Susan Engel's Then And Now: Creating A Self Through The Past

Template Memories”, a term coined by Susan Engel in her essay “Then and Now: Creating a Self through the Past”, are memories that stand for a great, more drawn-out meaning of theme in a person’s life (Engel 200). The deeper meaning within these memories can lead to a person developing a greater understanding of themselves; Patricia Hampl discusses about a time of when her father took her to a Nun for piano lessons in her essay “Memory and Imagination. She later recollects about this time in her life later on in the essay. From a comparative stance, the concept of template memories can apply to Hampl’s experience due to the similarities in their terms and concepts. Continuing on Engel’s essay, before she mentions template memories, she gives an example of one

She argues that if we do not write memoirs for ourselves, then someone else would probably write it. These observations indicate that the true meaning of yourself would be lost. This could also relate to template memories; except the memories are already are written down. All that has to be done is reading the memoir and gaining meaning from it, but you will never get the true meaning unless the memoir is from the person themselves. You would be getting an interpretation which could hold a different meaning or theme from what the person in question was thinking. So you could be missing an important aspect of someone’s character. The idea of template memories applies to a lot of aspects of Hampl’s essay, from her memoir itself to the recollections, and her arguments and ideas towards the end. A memory has a lot of value to it and that memory could return for significance. In terms of Hampl, writing that memory down would be the best option because a lot of meaning would be attained from it. Not only for others, but for you, the memoirist, as