Psychology Of Memory In War: A Study Of David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black

Abstract

Human Brain has the high complex mechanism which can store and retrieve memories. Memory studies helped us to understand the way it process. Long-term memory has the capacity for limitless storage to store the past and present events with emotions it carried along. Reading the novel of David Diop’s “At Night All Blood is Black”, Alfa the protagonist communicated his life narrative which contained memories, emotions and the psychological changes in his ‘self’. He was a Senegalese soldier at the war zone and the sudden unexpected demise of his soul bother evoked his past experience. This paper projects the sense of attachment with his past and the people in specific took an emotional upheaval connected with his memory. How the change happened in his ‘self’ slowly took over his mentality and behavior due to the death at the war zone discussed here. Key factors like visual mnemonic technique, flashbacks, episodic memory were implied in the article to understand a person who project his self in comparison to his past and present. Violence and death were the combination of war. Through visual mnemonic, we can observe the person seeking an outlet to express his thoughts and emotions and how he finally embraced the realization through revealing the truth which helped him to cleanse his ‘self’.