Christine’s husband, Ben, is my prime suspect for the cause of her memory loss. He has an advantageous position over her that he uses to keep Christine from her objective, shown through his patronizing of her, his lies, and his decision about memory treatments. Before all that, though, I think the whole situation very suspect. Ben has all the control in their relationship, as Christine is dependent on him telling her about her whole life, and she has no choice but to believe him. All of Ben’s characterization leads to the same suspicion of his guilt. Firstly, he is very patronizing of Christine. He smiles when he explains her story to her, he approaches her like she is a “frightened animal”, and tells her he knows and understands all of her worries. He also attempts to have sex with her, though knowing she views him as a stranger, and she has to push him off, much to his extreme disappointment. He thinks he deserves this sex and that he knows everything she thinks, meaning she's less than him and someone who needs to be taken care of or babied. This view of her would make it easy for him to justify harming her and causing her to lose her memory. He then keeps key knowledge about her own life from her-- he told her they didn’t have any children, even when they have a dead son, and he told her she worked as a secretary before her accident, when in fact she had fulfilled her dreams of being an author. She deserves to have this knowledge, even if it upsets her, and him deciding he had the right to control her life and identity so powerfully shows just how far he’ll go in the name of protecting her feelings. He also refuses to let her follow treatment for her memory, so she has to go behind his back to do so. He claims that the treatment won’t work and he sick of attempting to "cure" her. However, if he truly wants the best for her, he would continue the treatments no matter the cost to him. He is purposely keeping her in the dark, and his only objective to doing that would be to keep her sheltered from some truth in her past, which I suspect is that he is the cause of her memory loss.
“I said nothing when Ben came downstairs, nothing as he sat on the sofa across from me. I fixed my eyes on the television. A documentary about wildlife. The inhabitants of the ocean floor. A remote-controlled submersible craft was exploring an underwater trench with jerky twitches. Two lamps shone into places that had never known light before. Ghosts in the deep.” In this quote, Christine has just found out that Ben lied to her about yet another important part of her life. Ben had told her that her closest friend, Claire, who Christine has remembered flashes of, moved to New Zealand, when in fact she has been living close in England, one phone call away, the entire time. Christine now has to pretend as if she doesn’t know, for if she reveals that she does, she’ll reveal that she’s been seeing the memory specialist Dr. Nash, who told her about this friend. She is filled with hate for Ben for keeping this vital piece of information that could have alleviated her from pain from her...
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