The Elevator Rhetorical Analysis

The moments on each floor of the elevator represent the moments that Cobb regrets, but they also illustrate how Cobb creates Mal’s projection because of her relationship to the initial traumatic event. His subconscious uses archetypes from each of the memories in order to create what Cobb recognizes as Mal in dreams. For example, the basement level portrays the memory-dream of Mal’s death; however, this dream does not reflect the actual events of the memory, as revealed by the flashback of the event. Although extremely similar, the detail which differs is Mal’s presence within the room that Cobb walks into, as the audience knows she actually sat on a window ledge in the building opposite. We can extrapolate from this that his subconscious has
complete control of what archetype or combination of archetypes Mal portrays. ADD EXAMPLE OF BAD/MAL. Moreover, as soon as Cobb and Ariadne make a step toward and into the elevator, Mal jumps them. Cobb’s subconscious imbues Mal with this personality trait due to the trauma she causes. It believes that Mal is evil for committing suicide and forcing Cobb to leave his children. The curious operations of memory and repetition are thrown into relief by the case of Zimmerman’s Eurydice due the nature of these operations within the myth. Taken together, these two case studies begin to suggest that trauma in conjunction with the subconscious play a large role in creating images for the conscious mind.