Total Recall
ISU Short Stories
We Can remember it for you Wholesale
“We Can remember it for you Wholesale”, is a story focused around a man named Douglas Quail. Quail is a store clerk who has dreams of visiting the red planet. To aid in his dream he visits a company called REKAL, a company that sells a sort of virtual holiday to its customers. However, upon implantation of the “trip to Mars”, it is discovered that his new virtual trip and some very real memories of Mars begin to collide. It is here that we discover that Quail is not an average desk jockey but was part of an intergalactic government agency and has actually been to Mars on a high profile government mission.
In my opinion, I believe that the conflict demonstrated in this story is more along the lines of person vs person but also has many instances of person vs self. The conflict regarding Quail and the government monitoring and threatening him are perfect examples of person vs person conflict that is demonstrated throughout the story. However, the constant juggling between the new implanted memories and the renaissance of the old suppressed memories could be seen as a constant mental battle inside of the main character (Quail).
Quail’s main Character flaw in the story is his
The opening line “he awoke-and wanted Mars” perfectly sums up the story in my opinion. To me the line perfectly illustrates the hunger that the protagonist has for going to Mars, and also in the lines that follow that describer the planet, it makes me wonder as if there is more to this story from the beginning, which later on in the book, we find out that there indeed is more, much more.
In my opinion, I thought that “We Can remember it for you Wholesale” was a well written narrative that demonstrated the sheer amount of content and story that can be put into a short story (albeit a slightly long short story). I enjoyed the author’s use of a post-apocalyptic/futuristic approach to act as a base of a psychologically thrilling
We Can remember it for you Wholesale
“We Can remember it for you Wholesale”, is a story focused around a man named Douglas Quail. Quail is a store clerk who has dreams of visiting the red planet. To aid in his dream he visits a company called REKAL, a company that sells a sort of virtual holiday to its customers. However, upon implantation of the “trip to Mars”, it is discovered that his new virtual trip and some very real memories of Mars begin to collide. It is here that we discover that Quail is not an average desk jockey but was part of an intergalactic government agency and has actually been to Mars on a high profile government mission.
In my opinion, I believe that the conflict demonstrated in this story is more along the lines of person vs person but also has many instances of person vs self. The conflict regarding Quail and the government monitoring and threatening him are perfect examples of person vs person conflict that is demonstrated throughout the story. However, the constant juggling between the new implanted memories and the renaissance of the old suppressed memories could be seen as a constant mental battle inside of the main character (Quail).
Quail’s main Character flaw in the story is his
The opening line “he awoke-and wanted Mars” perfectly sums up the story in my opinion. To me the line perfectly illustrates the hunger that the protagonist has for going to Mars, and also in the lines that follow that describer the planet, it makes me wonder as if there is more to this story from the beginning, which later on in the book, we find out that there indeed is more, much more.
In my opinion, I thought that “We Can remember it for you Wholesale” was a well written narrative that demonstrated the sheer amount of content and story that can be put into a short story (albeit a slightly long short story). I enjoyed the author’s use of a post-apocalyptic/futuristic approach to act as a base of a psychologically thrilling