[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[Byatil]

(05-01-2011 12:43 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  Another great post binkie. I think that you present the reasons for Lucas keeping the tattoos brilliantly.

Ditto that! Your analysis is consistently fascinating and entirely believable; always a pleasure to read

I was thinking that perhaps Lucas' tattoos were such an integral part of him because of the fact that his life is built on lies. As you said, binkie, he has learned to keep his mouth shut and not to give too much away, because as soon as he is void of information he is worthless. I think that the tattoos are a way of implying meaning to those who realise the connotations and literal translations of them without him having to explain himself to anyone. A barrier, as I think you said? Whilst he has the tattoos, he has no reason to explain himself to anyone - because the tattoos culturally imply an explanation of himself simply through being there. A mask to hide behind, perhaps?

I think what I'm saying is that I entirely agree with this:

binkie Wrote:I wonder if he is not so much “showing them off” as he is hiding behind them. If he can retreat far enough beyond the sign of what the tattoos are in the collective memory (a connotation of the fact of imprisonment), then he may possibly be able to let go of the subjective memory which gives them the individual and personal meaning born of experience in space and time. Even his statement to Harry in 7.1 that “they all mean something” could be read as a first step on the way to divesting them of meaning in a post-release reality. If he says that they mean something, then that is all they have to mean. The statement has a kind of logical determinism. The significance of the tattoos is that they have significance, nothing else about them matters now.

Lucas keeps the tattoos because they prove he is something other than a gap in the record, or a memory glitch. He remembers because he must. His memory of himself is the means by which he gives purpose to his absence from the collective memory, and by which he is able to validate the individual experience which could so easily be obscured by that absence. The tattoos, in their simple physical evidence, recognise and remember the illusion of absence, and require that same recognition of the collective memory which would otherwise preserve the illusion.