Before I Go to Sleep

By featuring an amnesiac protagonist, Watson considers how memories shape identity and what happens to a person if their memories are damaged or become inaccessible. The author’s exploration of the theme draws on the philosophical idea of the continuity of the self. In his “memory theory,” 17th-century philosopher John Locke argued that an individual’s identity is intrinsically linked to their memories of the past. Memories forge a connection between the past and present, inform our sense of self, and create a sense of autobiography. According to Locke’s theory, if memory disappears, so does identity.

In Watson’s novel, Christine’s memory loss causes an identity crisis, eroding her sense of self. She describes the repetitive process of going to sleep and then waking with no memory as “like dying every day. Over and over” (208). While other people’s narratives have a linear chronology, with each day connected to the previous, Christine endures a kind of purposeless circularity, always returning to the same point. Every day she faces a world devoid of context and must start over again. Christine often feels as if she barely exists, referring to her sense of identity through the image of drifting, like an unmoored boat.