Memory and the Past

The short story explores the individual’s relationship with memory and the past by way of Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy’s reflective conversations. Throughout “Cut and Throat” the three old friends engage in regular dialogues about their past lives and experiences. Although Leonie warns her friends that “[n]ostalgia is your enemy” when Chrissy and Myrna start exclaiming about how fun college was, all three friends are susceptible to nostalgic reminiscences (4). All elderly women in the narrative present, Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy become preoccupied with the past as a way to control their lives in the present. Their realities are now defined by sickness and death, and therefore lack the vibrancy their former lives once had. Therefore, whenever the three friends meet up for drinks and cheese in one another’s yards, they become immersed in recollection and remembrance. They not only plot...