Facing the face of Grief....

The key to understanding Martha is to understand her grief, a concept of emotions that most of us have dealt with at one time or another. We may not have lost a husband but there are many other outlets that we may have grieved over, such as; a home, a pet, or family members who have passed. When we get to the point that we can feel her grief we may be able to see why she might have chosen to go so far towards the uncanny.

People long for the thing that they believe they can’t have. She couldn’t have Ash back so she wanted him even more. At her lowest point she decided that messaging him would give her a glimpse of Ash still being there. I couldn’t imagine losing the man I love, to then find out that I was pregnant with his child, and thinking that I was all alone in this and that my child would never get to meet their father. The hormones and the emotions would be overwhelming. Would I want to talk to him, yes, of course I would! Logic says that to talk to the real Ash, Ash1, is impossible. We could hope and dream but would Ash 2 really be Ash 1? The simple answer to that question is no. Ash 2 is only a figment of what Ash 1 was, he would never be able to be the original Ash. Without those memories, emotions, or actions Ash 2 is just a shell that looks like Ash 1.

Human nature is to lie but at the same time we don’t want to be lied to. Ash 2 is a lie in Martha’s eyes, he isn’t who she wanted back. Just as ourselves that we put on social media can be a lie Ash 2 was only the combination of Ash 1’s encounters on social media and the internet, everything that was public, he didn’t have the memories of intimate times with his wife. He was just an android with the face of the man she loved.

I’m not sure about everyone else but memories are extremely important to me. Without those memories we would be shells of ourselves as well. Those memories give us a heuristic for hat emotions we should feel during actions that we perform on a day to day basis. Ash 2 didn’t have that heuristic to know how Ash 1 would act in person and the emotions that he would feel. That’s part of the reason why Martha was so upset with Ash 2 he wasn’t acting the way that Ash 1 would have.

The scene before the last when they were on the edge of the cliff is what I would describe as the uncanny breaking point for Martha. She realized that Ash 2 would never be Ash 1. She had to tell Ash 2 what Ash 1 would have done, he would have cried and begged her not to make him jump. At that moment the realization was so much for her that she would not be able to have her Ash back.

In discussion the idea that she was ashamed of him, came up. I don’t believe that was the case. Since Ash 2 was only a part of Ash 1 he was just like a memory. She was able to deal with her grief by putting Ash 2 in the attic, only visiting him when she needed that moment of confirmation that Ash 1 was really gone and he wouldn’t be back, only the memories of him would live on. Overall she faced her grief just as we do, she just faced it with the help of an android.