The Man Who Walked on the Moon

“The Man Who Walked on the Moon” emphasizes the subjective nature of memory and the highly variable—and unreliable—way that people conceive of the past. Although history itself might be set in stone, the way people process and reimagine past events ultimately depends on multiple factors, including their own motives for remembering things a certain way. For instance, the narrator of “The Man Who Walked on the Moon” takes advantage of the malleability of his own memory and uses it to reshape the way he thinks of himself: if he says he went to space, nobody can deny him that. Similarly, when Scranton claims that photos of the Apollo missions torn from popular magazines are his own pictures, he demonstrates an unwillingness to accept the real version of history, and it’s quite difficult for anyone—the narrator included—to refute him, despite the fact that it’s quite obvious that Scranton wasn’t part of the Apollo missions. Seemingly inspired by Scranton’s willfully incorrect memory of the past, the narrator eventually uses the flexibility of memory to serve his own means. In doing so, he shapes for himself a new identity that is preferable to that of a failed journalist, husband, and son. Under the guise of an “ex-astronaut,” he can change his habits and reinforce a past that never existed. Memory is, in this sense, deeply subjective but also somewhat pragmatic, as the narrator uses it (or some deluded version of it) as a tool to justify an entirely new life. Like Scranton’s memory, the narrator’s memory effectively becomes his history. In turn, “The Man Who Walked on the Moon” highlights the tricky idea that the stories we tell ourselves about history are often just as important as what actually happened.