Persuasive response defending Dr. Mierzwiak
Who hasn’t wished to erase a painful memory? A bad breakup, the death of a loved one, a traumatic experience? Through his work at Lacuna, Dr. Mierszwiak managed to give people that chance. He allowed them to get past their pain and suffering and continue their lives as though nothing had ever happened. Erasing a memory allows the person to move on without the years of therapy, making their lives inherently much simpler.
It can be argued that removing a memory from someone’s mind, especially a painful one which are the ones that can shape or reshape our thinking, is taking away part of their personality. This was shown in the case of Clementine Kruczynski when she seemed to be spiraling out of control after erasing Joel Barish.
We must however consider the positive aspects of this particular case. Erasing the person who brought out these personality and character problems allows the patient to determine the root cause of these issues. They will have to come face to face with their problems and fix them, becoming a better person in the process. Without a partner to blame for them, they will have to take responsibility for them. Due to Clementine and Joel finding each other again, they are doomed to repeat the same cycle of pain, and never fix their personal issues. They may be lucky and make the relationship work this time, but only if they face the fact that they both have problems that they cannot always blame on each other.
Dr. Mierszwiak went into this with only the best intentions, wanting to help people. That is what the did. Until people who couldn’t handle the truth decided that his actions were unethical or even despicable. I would like to remind the public that these erasing procedures were done only with extensive written and oral consent from the patients, it was their own decision to have their memories erased. Almost all patients were able to move on from the pain and have a normal life.
Now it must be mentioned that the procedure is only completely effective if the patient stays away from the person they erased. This is because the procedure only erases memories, not feelings or emotions which are often the root cause of our issues. This was demonstrated in both the case of Clementine and Joel, but also the case of Mary Svevo and Dr. Mierszwiak. In these two instances, the patient(s) interacted with the person they erased, and their feelings were never given a chance to fade. Mary Svevo had Dr. Mierszwiak erased after their affair went south, she still wanted to be able to work with him at Lacuna, just not remember the pain of their personal relationship. This backfired because her feelings remained.
In short, Dr. Mierszwiak’s research and work at Lacuna have brought nothing but healing, happiness and second chances to people who went through with the procedure and stayed away from the person they erased. He never set out to eliminate feelings, only erase the memories that caused the feelings in the first place. His intentions were good, and he has helped many, many people. Any problems or pain encountered after the procedure were caused by friends and family not respecting the patient’s wishes or by underlying feelings which never went away and were in no way the fault of Dr. Mierszwiak or his work.
Juliette Mavrias 
Nice work, Juliette. This is well-written and very coherent in its structure and arguments, and does the job of convincing the reader to not judge Dr. Mierzwiak too harshly. You will likely receive a grade that you are pleased with, but if you do decide you would like to revise, there are two things I would suggest: the first is that you could go a bit deeper in your discussion of feelings and how some people are able to deal with them while others are not. This does not require you to go into Nietzsche, but his concepts could help. My reason for suggesting this is that you mention the relationship between Mary and Mierzwiak, but don’t speak to his own relationship to the events. I think doing so would also add to your defense of his character; and second, there are some areas where the writing could be tightened up a bit. There are no real errors, but there is some looseness here and there in terms of your movement through the paragraphs. This aspect is more easily explained in person, so let me know if you want to talk through it. If you decide to revise, your deadline is April 10 at midnight.
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