Little examines Mementos exploration of the complexities of surviving trauma, aligning the cinematic experience of viewing the film with the experience of living through a trauma. While the two are not identical, Little argues that the profound disruption of expectation and the film.s odd formal structure unsettle the viewer.s sense of temporal coherence and continuity. The author discusses the concept of .missing,. which frames the film.s thematic charge . a familiar temporal framework is missing, as is the true identity of the protagonist, whose character Little explores as a .missing person.. Memento elicits from viewers a response to missing that mirrors that of the repetition-bound protagonist, resembling the reaction to a traumatic experience. The author draws a parallel with post-traumatic stress disorder, which produces a compulsion to repeat the trauma through hallucinations, flashbacks and dreams in an effort to make sense of the experience. This repetition is bound with the problem of representation in terms of constructing a narrative .to re-present an original experience,. which makes it similar to an actual memento. Little draws on critic Susan Stewart.s work on the nature of the souvenir, an object that carries meaning only if it is recognized as a representation of and a substitute for the original thing. The author relates this to the fort-da game Freud observes in his grandson, which enables the child to make up for the absence of his mother by imagining and narrativizing it in a meaningful fashion. Like a memento, however, the game also entails disappointment as it cannot perfectly reproduce the lost origin of the mother.s unbroken presence. Memento, Little argues, functions like a memento in providing the viewer with souvenirs that stimulate, but do not satisfy, a nostalgic longing for an underlying truth.