I have to believe that the world still exists even when I close my eyes. Can I believe that? It must. It does.

The Monologue of One Searching for the Grounds of Existence: 'I have to believe that the world still exists even when I close my eyes'

This line is a kind of 'proof of existence' that Leonard Shelby voices to himself at the moment when the most basic trust system—his own memory—collapses. To lose all memory every ten minutes is to lose, at each moment, the grounds for knowing who he is and what he has done. This monologue is therefore not merely a pause in the process of tracking a case; it is Leonard's desperate attempt to hold onto a self on the verge of dissolution.

1. Context of the Utterance: The Void of Memory and the Amplification of Anxiety

Leonard gained an enormous driving force from the trauma of his wife's death and assault—the desire for revenge—but the 'memory' that grounds that force is itself unstable. He tries to rebuild his life by depending on external physical evidence: Polaroid photographs, notes, tattoos. Yet at the moment this monologue arrives, he sets aside external evidence for a moment and confronts the most primal question: 'Am I here, now, existing?'

His monologue attempts to grasp reality through the abstract concept of 'belief.' 'I have to believe that the world still exists even when I close my eyes' reflects a desperate psychological state—excluding physical sensation (sight) and trying to secure the continuity of reality through the single mental act of 'belief' alone. This shows that the amnesia he suffers has come to him not merely as a medical condition but as an existential threat.

2. Position in the Work and Structural Meaning: The Axis of the Non-Linear Narrative

This line fits perfectly with the film's overall non-linear narrative structure. The film alternates color (present) and black-and-white (past) to twist the flow of time, and Leonard is the person who experiences that twisting in his entire body. For him, 'truth' is not a perfect puzzle that can be rearranged in chronological order. Truth is closer to something that must be 'believed.'

This monologue is the point at which Leonard begins to doubt whether all the clues he has accumulated—Teddy's testimony, Natalie's help, the photographic record—are actually true, or merely the products of a 'belief' he has constructed. The repetition of 'Can I believe that? It must exist. Yes, it does' is a kind of self-hypnosis—an attempt to reassure himself in a state of radical uncertainty. This also poses to the audience the meta-question 'Is the very narrative we are watching trustworthy?'—maximizing intensity of immersion.

3. Audience and Fan Response: Intellectual Satisfaction and Coexisting Anxiety

Audiences connect deeply with Leonard's psychological suffering through this line. It makes them recognize the film not merely as a thriller about catching a criminal but as a philosophical thriller about the subjectivity of human memory and truth. Through this line the audience grasps that the suffering Leonard endures is not the 'loss of memory' but the 'loss of self,' and finds intellectual satisfaction within the film's difficulty. This line signals a turning point implying that Leonard must find truth not by depending on external forces (Teddy, Natalie) but through his own will—his 'belief.'

4. Subsequent Influence: The Transition toward Reconstructing Truth

After this monologue, Leonard becomes even more obsessively fixated on collecting evidence and reconstructing his own memory. This process of 'belief' ultimately leads to the greatest sense of betrayal and cognitive dissonance when he finally confronts the truth. The truth Leonard ultimately discovers—the distortion of his memory concerning his wife's death—means that every belief he forced himself to hold was in fact a device for deceiving himself. This monologue foreshadows the ironic ending in which Leonard departs from a state of distrust toward his own memory and arrives at believing the very thing he should least believe—his own memory.