This article investigates how material objects fit into societal discourses of remembering; the authors focus on how the spatial and material composition of objects can affect subjects, thus suggesting particular meanings and engagements. In particular, they investigate war memorials as cultural objects and products of social discourses, but emphasize that the memorials are not reducible to these discourses. Rather, the materials used in the creation of war memorials as well as their holistic organization constitute vital aspects of the memorial site and its ability to engage individuals and groups in socially desirable and personally meaningful processes. The authors analyze the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial, taking into account the holistic material organization, hyper-generalization of signs, symbolic functions, and social suggestions that the memorial provides for visitors passing through. They argue that, partially through its very materiality, the memorial guides the direction of viewers' affective response, leading to particular interpretations and reactions.Much of human life revolves around objects that are, at first glance, intrinsically non-significant, but which become highly valued as a result of cultural processes (Valsiner, 2007). The process by which these meanings are created has long been studied in sociological, cultural, and theological domains, but psychology has only recently begun a serious study of how meaning is constructed on an individual level. Further, the relationship between material artifacts and human subjects has constituted a new and Journal of Material Culture 16(2) 193-213