48 pages • 1 hour read
The Memory Police
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Symbols & Motifs
Hearts
The heart is both a symbol—for emotions, emotional intelligence, and empathy—and a motif that runs throughout the novel. Hearts serve as a way to gauge the impact of the disappearances on the islanders. Those who have the ability to remember everything seem to have larger hearts. R describes a heart as having “no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense” (81). He not only remembers an excessive amount but loves an excessive amount (for example, carrying on an extramarital affair and loving the writer alongside her writing).
However, those who forget the things that the Memory Police decrees as disappeared feel and appear as if their hearts are “frozen” (98) or “decaying” (146). The associations built up around objects, animals, plants, and even body parts are part of emotional intelligence; memory is key to establishing and developing links between people, especially with loved ones who have died. R tries to relink memories with forgotten objects—to “thaw” or “move” the narrator and the old man—but the attempts are “futile” in many cases (228). He insists that the Memory Police and citizens “may have burned the novels, but [the narrator’s] heart did not disappear” (231), and until the very end, he tries to warm her heart.
In some cases, the forgotten objects evoke glimmers of memory—especially sensory memory—and associated emotions, and these glimmers allow the protagonist to finish her manuscript. She calls them “luminous signposts that would lead me to R. And [...] illuminate the cavity in my heart” (244). Her love for R—someone with a full or even overflowing heart—is intertwined with her love for writing, and both are symbolized by the heart.
In the end, she continues to disappear; after the islanders forget their left legs, she says, “the hole left by our legs will find a place in our hearts and minds that it fits perfectly, a place to fall into” (251). Before she completely disappears, however, she gives R her completed manuscript, allowing some parts of her heart to symbolically leave the secret room.
Snow
The Memory Police begins in late autumn, and soon it rains, turns cold, and snows. Snow consumes the island and, after the disappearance of calendars, continually falls. As a symbol of oppressive, and excessive, nature, snow is tied to the sea. The narrator explains: “Trucks [...] collect the snow. They dump it into the sea at the harbor near the old man’s boat” (110). Only the sea can consume the amount of snow that is falling on the island. Once seasons are abolished, the lack of seasonal change is seen in both elements: “The color of the sea would be lightening. It seems strange to have so much snow on the ground this late” (135).
Snow and snow-whiteness are symbolically related to purity—in Ogawa’s novel, purifying is key to disappearances and enforced by the police. The Memory Police can use snow as a regulatory medium, to track the movements of citizens; the narrator says, the “snow was so perfect and untouched that it was almost frightening to disturb it” (118). Moreover, snow inhibits movement and has destructive powers. For instance, the roof of the protagonist’s mother’s sculpture cabin “caved in from the weight of the snow” (220).
When left legs disappear, revealing that the islanders themselves will eventually be forgotten, the narrator wonders, “[W]ould the cold creeping up from the snow bring feeling back to it?” (248). The snow never reinvigorates but instead seems to blanket and outlast everything else. The Memory Police have made bodies and even voices disappear, but in the end, “the snow [...] continued to fall without respite. There was no sign whatsoever that snow would disappear” (271).
Food
As a prevalent motif in the novel, food highlights austerity of resources and sensory experience. The characters make numerous comments about how it is difficult to obtain many kinds of food, and some foods have disappeared before the main timeline begins. For instance, the narrator can
“no longer recall how green beans looked or tasted” (45) because they have been forgotten. However, spices outlast novels—the narrator is hired as a typist at a “spice company” after the disappearance of fiction. Also, food is part of the resistance against the Memory Police: The narrator’s mother hid a candy called “ramune” in one of her sculptures (217).
The ramune are part of the last moment the narrator shares with the old man, and many important moments of emotional connection are linked to shared meals. Some examples: The narrator and the old man eat apple cake while planning how to hide R; when the narrator and R are learning about each other (and falling in love) in the secret room, they eat cookies made by the old man; and the narrator shares pancakes with the old man just before the earthquake hits. This motif highlights the connection between life-changing events and sense memory.
Hands
Another motif connected to sense-memory is hands. Tactile sensation is one way R tries to save the hearts of the narrator and the old man; he says, “there might be some benefit from holding these forgotten objects in your hands, feeling their weight, smelling them, listening to them” (146). Emotional memory, symbolized by the heart, is focalized through sensory perception, symbolized by the hand. Also, sensory details are key to the craft of writing; the narrator is inspired by sensations and composes her manuscript by hand (with a pencil). After novels disappear, her “hand still shook when it came time to select a word” (245). Later, R puts the narrator’s forgotten leg “in his hands” (251) to try to reverse the process of disappearance—to offer tactile proof that her leg exists—but she cannot feel his touch.
Before body parts begin to disappear, hands touching other hands is a symbol of intimacy and emotional connection. After the earthquake, R and the narrator do “not need to move, content to hold hands and stare at one another for a long time. There seemed to be no other way to reassure ourselves” (205). Another example of the hand motif is when the narrator fixates on Professor Inui’s son’s gloves—“the small sky-blue hand-knit pair with a strand of chain stitching to hold them together” (207)—during their attempt at escaping the Memory Police, and when she glimpses similar (or the same) gloves in the back of a police truck later.
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