The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa is a beautifully written political dystopian novel. To me this novel was reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Lois Lowry’s The Giver. All these works of literature take place in a dystopia in which the government has taken complete control of particular aspects of life or life itself. All of these works focus on a character that is attempting to disobey the order, and attempt to find a way of life that is different from what their governments have forced upon them. However, The Memory Police has unique characteristic that distinguishes it from the rest.
The way the The Memory Police distinguishes itself from other political dystopian novels is that the motives of the memory police is never clear to the reader. Throughout the novel, Yoko Ogawa never attempts to specify the motives or the details of the organization which has taken control over the lives of the people. Furthermore, the way in which the world is set up to follow the restrictions placed by memory police allows for the readers to understand the power that the government institution has on their lives. Once something disappears from the island, no one can remember the function. Hence, even though items like boats have not completely disappeared, it will never be used because the function of the object has become obsolete to the people that live there. Additionally, the correlation between political institutions and the physical world are intertwined in a way that allows for the disappearance of things to become more concrete. When the roses disappeared they never grew again. Similarly, when calendars cease to exist, so do the seasons that accompany them. All these ways in which the author creates this world makes it immensely distinguishable from other dystopian novels.
Another way in which this book is masterful is in its world building. Yoko Ogawa never overexplains the situation in which the characters are in, but she never leaves the readers in the dark. The explanations that she provides are enough for the reader to get the grasp of the situation without being spewed out to the reader at the beginning. Additionally, the way in which the details expand over the course of the novel set a feeling of credibility that allows for the reader to immerse themselves into the story. This is because the story starts with small disappearances that grow to things which cause real effects on the lives of people. Additionally, her pragmatic tone allows for the story to have a sense of uncanniness and eeriness. Furthermore, as the novel moves forward the sense of desperation, fear, and tension grows. It also allows for the reader be more attentive to the occurrences and have a sense of belief in the events unfolding in the novel. Also, the choice of not naming many of the characters caught my attention. It could illustrate that these people are losing their identity. Hence, there is no need to differentiate them by names as their identity is lost amid the mass of people. It could also emphasize the feeling of surrealism in this world, as we are never given a clear name to identify these characters.
Another literary device that I thought brought context to the novel was that the narrator was writing. The novel inside The Memory Police runs parallel to the main story, but what truly caught my attention was the similarity between the characters. Apart from the story being tied to her life, it also made me think of how as people disappear, so do archetypes of people, so I found the idea that the characters she writes are so similar to her to be interesting. It could also imply that people who disappear are gone from her memory, so she cannot think of or remember the differences between people. This also emphasizes the idea that the people are becoming empty shells of themselves, and their “sleeping souls” are actually gone. Additionally, as she writes about things which she has forgotten, it foreshadows her own disappearance.