The Memory Police is a novel about a dystopia on an island that is trying the reconcile the loss of memory. Throughout the novel, we see this small island living under the stern domination of the Memory Police, who barge into their homes and seize their belongings, loved ones, and more importantly, memories. On page 13, the narrator writes:
They all began to riffle through my father’s papers, pawing at his notes, drafts, books, and photographs. When they came upon something dangerous– in other words, anything that contained the word ‘bird’ — they threw the item unceremoniously on the floor. Leaning against the doorframe, I fiddled nervously with the lock as I watched them work.
The first thing that caught my eye about this book is the fact that her father is an ornithologist. Usually, birds symbolize freedom. Therefore, this scene, or even just solely the fact that her father’s profession is to study birds, lends an ironic touch to the novel.
With much talk of this story has been compared to Anne Frank’s diary and the holocaust, I would also like to point out that the Japenese have been through very similar struggles. During WWII, there were Japanese internment camps. Franklin Roosevelt created these camps as a reaction to the Pearl Harbor bombing in the earlier stages of WWII. Since this book is translated from Japanese, it leaves me to believe that the coping of the genocide is prevalent years prior.
Lastly, I would also like to write about the element of fantastic in this novel, which, I think, is an extreme dystopia. I took Nevison’s poetry class last semester, and we read a book called Deaf Republic. This is a work of poetry written in two acts about a town that also faces dystopia run by fascists; however, everyone in the town is deaf. I just think this is an interesting and incredibly similar comparison. And, I think it is interesting how we can also find the fantastic in poetry.