48 pages • 1 hour read
The Memory Police
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Chapters 25-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
The narrator details how the old man died—an intracranial hemorrhage outside the butcher’s shop—and her experience collecting his body from the morgue. She thinks back on his post-quake injuries and his varying degrees of abilities after that. After the funeral, she struggles to cope with his death, because unlike R, who remembers everything, the old man was a victim of the disappearances like her.
During nights of insomnia, she takes out her manuscript and arranges disappeared objects on top of it even though she feels like “nothing was likely to interest my soul in its weakened state” (243). Occasionally, an object offers a glimmer of feeling, and she begins to write, starting with the line “I soaked my feet in water” and, after being encouraged by R, continuing with:
Not a speck of dust floated on the water.
I looked out on the grassy meadow.
When the wind blew, it made patterns in the grass.
Patterns like those in cheese nibbled by mice (244-45).
The next disappearance is left legs; they are attached, but without feeling or movement. The narrator struggles to stand, walk, and dress before realizing the words for her disappeared appendage. The neighbors stumble out into the street and discuss this unique disappearance. While disappearances have become commonplace, this bodily one shocks the islanders, and they fear being forced to cut off their legs—but this ends up not being the case.
Don the dog also can’t remember his back-left leg. R tries to massage and describe the narrator’s left leg, but she has no sensation in it. She doesn’t tell R that she can barely tell he is touching her but asks him to keep holding her.
Chapter 26 Summary
One reason for keeping the disappeared legs attached becomes clear when the Memory Police are now able to catch people who can remember everything: Those who remember can’t mimic the way the others have adapted to moving with forgotten left legs.
The narrator notes that communication with R’s wife has been cut off, but she tries to reestablish the connection through the elementary school meteorological station, which has become even more of a ruin, and telephone signals.
The protagonist begins to write again, very slowly remembering details about the typist, but no manuscript excerpt features in this chapter. She visits the library ruins and thinks about the old man’s death, expressing regrets for not encouraging him to see a doctor, and worries about forgetting him.
Right arms disappear, and people adapt more quickly than with the left leg disappearance. The narrator notes these bodily disappearances are “in fact, easier and more peaceful than the earlier ones, as no one had to gather in the square to burn the objects or send them floating down the river” (256). R tries to comfort her, but she warns him that “every last bit of me will disappear” (257).
Chapter 27 Summary
This entire chapter is the protagonist’s manuscript. The typist suffers from Stockholm Syndrome and loses her eyesight, except she can see her captor clearly. She hears high heels click up the stairs to her tower room and someone knocking at the door.
Although the typist realizes this may be a way to escape, she does not move as the knocking continues. Eventually the knocker leaves, and the typing teacher returns. He asks why she didn’t respond to the woman knocking earlier. She stares back at him, wondering why he didn’t keep the woman away. He says, “I knew that you were no longer capable of going back out into the world. It would make no difference if someone came knocking at your door. You’ve already been absorbed into this room” (264).
The typing teacher tells her about the woman—a new student—and how he plans to steal her voice next. Then he visits infrequently, and only to give her poor food. The typist continues to lose her sight and hearing; she tries filling the sink with water to soak her legs but can’t feel the cold-looking water. Trying other body parts (like her hands, face, and chest), she realizes the lack of sensation is not only in her legs.
When the typing teacher is gone for a long time, the typist wonders about him—if he’s with the new student and why he isn’t coming to visit. Later, she hears the high heels alongside his footsteps on the stairs. Believing the new student is carrying a broken typewriter, the typist is “absorbed silently into the room, leaving no trace” (268) as he enters with the new prisoner.
Chapter 28 Summary
The protagonist comments on the difficult process of writing with disappeared body parts. She isn’t sure it’s “the story R wanted, but at least I had reached the end of the chain of words” (269), and she gives him the manuscript.
He tries massaging her forgotten body parts, holding her close, and showing her the forgotten objects, but she can’t remember and falls asleep in his bed. She says the islanders were able to easily accept the disappearance of the remainder of their bodies and reflects on how the old man was lucky to die before they lost their bodies.
When only voices are left on the island, the narrator notes that R “seemed to be trying to caress my voice” (273). She believes the Memory Police are now inactive because there are no more bodies, and she tells him he could leave the secret room. After she wishes him goodbye and her voice continues to disappear, he opens the trapdoor and leaves the secret space.
Chapters 25-28 Analysis
The narrator’s first forays back into writing visually resemble lines of poetry on the page (broken lines with white space on the right-hand side rather than paragraphs that run to the margins); in content, they suggest the poetic school of thought called imagism. Ezra Pound was one of the founders of imagism, which imitated ancient Chinese poets like Li Po and called for language focusing on the thing itself; the narrator is writing in this kind of verse when attempting to record glimmers of memories that come back to her.
In Chapter 25, the disappearances are causing bodies to become unfamiliar. This is part of the gothic trope of the uncanny; tactile relationships within the body resemble earlier tactile relationships to objects (not knowing how to handle forgotten objects). Body parts have become strange and disassociated things; as one of the protagonist’s neighbors, the former hatmaker, says, “My body feels as though it’s gone to pieces and won’t go back together again” (248).
The slow process of removing body parts finds parallels in Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go. At one point, R even says to the narrator, “I won’t let you go” (258). Disappearing body parts and sense perception are mirrored across the internal manuscript and the main narrative; both the typist and Ogawa’s protagonist first lose sensation in their legs, and this process culminates in the dissipation of their entire selves into secret rooms. However, while the typist loses her voice before anything else, Ogawa’s protagonist loses her voice last of all.
Even the Memory Police have disappeared by the last two chapters. The snow, sun, and R are the only things the protagonist is sure exist at the end.
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