The Memory Police

The disappearances cause familiar things to become “strange”; this is an example of the uncanny, a major theme in gothic and science fiction genres. When the islanders forget an object, it loses scientific explanations and becomes mystical. For instance, a simple music box, once forgotten, is “like magic.” Many works of fantasy, like the famous Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien, are about magic leaving the world, but the dystopian disappearances in Ogawa’s novel are a way of re-enchanting the world.

Even body parts that have disappeared are “all illusions.” People become unfamiliar with legs and arms: “They all seemed to be wondering how to deal with their own bodies” (247). In other examples of genre fiction, bodies become uncanny through mechanization (like China Miéville’s Remade characters in Perdido Street Station) or through separation from the mind by machines (as in The Matrix). Ogawa does not physically replace or remove body parts but takes away muscle memory.

Language—words and phrases—become unfamiliar through the disappearances. While objects sometimes remain in the world, the names for them are forgotten. What was once a native tongue becomes a foreign language. For example, when R tells the narrator the word for harmonica, she replies “as though drinking each syllable from his mouth.