48 pages • 1 hour read
The Memory Police
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Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
The protagonist encounters an old woman selling vegetables on the side of the road who asks if she knows a safe house. Fearing that telling the woman will put R in danger, the protagonist refuses. Shortly thereafter, her neighbor—a former hatmaker—and his family ask to stay with her while their house is being painted. She feels she must agree and is especially cautious with R, keeping their secret hidden from the visitors.
The narrator reveals she has been taking care of the dog the Memory Police left behind in Chapter 17, and she finds out the dog’s name from his doghouse: Don.
Soon after, novels disappear. R offers to hide the narrator’s books in the secret room and begs her to continue writing her manuscript. She replies, “Even if we keep the manuscripts and the books, they’re nothing more than empty boxes. Boxes with nothing inside. You can peer into them, listen carefully, sniff the contents, but they signify nothing,” and her “soul seems to be breaking down” (176). Eventually, she agrees to keep the manuscript and a dozen of her books with R, but she brings the rest of her books to be burned in large, public fires.
Reaching the center of town, she and the old man see a “mountain” (178) of books burning and the Memory Police watching the fire under a moon-less, star-less sky. A woman starts screaming about the importance of books, and the narrator slowly realizes she’s wearing a hat (an object that has disappeared) as the Memory Police drag her away from the fire.
The narrator has too many books to burn in one fire, so she and the old man visit other fires to burn the rest of the novels. They comment on the incredible size of the fires and walk past the burning library to the ruins of the observatory. She remembers the quote: “Men who start by burning books, end by burning other men,” but she does not remember its source, and she asks, “What if human beings themselves disappear?” (184).
From the observatory, they throw books onto the library fire. She tells the old man her plan to continue writing her novel in secret; she has decided to try for R as much as for her soul.
Chapter 20 Summary
The narrator gets a new job as a typist at a spice company but can’t remember why the word “typist” is significant to her. She generally likes her job and gets gifts of food, like sausage and cheese. When she looks over her manuscript, she realizes there was a connection but struggles to read even her own work; the words evoke “no feeling or atmosphere, no recognizable scene” (190). She can only type and erase series of letters, usually vowels. R is certain she will be able to write again with practice, and they are physically intimate again. She tells him about the books burning, and he reads her manuscript aloud to her.
On the boat, the protagonist and the old man make pancakes, and Don the dog gets a few bites as well. They listen to the music box and talk about books burning and her attempts at writing as well as the craft of writing. She says, “I thought I could hear the sound of my memory burning that night” (195). The old man asks if she’s in love with R. She thinks he won’t be able to leave the secret room—he would come apart because of the density of his memories if he tried to rejoin the world. During this conversation, an earthquake hits.
Chapter 21 Summary
After the quake, the narrator finds Don the dog easily and discovers the old man is stuck under the dish cabinet. He tries to warn her about a tsunami, but the word “tsunami” is unknown to her. She eventually frees him, and they flee the ruined boat. They climb the hill to the library ruins, and the narrator notices blood coming out of the old man’s ear. From this elevated position, they watch a tsunami destroy houses on the island’s coast, such as “a red roof being folded like origami and sucked under the surging waters” (201). After the wave subsides, they realize the old man rescued the music box while the narrator rescued Don the dog.
Her house is relatively intact—not much structural damage to the outside, but everything tossed about inside. They rush to the trapdoor and discover that it is stuck, and R is without light and ventilation. She borrows tools from the former haberdasher neighbor, and the old man breaks open the trapdoor. They survey the damage in the secret room and hold hands.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
The descriptions surrounding the loss of novels contain several literary allusions and quotes. The protagonist classifies novels (after their disappearance) as “boxes with nothing inside. You can peer into them, listen carefully, sniff the contents, but they signify nothing” (176). This appears to be an allusion to lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing” (Macbeth 5.5.26-28). Our narrator can’t remember the source, but the quote “Men who start by burning books, end by burning other men” (184) is by German poet Heinrich Heine. Following this quote is a significant moment of foreshadowing: The narrator worries that humans will disappear, and they do in fact start disappearing later in the novel, one body part at a time. Right before the disappearance of novels, she considers the literary roots for Don the dog’s name: either “Don Juan or Don Quixote” (174). In a novel full of nameless characters, Don the dog and Professor Inui’s cat, Mizore, are the only ones graced with first names.
Even though novels have disappeared and been burned, there are several connections between the manuscript and the main narrative. Ogawa’s protagonist winds up a typist, the same job as her narrator’s protagonist. In Chapter 18, the typist says, “I am reduced to pieces in no time” (166), and in Chapter 20, Ogawa’s protagonist worries that R will “dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly” (196). “Pieces” is repeated across the texts.
In addition to the never-ending snow, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami are indicative of climate change. Since the old man remembers the word “tsunami” but the narrator doesn’t, it seems that a tsunami has occurred in his lifetime, but not hers. This mirrors the snowless decade; large meteorological events are accompanied by large seismic events.
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