What did I get out of the book? I enjoyed it. I think often when I read different books that there are things in there that an author may or may not have intended to be there. They provide a framework, a skeleton, that I have to clothe with flesh and fabric to make it complete.
Everything in this story revolves around the memory police and their actions in the community. Things would disappear, and along with them, the memories associated with those objects. There was no reason given to the reader why particular objects were chosen, but that may have been the point: to illustrate certain types of experiences with particular types of governments and their actions.
Here are some things that came to mind when I read about the character’s experiences in the situation they lived in the story. Anne Frank, the Jewish girl that wrote a diary while confined in an attic to escape being found by the Nazi authorities in Germany. One of the main characters had to be hidden in a very small space, a room specially modified for a long-term stay. He was in a secret basement that had a small entrance that was covered with a rug. There was a fear that they would all be found out. Confinement inevitably causes one to suffer mentally. Most of the time, objects were what was disappeared by the memory police, but on occasion, it was people. The need had arisen to hide this man.
The event called the Cultural Revolution in China is another thing that came to mind while reading the story. My perception of this moment in history was that there had to be an elimination of objects that represented ideas that a government no longer thought appropriate for the people to possess. Artifacts related to various religions, such as Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, and aspects of Western culture, had to be purged so that people could be set onto a correct and proper path. These are things that could have been considered pollution or contamination. This type of behavior is also part of the historical legacy of Christianity and Islam when they destroyed images and artifacts related to pagan religions. They would destroy temples and buildings and use the materials to build something else. Art was destroyed, and stories, books, and languages were erased and eliminated. There was a scene in the novel where books were gathered and burned.
The underground railroad also came to mind. During the Civil War in the United States, enslaved people were taken to the North, where they could be free. There was mention of people being able to leave the island of the memory police and get to safety and freedom.
A woman in the story was unable to speak with her voice, but she was able to communicate using a typewriter. I took that as a literal ability to speak through an object. In the story, many objects disappeared, and each one had an identity and memories associated with it. The things would remind people of individuals, places, events, and stories associated with them. Objects could contain and tell stories. Erasing objects erased the stories and removed memories.
Memories and objects and art and stories are part of history and part of identity. Some governments throughout history, and in the present, have tried to control memories. This is what we want you to remember, and this is what we want you to forget. Pay attention to these stories and ignore these other stories.
The story and the actions of the memory police progressed toward increasing disempowerment of the population so that later in the story, there was an event where people started losing the use of their limbs. First, a leg, then an arm, and then more of their bodies ceased their proper function. The body part was not cut off and disappeared. It was still there, and it could presumably operate correctly, but it was not used. I thought about that and compared it to the limitations that people sometimes place on themselves, something like a learned helplessness. Memories and history on the individual and collective level produce the identities of individual people and societies. These things can be manipulated for control over people and a society.
We are taught and internalize stories that are part of our education. I brought up ideas in a book discussion group regarding what was possible for a woman or an African American to do early in this century. Someone was setting the limits with the stories they told. Culture, government, racism, and gender inequality create stories that create boundaries or set the parameters of what is possible. James Baldwin wrote a comment in a short message to teachers saying that if the world thought he was one thing and he disagreed with that conception of himself, then there was going to be a war as he was going to fight that idea. It is, as I mentioned earlier, like that moment in the story when people have their limbs but are unable to use them because something has gone wrong with the structure of the stories in the mind.
Memory, in this case, remembering, forgetting, creating a new illusion, and controlling what is in the minds of people, could include the elimination of past accomplishments as individuals and as cultures or nations. The memory police are monitoring and producing their own desired reality for everyone.
This book seems to be modeled after George Orwell’s 1984. I read that book twice, according to my Goodreads account, but I have no memory of it.