UNIT 5: Novel Experiments
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa Unit Overview.
This unit focuses on the novel as a literary form by studying the modern novel The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Student activities highlight setting and characterization, with particular attention paid to the question of how and why characters in the novel so easily forget objects that are “disappeared” by the Memory Police. Additionally, students will collaborate in whole-class and small-group lessons to explore the role of magical realism and the fantastic in literature, particularly how magical realism helps the reader gain a deeper sense of reality; consider the challenges of translation, including the different connotations that various cultures attach to given words; analyze how literary devices produce meaning; and interpret how Japanese concepts like mono-no-aware, gaman, or enryo are used or treated in the novel. |
Plot Overview.
The Memory Police takes place on a mysterious, unnamed island off an unnamed coast where an authoritarian government makes whole categories of objects or animals disappear overnight, wiping them from the memories of citizens. Those who retain their recall are outlaws who go into hiding. Citizens live under heavy police surveillance. Novels are burned. People are detained and interrogated without explanation. Neighbors are taken away in the middle of the night. All the while, the citizens, cowed by fear, do nothing to stop the disappearances. These disappearances are enforced by the Memory Police, a fascist squad that sweeps through the island, ransacking houses to confiscate lingering evidence of what’s been forgotten.
Amidst this uncanny epidemic of forgetting, a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police. She concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
The Memory Police takes place on a mysterious, unnamed island off an unnamed coast where an authoritarian government makes whole categories of objects or animals disappear overnight, wiping them from the memories of citizens. Those who retain their recall are outlaws who go into hiding. Citizens live under heavy police surveillance. Novels are burned. People are detained and interrogated without explanation. Neighbors are taken away in the middle of the night. All the while, the citizens, cowed by fear, do nothing to stop the disappearances. These disappearances are enforced by the Memory Police, a fascist squad that sweeps through the island, ransacking houses to confiscate lingering evidence of what’s been forgotten.
Amidst this uncanny epidemic of forgetting, a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police. She concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
Learning Objectives.
CORE TEXT
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Mono no Aware series by Gabriella Achadinha and Marlize Eckard (2017)
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IMAGE GALLERY 1.
Mixed media artwork by Maurizio Anzeri, from the film Mono No Aware (2020), which seeks to find the beauty in the ephemeral nature of human life.
Mixed media artwork by Maurizio Anzeri, from the film Mono No Aware (2020), which seeks to find the beauty in the ephemeral nature of human life.
IMAGE GALLERY 2.
Photography by Seung-Hwan Oh. His Impermanence series (2012-2015) implements microbial growth on film.
Photography by Seung-Hwan Oh. His Impermanence series (2012-2015) implements microbial growth on film.