We understand that they enforce the ideals of their state through searches, even state murder. We do not know who the memory police are or what their ultimate agenda is. We don’t know where it is set, except that it is on an island, nor do we know when. Ogawa’s novel, however, does not concern itself with the minutiae of state control. Orwell’s dissection of the means of repressive control spawned a political adjective, ‘Orwellian’, often applied to specific situations because Orwell’s novel laid bare the mechanisms of this type of power. He works at the Ministry of Truth, an aptly ironic name, since Winston’s time is employed in doctoring news stories and photographs to suit the State’s current political agenda, recalling the way Stalin’s political rivals were erased from the historical record through doctored photos and articles.īut this comparison serves to highlight what is so fundamentally different about Yoko Ogawa’s novel. Winston Smith, himself, is a cog in the State’s machine. Orwell’s State works through oppressive surveillance and by controlling the political message.

In both novels the regime has the means by which assumed reality is controlled.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four reality is controlled by the Party to exact total obedience to the State’s figurehead, Big Brother. There is a repressive regime, the memory police of the title, that has an agenda to control its population.

The Memory Police has themes in common with other dystopian fiction like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa