Disappearance

In the novel, the phenomenon of ‘disappearing’ symbolizes censorship. One of the memory Police’s main activities is outlawing certain objects and erasing all memory of those objects from the islanders’ memories. The Memory Police employs this tactic to tighten their ruthless control, much like autocratic governments in real life use censorship to help solidify their power.

The Memory Police

The Memory Police symbolize corrupt, autocratic governments. The only apparent goal of the Memory Police is to strengthen its own control over the islanders, and the MP regularly resort to killing dissidents and performing various other immoral actions. The Memory Police exercise ruthless control over the islanders, without any input form the islanders themselves.

The Narrator’s Novel

The story of the narrator’s in-progress novel symbolizes the destructive societal effects of censorship and dictatorship. In the narrator’s novel, a man steals a woman’s...