Memory Wall

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, religious discrimination, illness or death, and child death.

Alma Konachek is the protagonist of the collection’s titular story, “Memory Wall.” She’s a white woman in post-apartheid South Africa, characterized on the surface by her racism, entitlement, and resentment toward her late husband. The subtext reveals character traits that add depth to her portrayal. Her desire for fine things, comforts, and high society contrasts with her girlhood love of pirates and adventure stories. With her characterization, the narrative demonstrates the idea that a person’s essence is complex and made up of countless moments and memories. Her memory wall symbolizes this idea: “On the wall in front of them float countless iterations of Alma Konachek: a seven-year-old sitting cross-legged on the floor; a brisk, thirty-year-old estate agent; a bald old lady. An entitled woman, a lover, a wife” (49). With every memory she loses to dementia, Alma loses part of herself, illustrating Memory’s Role in Identity, Loss, and Preservation.

Alma’s primary conflict in the story is against time and the inevitability of death. The narrative’s speculative element, a medical procedure by which Alma harvests her memories and relives them through specialized machinery, symbolizes Alma’s efforts to defy the ravages of time, the body’s decay, and the finality of death.