53 pages • 1-hour read
Memory Wall
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Symbols & Motifs
Dichotomies
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness or death.
Dichotomies, depictions of opposing forces that create tension and often conflict, appear as a motif throughout the stories in Memory Wall. The most prominent dichotomies in the collection include nature versus human society, life versus death—or creation versus destruction—and light versus darkness. The reason these dichotomies create conflict, ironically, is not because two forces are in opposition. Rather, it is because the characters in the stories can only see one side or the other. In addition, the antipodal forces are not equal to each other at any given time because they exist in cycles. Given enough time, Memory Wall’s characters might recognize the give and take that ultimately brings equilibrium and demonstrates the theme of The Balance Between Loss and Renewal.
“Village 113” uses both setting and symbolism to illustrate the dichotomy between nature and human society. The story’s juxtaposition of the rural village and the city highlights this tension, as does the relationship between the powerful river and the government dam that will sap the river’s life force. Imogene and Herb’s struggle with infertility in “Procreate, Generate” explores the parallel dichotomies between life and death, creation and destruction. After her parents’ death and her infertility diagnosis, Imogene feels that death is much stronger than life, but her character arc helps her see the balance between the two. “The Demilitarized Zone” and “Afterworld” both feature tensions between light and darkness. The announcement that Davis’s son is coming home comes on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, a day that symbolizes the rebirth of light and hope for renewal. In “Afterworld,” Esther sketches the darkness around her as a way to “point out the light which has been in the paper all the while” (208), symbolizing the hope that exists amid war and terror, offering balance.
The Passage of Time
An important aspect of the theme exploring Memory’s Role in Identity, Loss, and Preservation is the idea that the passage of time inevitably brings loss. This may be epic loss, like the extinction of species portrayed through fossils in “Memory Wall” or the destruction of a village in “Village 113,” or it might be loss on a smaller scale; in “Procreate, Generate,” for example, each passing month of Imogene’s unsuccessful efforts to get pregnant means the loss of an unfertilized egg.
Doerr threads this motif throughout the narrative, using various devices to portray the passage of time as a connotation of inevitable loss. Metaphors are one such technique. In “Afterworld,” Esther compares the unceasing march of time to Foucault’s pendulum. As the war brings danger closer and closer, she sees the pendulum “swinging above the city: huge, terrible, swinging on and on, ruthless, incessant” (216). The distance with which Imogene sees her childhood memories is another representation of passing time: “[S]he wonders how she can be a thirty-five-year-old orphan when just yesterday she was a nine-year-old in Moon Boots” (109). Doerr also uses elements of the natural world, including celestial movements in “Procreate, Generate” and bird migrations in both stories to highlight the passage of time through the cyclical nature of the seasons.
Doerr also uses the literary device of repetition, which refers to deliberately repeating sounds, words, or phrases to create a specific effect, to evoke the passage of time, an element that is prominent in “Afterworld.” The repetition relevant to this motif involves a recurrence of short, figurative phrases describing the actions of time: “Time compresses; […] Time drifts. […] Time passes. […] time is beginning to disintegrate; […] She is tipped backward in time” (193, 204, 207, 214, 220). Together, these recurring depictions emphasize time as something outside human control. The story’s characters use memory as a way to create and preserve meaning despite the inevitable loss that comes with time.
Memory and Memory Loss
As the organizing principle that ties this collection together, the concept of memory is central to every story. Doerr’s narrative style uses metaphor and symbolism, and he imbues countless details of setting, character, and conflict with layers of meaning related to memory.
The titular story, “Memory Wall,” and “Village 113” are both rife with symbols of memory and memory loss. Inclement weather, for example, often represents aspects of memory. In “Memory Wall,” fog obscures Alma’s vision of her surroundings, symbolizing the disorienting effects of dementia. Similarly, a breeze that drifts through her open window causes the pages on her wall to fan out “like a mind turned inside out” (55). The fossils in the story also symbolize memories. To Luvo, the bone, teeth, and footprint fossils in the museum are the same as the papers and memory cartridges on Alma’s wall. Fossil hunting, like memory extraction, is portrayed in the story as an attempt to defy erasure, further reinforcing the symbolic relationship. While each cartridge literally represents a memory, the wall itself is a symbol of the connection between memories and identity. Increasing chaos in its organization represents the erosion of Alma’s mind through the course of her dementia.
Seeds are the predominant symbol for memory in “Village 113.” The narrator compares the seed keeper’s years of layered memories to the seeds she preserves: “Embryo, seed coat, endosperm: What is a seed if not the purest kind of memory, a link to every generation that has gone before it?” (150). Through the seed’s central role in reproduction, it biologically connects one generation of life to the next, just as memories connect generations through a collective and historical consciousness.
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