61 pages • 2 hours read
Memory Man
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Symbols & Motifs
Colors
Because of the way Decker’s brain is wired, he experiences colors as something more than visual stimuli. Both in his memories of past events and in his current investigations, Decker associates particular colors with specific emotions.
The most prominent color for Decker is blue because he associates this with the murder of his family. His choice of adjective to describe the color evokes emotion, as he calls it “terrifying.”
Other colors maintain a consistent association for Decker and move to prominence depending on his mental state. Just as he associates blue with death, he associates white with despair.
He also describes various characters by color whom he doesn’t like. The con man is purple—worthless, and Leopold is yellow—cunning. He sees Wyatt as gray—a color with no definite associations.
Numbers
For a normal person, numbers serve an intellectual function to measure and calculate. However, Decker’s brain processes numbers in a way that contains emotional resonance.
Numbers recur in the novel in the same way that colors do, as Decker assigns them to feelings and people. He mentions “six” as being a dirty number. “Four” is uninteresting. “Zero” is an unwelcome digit.
The number that looms largest in Decker’s mind is “three.” It lunges at him out of the darkness as a frightening hallucination portending danger.
This mirage of giant “threes” doesn’t appear until midway through the novel at a time when the killers are escalating their attacks. The “threes” themselves have changed shape from Decker’s earlier experiences of them. They are now sporting knives attached to their stems and appear to be running straight at Decker.
Inner DVR
Decker uses the analogy of an “inner DVR” to explain how his brain processes memory; he has conditioned his brain to behave as a digital video library. He can select a “movie,” replay it in his head, and then file it away for future reference. He deliberately partitions his memories to keep them from overwhelming him.
The comparison to digital media is appropriate. Just as digitizing an analog image reduces a flowing wave to discrete pixels of data, Decker’s brain stores individual memories in tiny packets that he can retrieve when needed and ignore the rest of the time.
Over the course of the novel, Decker calls on his inner DVR frequently to help him in his investigations. However, it has the same shortcoming as all digital media: It can store a prodigious amount of data, but data are useless without the proper context to give meaning.
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