On the night that the Inuis show up at the unnamed narrator’s door to tell her they are fleeing, the narrator clips the Inuis’ young son’s fingernails. He removes a pair of sky-blue gloves to let her do this. Later in the story, the narrator knows by the Memory Police have captured the Inuis because she recognizes this same set of gloves in the back of one of the Memory Police’s trucks.
The Inuis’ Son Quotes in The Memory Police
The The Memory Police quotes below are all either spoken by The Inuis’ Son or refer to The Inuis’ Son . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 22
Quotes
I’d heard rumors that people who had been hiding were forced to wander the streets when their homes were destroyed by the earthquake or the fires that followed it. And that the Memory Police had been rounding them up and taking them into custody one after the other. But I had no way to know whether the Inui family had actually been in that truck or not. All I could do was pray that someone had continued to cut the little boy’s fingernails and that the blue gloves were still protecting him.
Related Characters:
The Unnamed Narrator (speaker), Professor Inui, The Inuis’ Son , The Memory Police
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Memory Police LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Inuis’ Son Character Timeline in The Memory Police
The timeline below shows where the character The Inuis’ Son appears in The Memory Police. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...find Professor Inui, his wife, and their two children (a 15-year-old daughter and a younger son) standing there. Inui, an old friend of the narrator’s parents, teaches in the dermatology department...
(full context)
...asks for a nail clipper, and the narrator finds one. The narrator helps the young son remove his sky-blue gloves, then gently clips his nails. After she finishes, the Inui family...
(full context)
Chapter 22
...Inuis—or, more exactly, she sees a set of blue gloves that belonged to the young son. She is running an errand when she sees one of the Memory Police’s trucks. Poking...
(full context)