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1. Context
2. Evolution of the narrative voice and that of the main character / Doppelgnger
o Bildungsroman When doctor dies, the soul is set free (not from childhood
into adulthood but a deconstruction of time in which History and his story are
undone) dissolution instead of assertion /At the end the both narrators are
killed off.
Travels
Subversion of
o Bildungsroman When doctor dies, the soul is set free (not from childhood
into adulthood but a deconstruction of time in which History and his story are
undone) dissolution instead of assertion /At the end the both narrators are
killed off.
Travels
Narrators is unaware that his backward trajectory through time violates ordinary
chronology poetic undoing of the Holocaust Deconstruction of time in which
both History and his story are undone
Space
o Auschwitz universe terrible and nasty palce full of dir and sadness
o Different houses were Odilo has loved are depicted all of them are similar,
like train stations: places in which stay in for a little
o Only Solingen deserves a brief description his birthplace place (and Adolf
Eich-manns too) it is famous for its knives, scissors and surgical instruments
future as doctor and nazi
o Lisbon where Odilo has enjoyed his best time ever: calm, unstressed and
playful
o Victims point of view but not in this case defamiliarizes the subject matter
abuser as victim
o Through reportages and films we have become familiar cattle wagons of the
sinister trains to the camps, separation of families, etc. vs metaphor of
reanimation, reconstruction and rebirth
o Amis has been charged using Holocaust for his benefit of experimenting a
narrative technique it means that he is in favour of Holocaust and
exculpates him
Perpetual state of crisis war is always looming but has already happened
o Nazis as creators
5. Postmodernist narrative
Irony, playfulness and black humor Narrators innocent & violence (4)
Paranoia***
Magical realism***
Participation reread***
Medical work in America Tod seems to make people worse rather than better
doctors demolish the human body
Surgeons in New York In New York surgeons better suited to Auschwitz doctors
Holocaust doctors are invested with a godlike power in exterminating a race they
are healing a nation
o America Tod Friendly Tod is death in German and Friendly stands for
American, open, friendly
Narration Subversion
Representation of violence
Sex with Irene = soul powerful but irony, she is powerful because she knows the secret
Hospital sleeps with nurses (the soul says it is true what they say about nurses)
In so doing we learn not of his growth into maturity but of the nature of the offence a
well known phrase of Primo Levis which Amis had considered as a title for the novel
under his terrors and nightmares