TIMES ARROW BY MARTIN AMIS

1. Context

German Holocaust doctor & narrator (secondary consciousness)

Reverend Nicholas Kreditor (who assists war criminals in hiding)

America (retirement practicing medicine) Tod

New York John Young

Portugal Hamilton de Souza

Auschwitz Odilo Underdorben (protagonists) assists Uncle Pepi (modelled on Josef

Mengele)

2. Evolution of the narrative voice and that of the main character / Doppelgnger

It goes backwards in time (deat-birth). Narrative is progressive and linear.

Narrators (protagonist and double consciousness) intradiegetic (characters involved

in the action) but lack of access & innocent (misinterpretations) Narrators is
unaware that his backward trajectory through time violates ordinary chronology

Doppelgnger at the moment of his death in an American hospital Nazi doctor

gives birth to a DOPPELGANGER (double-goer) who re-lives his life in reverse. He is
equipped with general knowledge and superb vocabulary but innocent (it just seems to
me that the film is running backward, he declares)

Through narrative voice subversion of

o Science fiction imminence of impending catastrophe as if imminent future

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.

This evolution makes us reread the narrator certainly encourages us to reread

Travels

o America (retirement practicing medicine) Tod

o New York John Young

o Portugal Hamilton de Souza

o Aschwitz Odilo Underdorben (protagonists) assists Uncle Pepi (modelled

on Josef Mengele) Underdorben meaning pure (metaphorical Nazi
 aspiration to create a pure human race and ironically of the doctors
inhumanity = it creates life) In this body the narrator speaks in first person
and it suggests a shared memory much closer between them. In this part,
protagonist is not abuser but the victim

Psychological dissociation division of self that separates narrator and protagonist

alluding to post-traumatic stress disorder Invested in denying his culpability anti-
realist temporal and narrational split between them Odilos desire to reverse the
trajectory of the Holocaust to evade moral responsibility

3. The role of memory and time & space

Times moves backward. It goes backwards in time (deat-birth). Narrative is progressive

and linear.

Character younger, date on the newspaper is a further hint at what is ihappening /

Daily routines are emphasized First chapter eating process / Illness and old age
recede

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.

o Science fiction imminence of impending catastrophe as if imminent future

Memory Doppelgnger at the moment of his death in an American hospital

Nazi doctor gives birth to a DOPPELGANGER (double-goer) who re-lives his life in
reverse. He is equipped with general knowledge and superb vocabulary but innocent
(it just seems to me that the film is running backward, he declares)

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

4. Representation of violence / theme of Holocaust / representation of history

It does not destroy but create Healing becomes violence

Holocaust = creation of people

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

War haunting Odilos past = future

Perpetual state of crisis war is always looming but has already happened

Traumatic effects of Auschwitz similar atrocities

o In post-war America hospitals asp laces of pain and death / medicines

therapeutic role as destructive

o In New York surgeons better suited to Auschwitz doctors

o Nazis as creators

5. Postmodernist narrative

Temporal distortion / fragmentation / non-linear narrative NARRATION (2-3)

Historiographic metafiction to refer to works that fictionalize actual historical events

or figures Dr. Menguele and Holocaust

Irony, playfulness and black humor Narrators innocent & violence (4)

Paranoia***

Magical realism***

Participation reread***

6. Science and medicine (4)

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

7. Irony and parody

Name of the novel: it implies a forward movement, however it is told in a reverse

chronology

The various name-changes

o America Tod Friendly Tod is death in German and Friendly stands for
American, open, friendly

o New York John Young younger a Jack of all trades

o Holocaust Odilo fortunate or prosperous in battle

Narrator consciousness innocence unreliable intradiegetic narrator

misinterpretation

Parody Holocaust god-like creator working in Auschwitz

Dialogues shadowy information

Narration Subversion

Representation of violence

8. Role of female characters (X)***

Women as objects (soul says he coincides)

Sex with Irene = soul powerful but irony, she is powerful because she knows the secret

Soul two-timing = contradiction loss of integrity vs physical buzz he sleeps with

tons of women (uses his status as a doctor)

Guilty = tries to cure the hookers

Hospital sleeps with nurses (the soul says it is true what they say about nurses)

Avoiding women with kids

9. Subtitle of Amis book (the nature of the offence)

Subversion of two literary genres

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