W, or The Memory of Childhood By George Perec is a novel that contains two narratives at the same time. This is what initially made the novel sort of difficult to read for me read. It did begin to confuse me more and more when the narrations were not making sense of each other. However, as I kept reading the contrasting of the narratives began to make sense. The first narrator meets with this unknown man, Otto Apfelstal and learns all about life on the Island of W. The strange place where the men are forced to become athletes and perform in games and races could lead to their death or they could become victorious. W is a place of horror where women are raped and confined from the rest of the Island. The narrator claims it is a place where the higher officials possess all the power. “There are two worlds, the world of the masters and the world of the slaves” (p 160). The slaves being the athletes have no control over agency and freedom. They are dehumanized and physically assaulted if they do not win. The unequal treatment of winners and losers on this island I believe connects to the Nazi concentration camps. The second narrator who shares his memories of his childhood, remembers his memories of fleeing from persecution from the Nazis. Most of the memories he holds from his childhood are predominantly negative and saddening. All he has to reminisce about his mother and father are photographs that he describes in detail. He describes what clothing they were and what is in the background. He remembers being separated him his mother and the Charlie Chaplin magazine she bought from him before she sent him to safety. His mother died when he was 6 years old at Auschwitz. The narrator continues to piece together his childhood but he also mentions that he “knew nothing of the outside world except that there was war, and because of the war, there were refugees.” (p 88). As the narrator grows and ages, he realizes that during his childhood the war impacts his ability to learn of the outside world. Even though the war created dark and egregious memories, the narrator did appear to have positive memories as well. Like going with his extended family to pick out a Christmas tree and spending time with his cousin Henri.
My question: do you have any memory of your childhood, that at that moment you did not understand as well as you do now?
Hey, I liked your blog, to answer your question I think I dont. Mostly because if I did I probably forgot it but it deffinetly had me thinking for a while.
:))
Hello, I thought this post was really interesting. I think that there is definitely allegorical parallels with between W and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. And to answer your question I don’t have a lot of childhood memories of the impactful kind, more just random anecdotes or fixations
Hi Jaisleen,
In response to your question – I can’t think of a specific childhood memory at the moment, but I understand what you’re getting at. I think it has a similar effect as when we rewatch a clip from one of our childhood tv shows as an adult when we can pick up on the more mature, darker themes looking back at it.
Hi there! Great blog post! I do believe that I have a lot of memories from my childhood that I understand a l0t better n0w than I had during the exact moment, I have built an understanding to specific things which I had not had when I was younger and had experienced the moments
Hi Jaisleen!
Thank you for sharing your insight on the connection between W and the Nazi concentration camps. I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on the correlation. For your question, I definitely related to the author about having unique elements, like the Charlie Chaplin magazine, that jogged childhood memories. For me, some random things from childhood that I only remembered because they were so peculiar to me have helped me make sense of things with age. Great question!
I think we recreate and rewrite memories all the time and recent studies have confirmed this. The human mind is truly fascinating. I was reading an article about how the brain edits memories relentlessly, updating the past with new information. And this has nothing to do with bad memory but a task the brain does in order to make our memories more relevant and useful to us even if they are not true representations of the past.
This novel was certainly unusual and autobiographical, and an attempt by someone without a past to create one.
Hey!
I found the aspect of the piecing of the memories to be a very large part of my reading experience (like this is something I focused on a fair bit). I thought it was sort of like that was the way in which the narrator connected with his parents, of whom he barely remembers. It is kind of sad that he only has the photos and a few smaller memories to remember his parents by, and even then, they’re slightly spotty memories. To answer the question you pose, I absolutely do have memories that made no sense at the time, but make complete sense now. Depending on the actual memory, the realization makes me feel different ways (some good, some bittersweet haha).
hi hi
In response to your questions I think most of my confusing memories revolve around me not being told that being gay was an option, looking back I had a lot of definite crushes on girls that I was super confused by but not make a lot more sense. No where near as serious as that in the book but interesting all the same 😀