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,\u00a0Otto 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.<\/p>\n
My question: do you have any memory of your childhood, that at that moment you did not understand as well as you do now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jaisleenthindblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}