The novel’s structure is novel, as if Island W tells one storey and my childhood memories another, seemingly unconnected but merging in places. What I think is the interest of this book is the certain contents of its description. Everything described is like a real scene, but it’s actually just existed in the author’s memory. It is uncertain whether the things that appear in memory can be regarded as real or not. He also incorporates many elements, similar to war and death. These two stories are dispersed throughout one book, and the other is from the odd same appointment. Finding a link between them was often difficult for me. The title of “champion” is like an acknowledgment of the winner in W’s village division of Olympic sports, and even the names of athletes. Whether at athletic events or battles, the victor receives preferential attention.

In W, or the Memory of Childhood, there are so many characters in the chapters, such as Gaspard Winckler, George, Cyrla Schulevitz, Caecilia Henri, Esther, Berthe, and so on. This part of my memory seems to be more tragic. George’s father was a soldier who died in World War II, while his mother was slaughtered in Auschwitz in a tragic manner during the war. Just like the beginning of chapter two said, “I have no childhood memories.” This seems to contradict the title of the novel. But then read the following content. You can see that his knowledge of his parents mainly comes from objective things like three pictures of his mother and his aunt’s description of his father. Perhaps like many children in the war, he also had a yearning for a happy family relationship, as if page 30 described his imaginary mother’s life.

However, when he talked to the man who wanted to be a lawyer, the picture jumped to the island that he had conceived of.

The sports activities that happened in W and its dietary system are part of the social system of W village. Talk about what benefits the winner can get. On this island mountain, people, or athletes, fight for fame and privilege in this arena. And this Olympic spirit is particularly cruel, because the result of winning or losing affects the treatment they are about to receive, so it has become a world of the jungle. This seems to be more than just a few villages on an island; it looks more like what the world really looks like.

Whether it is the deaf boy named Gaspard Winckler or the protagonist who later inherited his name, it appears that they are all children who are lost and fighting alone in the sea.

I don’t know if you have any questions about the name of this novel. Why is it not called “W and the Memory of Childhood” but with “OR” as the connection?