Analysis Of Time's Arrow By Amis

Known for his works colloquially called Amis’s “London Trilogy,” his work often focuses on the excesses of Western capitalist society and the banality of modernity. Possibly his most standout work is one that barely fits into the confines of these themes is Time’s Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offensive, where Amis employs a wide variety of literary techniques to convey a story drenched in black humor, irony, and symbolism. Amis’s 1991 novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, tells the story of Tim Friendly, a German doctor in America, and his disorienting backwards tale of working as a doctor during the Holocaust in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp as well as his escape from Germany to Italy Portugal, and eventually the U.S. The book was heavily influenced by Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors as well as the work’s alternative title, The Nature of the Offensive by Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, author of The Truce. The work has been called a “…postmodern unbildungsroman…” …show more content…
The reversal of time in the novel is a technique borrowed from and partially inspired by Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse 5, which challenges the reader through several reversals besides the plot including backwards dialogue and explanations. Even so, all life in the novel transpires in reverse order as people don’t age but become younger, injuries heal, doctors injure, thieves donate, eating turns into regurgitating food and use of the bathroom is a twisted comedy of sorts. Tom de Haven juxtaposes the narrative method through the novel’s title, writing ““Time’s arrow…doesn’t fly from the bow to the target, but from the target to the bow — then from the bow to the quiver, from the quiver to the tree, from the tree to the acorn”