Time is Not Measured by Clocks
Throughout the novel, Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald, protagonist Austerlitz continuously dissects and challenges the notion of time while telling his life’s story to the novels narrator. Austerlitz spends hours on end in train stations, empty cafes, and wandering throughout neighborhoods thus proving in many cases that time to him does not matter. Furthermore, due to Austerlitz’s traumatic past, he never fully lived through his own experiences and therefore in his present day still faces intense flashbacks and recollections of the past proving to him the past still lives on. Finally, Austerlitz takes photos of the everyday things he sees in an attempt to preserve moments in time forever, which further depicts his …show more content…
Throughout his adventures and daily life Austerlitz documents his experiences by way of photography in his efforts to preserve his present for the future as well. When walking through an old abandoned town, Austerlitz encountered the artifacts left behind from World War Two victims in a store and noted how “They were all timeless as that moment of rescue, perpetuated but forever just occurring” (197). In this abandoned shop, Austerlitz experienced the ongoing life of physical artifacts that brings the past to the present and allows stories to live on. Just as these artifacts live on with a sort of immortality and continue to live in the present, Austerlitz makes his experiences act in the same way by capturing them in images. He explains, “I liked to study the black and white photographs which, one day, would be all that was left of his life” (293). Austerlitz has understood from his own experience with photographs that they are the artifacts that live on and tell the stories of the past to those in the future. Thus, his almost ritualistic photo capturing habit will do the same thing for his own
Throughout the novel, Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald, protagonist Austerlitz continuously dissects and challenges the notion of time while telling his life’s story to the novels narrator. Austerlitz spends hours on end in train stations, empty cafes, and wandering throughout neighborhoods thus proving in many cases that time to him does not matter. Furthermore, due to Austerlitz’s traumatic past, he never fully lived through his own experiences and therefore in his present day still faces intense flashbacks and recollections of the past proving to him the past still lives on. Finally, Austerlitz takes photos of the everyday things he sees in an attempt to preserve moments in time forever, which further depicts his …show more content…
Throughout his adventures and daily life Austerlitz documents his experiences by way of photography in his efforts to preserve his present for the future as well. When walking through an old abandoned town, Austerlitz encountered the artifacts left behind from World War Two victims in a store and noted how “They were all timeless as that moment of rescue, perpetuated but forever just occurring” (197). In this abandoned shop, Austerlitz experienced the ongoing life of physical artifacts that brings the past to the present and allows stories to live on. Just as these artifacts live on with a sort of immortality and continue to live in the present, Austerlitz makes his experiences act in the same way by capturing them in images. He explains, “I liked to study the black and white photographs which, one day, would be all that was left of his life” (293). Austerlitz has understood from his own experience with photographs that they are the artifacts that live on and tell the stories of the past to those in the future. Thus, his almost ritualistic photo capturing habit will do the same thing for his own