Who's Crazy Here Anyway Austerlitz Sparknotes

In relation to questioning the past, the stories uncover the inability to rely on memories. Notably, there is a blurring of fact from fiction when often the characters and sometimes even the reader doesn’t know what really occurred or is the truth. This is pointed out by Austerlitz’s teacher when he mentions: it would take an endless length of time to describe the events of such a day properly[...] [a]ll of us, even when we think we have noted every tiny detail, resort to set pieces which have already been staged often enough by others. We try to reproduce the reality, but the harder we try, the more we find the pictures that make up the stock-in-trade of the spectacle of history forcing themselves upon us. (Sebald 71) He is making it clear what happened in the past is provided by the understanding of the present, and that these events are not entirely accurate because no experience can be fully explained identically. This is due to the fact that no one could possibly translate every experience in that moment. This quote exemplifies what is interpreted to happen in the past is not absolutely true because it …show more content…
He states ”I have always resisted the power of time out of some internal compulsion which I myself apart from the so-called current events in the hope[..].that time will not pass away, has not passed away” (Sebald 101). Austerlitz steers clear of time altogether referencing his lack of wanting to acknowledge the present. He doesn’t want time to tick because it would mean more of the past is gone. He is keeping away from all existing matters in order to remain in the past from his point of view. Furthermore, he communicates “I found it impossible to think of myself..or my present state of mind”(231). Consequently, at this point it becomes aware he has become so obsessed with the past, he now lacks the potential of thinking in the present. His mind was fully absorbed in the past at this