Catastrophism and Time in Martin Amis's Time's Arrow

Abstract

Martin Amis's 1992 novel, Time's Arrow, presents an alternative timescape in which time runs backwards. The reader is focused on two central characters: the physician Odilo Unverdorben, and what appears to be Odilo's nameless (and at times naïve) soul, unconscious or alter-ego, which also functions as the novel's narrator. The narrative begins with Odilo's death in then-present-day America and ends with Odilo's conception in Germany. Odilo, who is first introduced to the reader as Tod Friendly, changes his name throughout the text so as to conceal his involvement in the Second World War as a Nazi doctor who had a direct hand in experimenting on and killing Jewish concentration camp victims. Interestingly, the backwards flow of time allows the narrator to view Odilo's killing of Jewish people, ironically, as a kind of resurrection or creation of a race of people. Instances such as these prompt the reader to recognize the complex relationship between time and catastrophe, especially in terms of narrating such an event. Utilizing theories of time and narrative by Paul Ricoeur, Mikhail Bakhtin, Edward Said and Frank Kermode, this article attempts to engage with Amis's representation of catastrophe, demonstrating his possible reservations about narrating catastrophe. The argument concludes that Amis, by creating a narrator who is susceptible to misinterpreting the Holocaust due to the backwards flow of time, narrates catastrophe passively: through the narrator, Amis distorts facts which the reader knows to be true, thereby demonstrating and entertaining different interpretive possibilities. Thus, rather than portraying the catastrophe of the Holocaust in concrete and absolutist terms – a portrayal which would resolve our understanding of catastrophe – Amis uses his text to invite the reader to consider the multiple ways in which catastrophe may be narrated, not narrated, understood, and misinterpreted.