Memory as protagonist in Thomas Pynchon, Anthony Burgess and Nicholas Monsarrat

Abstract

Three novels, each of which depict, describe, in some way tell of the events of the Second World War, each from a particular point of view. Yet, all make use of the same trope or technique of looking back some years after the events had occurred, once the actual horror of the lived experience of war was at a safe distance in time. The notion of recalling, re-living, and re-telling relies on memory as the guiding principle, and the form of presentation is inevitably the past tense. This stratagem parallels reality to the extent that the phenomenon of the testimonies of the survivors of the Holocaust only came to be told some years after the events. This suggests that the first reaction of the survivors was to try to forget, while came only later the need to try to remember, as the fear of forgetting threatened to dishonour the memory of the millions who were killed. The greater part of the testimonies are written or told by survivors and they may carry, to varying degrees, elements of guilt associated with their having survived while others perished. These survivors become the witnesses, etymologically, the martyrs, of what they had seen and known, long tortured by the memory of those events.