Memory in Literature
The Narrator’s Chronology
In retelling a memory, the narrator must choose a chronology to pursue, as Lawrence Langer suggests, there are "Two clocks which dominate the landscape of Holocaust testimonies . . . " These two "clocks" or chronological methods of narration differ in that one " . . . flows uninterrupted from source to mouth . . . " while the other " . . . meanders . . . and requires strenuous effort to follow its intricate turns . . ." The motivation for the existence of these two chronologies of narration seems to lie within the remembering process of the narrator, not necessarily in the nature of the events being recalled.
Langer maintains that the motivation for the existence of the two "clocks" of Holocaust narrative is the presence of "anguished" memory. "Anguished" memory implies a self-consciousness at work in the recalling and retelling of an oral narrative. This self-consciousness may not encourage the narrator to try to " . . . recapture the dynamic flow of events . . . " but rather may try to communicate a sense of the " . . . past in the present . . . " Langer says of this self-conscious narration:
Unlike those who recreate details and images of the event through written texts, they generate narratives less predisposed to remind us that we are dealing with a self-consciously represented reality. (40)
At times, Art Spiegelman, in Maus, allows the reader to observe how different his Father’s oral narrative was from the written and illustrated text that is Maus. In so doing, Spiegelman preserves the self-conscious aspects of his Father’s testimony by incorporating them into the self-conscious aspect of the finished work. For example, when speaking of his second wife Mala and her recent departure, Vladek communicates, in Langer’s words, a sense of the "past in the present" by linking his Holocaust suffering to his suffering in the present.
Art: How did you become a tinman again?
Vladek: Mala could go for a whole evening out with her friends and leave for me nothing cooked to eat or drink. Sigh, you see how it is? I have now one more time an unnecessary suffering in my life.
Art: So how did you get back into the tin shop? (69)
In the midst of Art’s questions regarding Vladek’s ordeal at Auschwitz, Vladek interjects his present woes into the narrative, suggesting that Vladek links his memories of the Holocaust and his unhappiness with his wife into a continuum of suffering in the present.