Times Arrow Essay

1040 Words5 Pages
In the novel Times Arrow by Martin Amis, poetic justice was offered on a historical scale. The novel recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in a backwards time frame. The reader faces controversy over the themes, creation vs. destruction, morality, and power and who holds it. Amis’ writing style adds suspense to any situation occurring in the novel and proves that the narrator and Tod cannot be thought of as the same person. The narrator is a secondary consciousness living within Tod, and though he can feel Tod’s feelings, he has not control over Tod’s thoughts. A recurrent theme in the novel is the narrator’s misinterpretation of creation vs. destruction. For example, from the narrator and the reader’s perspective the opening scene…show more content…
In most of Tod’s relationships, he holds the power. In reverse chronology, Tod and Irene’s relationships begins rocky. She tells Tod that she will blackmail him because she knows his “secrete.” Irene then goes on to say that she is unhappy and wants to kill herself but, “suicide isn’t an option.” The narrator knows that this will not happen and states, “…we can dismiss suicide as a hollow threat,” (25) because if she would have gone through with killing herself, she would have started off dead. As the reader we know that Tod has complete power in the relationship because he knows that Irene isn’t going to kill herself, therefore he does not fall for Irene’s threat. Likewise, Tod’s relationship with his wife is also rocky. In reverse chronology their relationship starts with Tod hitting and making her do unjust things. At the end of their relationship, everything is perfect because Tod wants to convince his wife that he is a good man. It is believed that things start to change over time in a relationship because the spouses begins to get comfortable with one another. If the relationship between Tod and his wife were flipped to a forward perspective, it can be said that they began to grow on one another which led Tod to believe he could treat his wife
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