Austerlitz

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 21-50

Pages 51-82

Pages 83-113

Pages 114-132

Pages 133-158

Pages 159-201

Pages 202-244

Pages 245-275

Pages 276-290

Pages 291-310

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Pages 133-158Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 133-147 Summary

Three months pass before the narrator hears from Austerlitz again. Austerlitz sends an invitation to his house on Alderney Street in London on a postcard from the 1920s or ‘30s, depicting a large camp of white tents from a forgotten military campaign in front of the Pyramids of Giza (pictured).

Austerlitz’s house is sparsely furnished and done in shades of gray. Dozens of photographs lie on the dining room table; Austerlitz says sometimes he arranges the photos upside down before turning them over one by one, becoming increasingly surprised by what he sees.

Austerlitz studied architectural history in Paris before moving to Alderney Street and taught for 30 years before retiring in 1991. The narrative turns to that year:

Austerlitz retired so he could finally synthesize his lifelong investigations of history and architecture into a book, but after reviewing his papers from his lifelong study, he becomes disillusioned with the words he wrote and with language in general. He sees words as lies concealing reality. He buries all of his papers in his compost heap, which gives him some relief, but he soon again feels an acute sense of isolation. He reflects he was one of the authors of this isolation: “all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world” (139).

In the following year, Austerlitz spends every night wandering the streets of London. During these wanderings, he sees ghosts and visions of a former London and feels he’s being sucked into the past. One night at the Liverpool Street underground station, Austerlitz wonders whether the suffering that occurred in the infamous Bedlam Asylum—which formerly occupied the same ground—lingers in the station.

Austerlitz sees a concrete example of traces from the past during the demolition of the Broad Street Station, which uncovers earth dense with human remains from a 19th-century graveyard. Austerlitz visits this site often, photographing the human remains (pictured) and talking with one of the archaeologists, who tells him how the graveyard was first covered by a socioeconomically deprived neighborhood in the 19th century before the area was razed for the train station.

Through narration addressed to the reader, the narrator says he can still hear the hiss of the gas fireplace in Austerlitz’s house from the night he told him this, and he can still see the way the reflection of the fire on the patio doors seemed to project the fire far into the distance.

Pages 148-158 Summary

Austerlitz continues his story for the narrator:

One morning, after walking all night, he feels drawn to an area of the Liverpool Street Station that’s closed for construction. He passes through a heavy curtain into a defunct waiting room, where he is overcome by the sense the vaulted room holds the key to his past:

I felt, said Austerlitz, that the waiting room where I stood as if dazzled contained all the hours of my past life, all the suppressed and extinguished fears and wishes I had ever entertained, as if the black and white diamond pattern of the stone slabs beneath my feet were the board on which the endgame would be played, and it covered the entire plane of time (152).

He sees a vision of Emyr and Gwendolyn waiting there for him in 1939, then one of himself as a boy waiting there at the same time. He realizes this place marks the loss of his parents, his prized green rucksack (which disappeared when he arrived at the Eliases’), and his native language.

After returning home that morning, Austerlitz falls into a deep sleep plagued by nightmares. He finds himself trying to escape from the center of a star-shaped fortress whose labyrinthine passages lead him through every building he wrote about in his work. In another dream, he sees an overhead view of a train charging through a dark forest, then sees himself in one of its compartments. When he awakes, he struggles to recall these dreams because of his lifelong suppression of memories.

Now as he sits with the narrator, Austerlitz explains that, for most of his life, he avoided learning about the persecution he escaped during World War II and instead studied history until the end of the 19th century. The increasing effort of suppressing his past resulted in his nighttime walks, his hallucinations, and the destruction of his papers. The consequences of suppression became more extreme: He developed aphasia before finally experiencing a mental health crisis, for which he was hospitalized.

Austerlitz doesn’t remember the year he spent in the hospital. However, he remembers one of the first trips into London from the hospital that he was allowed to take after recuperating enough: In a bookstore, Austerlitz found himself staring at a picture of a star-shaped vault before he heard two women on the radio describe how, as children in the summer of 1939, they were evacuated across Europe to England. In their descriptions, Austerlitz recognized his own memories; suddenly, he recalled how, after a long train journey, he had stood in a vast line of children to board a ship. He was so deeply entranced in his recollection that the storekeeper noticed. The man asked if Austerlitz was alright, then amicably asked him for his insight into a crossword clue: “One way to live cheaply and without tears?” (158).

Still thinking of what he heard on the radio, and spurred by the name of the ferry that took the women from the Netherlands to England—the Prague—Austerlitz decided to visit the city to see if he could uncover any record of his lost past.

Pages 133-158 Analysis

The themes of architecture, history, and memory converge as Austerlitz uncovers more of his forgotten past. In the graveyard beneath Broad Street Station and the lingering cries of pain from the Bedlam Asylum in the Liverpool Street Station, Austerlitz sees that civilization is literally built on the bones of others. There is a common idea that the past is preserved in some way, that it doesn’t vanish without a trace (whether those traces are bones or faint cries of pain). This may be why, when Austerlitz becomes disillusioned with his papers from his lifelong study, he buries them rather than burning them. Throughout the novel, the motif of the underground—both the subterranean and the London Metro—stands as the repository for the past, the hidden record of forgotten things.

On his nighttime walks through London, Austerlitz’s hallucinations of ghosts from a former London indicate the past’s pull on his life, “the vortex of past time” (144). Austerlitz is drawn inexorably to the past as a pigeon is drawn to its home, but simultaneously, he resists this vortex, resulting in a pervasive wrenching heartache. His resistance signals there is something intolerable about his past he hopes to avoid yet cannot escape.

Austerlitz’s dream about trying to escape from the center of a star-shaped fortress, whose passageways are composed of the buildings he studied over the course of his life, is a dream about his attempt to escape his repression of his past. The star-shaped fortress itself has a multifaceted symbolism. It first symbolizes the perfect realization of the theoretical (blueprints) in the world—the transcendence of pure thought from the mess of the world. However, as Austerlitz’s dream suggests, the fortress is more confining than it is protective, and this is where other elements of symbolism emerge. The passageways, unconsciously modeled after the buildings he’s studied, symbolize how he imprisoned himself in scholarship to defend against the memory of his childhood trauma. Therefore, just as it symbolizes intellectual transcendence and academic escapism, the star-shaped fortress also represents the futility and destructiveness of endless repression as a defense mechanism.

On his first trip into London from the hospital, Austerlitz finds himself in a bookstore looking at a photograph of a star-shaped vault—a symbol of his elaborate concealment of his past. When he hears the women on the radio recount their experience as children evacuated across Europe during World War II, Austerlitz is gripped by the same memories, realizing they are his own as well. He is so transfixed that the storekeeper asks if he’s alright and gives him an understanding smile before posing a crossword clue: “One way to live cheaply and without tears?” (158). That this clue appears in the wake of Austerlitz’s disorienting flashback connotes some application to him. To avoid the grief of his past (to live a life without tears), he hasn’t fully invested himself in life: He has skimmed over it, avoiding relationships and emotions all in service of this avoidance. In short, he has “live[d] cheaply.”