That the novel is structured into two parts is significant to my reading this work shows how the first part of the novel with its rich, lyrical discourse and fulfilling outcome is complicated by the second part which is notably less poetic and does not culminate in explicit restoration. Likewise, I discuss how the tenuousness of Ben's potential recovery from the transmitted past of his parents deconstructs the restorative closure offered in Jakob's story. I look closely at how Jakob recovers his past, reaches redemption, and how he ultimately comes through the trauma of the Holocaust while remaining on the edges of the event. This work addresses the problems with the restorative nature of the novel through untangling the dense metaphors, the plot structure and characterization, and by drawing on survivor accounts, psychoanalysis, historiography and literary criticism. Not only does Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces render a transformative narrative, but the closure in Part I of the novel reaches a level of redemption.

While traditional representations of Jewish catastrophe have relied on ancient Biblical and non-biblical archetypes, originating with Adam's fall from God's grace and mankind's eventual restitution from his fall to be delivered in messianic time, Holocaust narratives have in general not carried a message of redemption, nor have they offered any closure to the event. The overall posture of Holocaust representation has been to underline the nonsensical and destructive nature of the event as it extends into the post-Holocaust generation's collective memory. Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:Ī Backward Glance: Cataclysmic Redemption in Anne Michaels' Fugitive Piecesįive decades after the event, portraying the Holocaust continues to be a precarious and controversial endeavor.

Fugitive pieces anne michaels summary