Echoes of the void

Abstract

This thesis explores the ways in which the themes of memory, history and narrative are at work in Sylvie Germain’s Magnus. The main character, Magnus, is both the adoptive son of a fugitive Nazi war criminal and a survivor of area bombing in Germany. Because of Magnus’s connections to historical tragedies, he spends his life in pain and confusion, seeking a way to overcome these traumas. Germain examines memory on an individual and collective scale, through both the format and plot of the novel. She furthers this exploration by examining the ways language and memory interact and the ways that language can be used as a means of expressing memory and allaying tragedy. Through the resolution Germain argues that archaic narratives can be relied on as means of dealing with the past because they use language in ways that reduce the gap between the linguistic and the real.