a warm Autumn. On the following pages Baker explores the reliability of his fathers memory, and begins to understand the flaws in memory. His fathers’ memories are just experiences without any chronological order, so it makes sense that all his memories don’t line up. The Fiftieth Gate has been structured in such a way so as to express such ideas. The content expressed throughout the book is very disconnected and there is little evidence of any chronological order. These structural elements actively develop the idea that memory is overall fragmented, with no real begging, middle or end. The issue of his fathers’ correct age is one of the many other events in the book where his fathers’ narrative has surrendered to forgetfulness and therefore subjectivity. The modern historian Michel Foucault’s stated “…. with its moments of intensity, its lapses, its extended periods of feverish agitation, its fainting spell, memory fails to be objective…” It is at such points in The Fiftieth Gate where memory falls short, that Baker has sufficed to let the logical, more so objective option, of history, rule over his parents’ completely subjective memories. At a number of stages throughout The Fiftieth Gate, when Bakers father feels he can remember no more, Baker is forced to interact by telling his father a part of history which inturn triggers another memory. Such a responsive characteristic of memory insinuates that memory is subjective to the current situation. History is considerably more objective than memory but due to its’ basis on evidence it too contains elements of subjectivity. History is founded upon evidence and, despite preconceptions, evidence is not always objective. There is a bias in the creation of evidence and a bias in the survival of evidence. During the Nazi regime the German government had tight control over the survival of evidence that proved to their act...
