r comingTod is highly sensitive to this material. It affects him like a smell, like a chime." The image of the holocaust becomes clearer and clearer as the story unravels. When the narrator sees the black and white photo that threatens Tod's US citizenship, he immediately realises that it is about power, and that there were twelve men of two "distinct human types" where one type belonged to the living and the other to the dead. The innocence of the narrator also makes it easier for Amis to slip his personal feelings into the book. When the narrator finally realises that the secret has to do with the dreams where "the half dead stand in line and a white-coated sweats with power", he says: "but the dreams lied. I thought (I was sure) that our transgression would be some kind of departure. I thought it would be extraterritorial, out of society, forming its own universe. I certainly never figured Tod/John for a life of crime." Clearly, Amis still finds it hard to believe that the holocaust was an act of human design. The accustomed irony of the narrator's observations reaches new heights when the story moves to Auschwitz: "I saw the old Jew struggle to the surface of the deep latrine, how he splashed and struggled into life, and was hoisted out by the jubilant guards, his clothes cleansed by the mire." The narrator then goes on to report that all the medical experiments at Auschwitz are a success: "A shockingly inflamed eyeball at once rectified by a single injection. Innumerable ovaries and testes seamlessly grafted into place. Women went out of that lab looking 20 years younger." In Auschwitz, the gold is restored to the corpses' teeth: "To prevent needless suffering, the dental work was usually completed while the patients were not yet alive." Suddenly, for the first time in the narrator's existence, the world "makes sense". The "German" part of the book is where the innocent, backwards narration really hits home. By descr...
