Response to The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
The text is an extract from W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, which is a travel
writing publication, acting as a memoir. In essence, this presents the prose as the
author’s recount of his observations during his travel. The title of the text is incredibly
poignant as it resonates feelings of isolation apparent in the text extract. The title
acts in tandem to the extract to convey the writer/narrator’s attitude of anguish and
his recognition of the emotional and spiritual void existing in the setting. The
intended conveyance of the setting’s desolation is critical to paralleling the narrator’s
own feelings.
The extract originates from what is effectively the memoir of a traveller who intends
to portray his settings lack of significance and the emotional vacuum it has become.
The work was first published in 1995 and is most likely intended for those interested
in travel. In this regard the purpose of the extract is somewhat supplemented with
the author’s intention of denouncing his setting as a destination by attempting to
capture the true character of the setting. It may also be the author’s intention to
express emotional trauma, brought on by depicting the emptiness of the setting.
The structure of the extract is critical to the author’s development of his ideas and
the mood which is morose and conveys the emotional void apparent in the setting.
The extract is fragmented into two segments being the two paragraphs, each of
which expresses the attitude and mood of the narrator, as well as the development
of the setting’s major significance to the narrator’s travel experience. There is
disarray in terms of chronology as there is little maintenance of a time frame in the
extract. This may be a reflection of the setting’s ‘numbing’ effect on the narrator. This
is reinforced through the vagueness expressed in ‘or perhaps an hour had passed’.
The uncertain time frame corresponds with the fragmented memory of the narrator
whose lack of recollection at times may be an indication of his total lack of mental
and physical stimulation brought on by the blandness of the setting.
The narrator’s attitude to the setting is conveyed clearly, using several stylistic
devices to show his dislike for where he finds himself. The bland sensory imagery
used as a metaphor is a device Sebald uses to capture the bleak nature of his
physical environment, seen, for example, in the narrator’s meticulous description of
his meal, as evident in “the breadcrumb armour-plating of the fish had been partly
singed by the grill, and the prongs of my fork bent on it. The attention to detail in this
example is darkly humorous, but the extended description of something so mundane
may also reflect the absence of stimulation in the setting more generally. This is
further evident through the narrator’s description of a window, which is one of the few
objects described in any significant detail. That is, the window is described as a
“semi-circular bay window”, and the geometrical detail seems pedantic and
© David McIntyre, InThinking
www.englishalanglit-inthinking.co.uk
1 redundant. The diction in the extract supplements the meticulous descriptions as
evident through the use of adjectives such as “sorry”, adding a mood approaching
anguish to the uninspired setting. This is further exemplified through the
personification of the narrator’s food, apparent in “the sooty breadcrumbs, and the
fish itself, lay a sorry wreck among the grass green peas”. There are several notable
elements in this quote as it highlight’s the food’s insignificance next to the peas, an
almost hyperbolic suggestion, since you need to question the value of anything that
is insignificant in comparison to peas. There is a clear contrast evident here, and this
is made obvious by the alliteration of “grass green”. This is perhaps the only
description of vibrancy in the extract – a common pea – set in relief against the
otherwise mundane setting.
The narrator’s attitude is perhaps best portrayed through the extended metaphor
which compares the setting to his meal. The vocabulary used expresses this clearly
and perhaps embeds the most central idea in the extract. Potentially, this is most
obviously seen in “indeed it was so difficult to penetrate what eventually proved to be
nothing more than an empty shell that my plate was a hideous mess once the
operation was over”. There is a clear parallel between the setting and the “empty
shell”, resonating the ‘hollowness’ of the setting. The word choice of “operation” is
again darkly humorous, but also suggests the impossibility of cutting through the
shell; an indication of how awful the meal is. When the narrator reveals that he was
“brought […] a fish that had doubtless lain entombed in the deep-freeze for years”,
he seems to be suggesting that the setting is somehow ‘frozen’ in time; that is, it is
unchanged. This idea is reinforced by the word choice of “entombed”, which
suggests that the setting has been somehow isolated in its uninspired state for a
great length of time.
The narrator may also be attempting to convey the relationship between setting and
the ways in which people act. The narrator seems to be entirely enveloped by his
setting and, in the process, becomes emotionally sterilized. The absence of
interesting events to stimulate the narrator can be seen when he claims that “even
the white waves rolling in the sand seemed to me to be motionless”. Here, the
narrator may be suggesting that people assimilate with their physical environment,
and begin to mirror it in their behaviour. The setting’s impact is not only apparent on
the narrator. The insipid waitress also seems stranded in her surroundings, with the
narrator describing her as “having dressed in the style of the thirties”. The emotional
void that runs through the extract is perhaps most apparent where the narrator
suggests that the waitress “looked right through me”. © David McIntyre, InThinking
www.englishalanglit-inthinking.co.uk
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