Symbolism In The Immigrants

In The Emigrants, author W. G. Sebald uses many returning themes as a way to represent the struggles that emigrants repeatedly experience. Going through a traumatic event, such as being forced to leave one's home, leads to the need for repetition as a coping mechanism. This repetition is an outlet for the emigrants, because they long to feel as if they have control in their lives. All of the emigrants that Sebald introduces throughout the novel have the same obsession with looking out a window, or a high view, to escape the reality that they are living in. Since each of the characters, including the narrator, have gone through so much, they literally and figuratively must take a holistic view to understand how looking at their life from a
Both Ambros and Cosmo cannot wrap their heads around the fact that the countries are not what they expected. Ambros writes that, “Whereupon you take one last desperate turn round a corner and find yourself suddenly gazing from a vantage point across the vastest of panoramas” (131). Traveling through destroyed places is a lot for Ambros since he already struggles with the war effects. He finds himself looking out at the larger view instead of just trying to see the town that he is in, as a way to search beyond the ruins and escape the culture and reality of the 20th century all together. On top of that, Ambros states that he and Cosmo, “go up on the roof and see a moving baldachin, a pattern of black and white canopied overhead as far as the eye can see” (133). Ambros notices that this bird has to ability to leave a human’s standpoint and can fly above everything with a whole new view. It amazes Ambros that this bird voluntarily chooses to come sit with him and Cosmo, but the second the sun rises and another day sets in, the bird immediately flies away. Watching this bird fly over and see from a different perspective is very calming for Ambros since he cannot wrap his head around the towns from a standing human , and this presents a different