When reading Bernhard’s novels, the most striking feature is the prose and structure. Wittgenstein’s Nephew is comprised of a single, long paragraph with sentences stretching many lines. His prose is characterized by an urgent and pessimistic voice, constantly turning to hyperbole and contradiction. For instance, on the topic of patients in hospitals, Bernhard says, “[they] had nothing to look forward to but death.” (3-4) In the novel, Bernhard himself acts as narrator and is a patient in a hospital, just as his friend Paul Wittgenstein is in a hospital. Paul, however, is a patient in a mental hospital, whereas Bernhard is in a medical hospital. They both have “nothing to look forward to but death.” This similarity in character and predicament (among with the many others throughout the novel) plays a key role in understanding Bernhard’s use of the single voice. Over the course of the novel the narrator and Paul become almost identical. Paul becomes a surrogate for the narrator and as such Paul’s voice is absorbed into Bernhard’s, as is every voice in the novel. Through this surrogacy, the narrator Bernhard is able to express himself and, ultimately, live. Furthermore, because the novel is shared only through the perspective of the constantly contradictory narrator, Bernhard challenges the idea of truth. All of the information communicated through the novel is through one unreliable voice, suggesting the inability of communicating truth as everything is forced through the lens of a personal and thus biased perspective.
	Bernhard shows these traits early on in the novel. For instance, in the description of Professor Salzer, the narrator (Bernhard) says:
I could not help recalling how, time and again, my friend Paul had described his uncle alternately as a genius and a murderer, and every time I saw the Professor entering or emerging from the operating theater, I wondered whether I was seeing a genius or a murderer entering, a murderer or a genius emerging. (5)

This is exemplary of the narrator’s absorption of Paul’s voice: his own thoughts are Paul’s thoughts, highlighting the similarity and almost sameness of the two figures. Additionally, in using Paul as the figure who sees Salzer as a genius or murderer (whereas Bernhard sees Salzer that way because of Paul), Bernhard is protecting himself from the Professor while being able to express his own thoughts on Salzer. Bernhard is taking on “the comparatively invulnerable position of the narrator” (Cousineau) whereas Paul fills the role of the vulnerable surrogate to the narrator. In essence, the burdens of the narrator are shifted onto the protagonist, Paul.
	The comparison of genius and murderer in the prior quote is also important — this uncle, Professor Salzer, is a well respected doctor in Austria and one of the so-called elite. Through his status and profession, Salzer is able to take on the role of murderer without repercussion. Bernhard tells the reader early on of Salzer’s apparent troubles, disclosing the fact that many patients have died under Salzer’s care. In a further polemic against doctors, Bernhard goes so far as to say a patient under a doctor’s care is in fact the doctor’s victim.
	The notion that hospital patients are all waiting to die and that they are the victims of their doctors points towards a historical parallel: the concentration camp. The hospital patients are completely subordinate to the doctors due to illness and are waiting to die, just like concentration camp prisoners were completely subordinate to their own German dominators due to a comparative “illness” (Jewishness, homosexuality, etc.) and so could not help but await death.
	In addition, Steinhof, the section Paul is stationed in, cannot be thought of without the connotation of the Holocaust because Steinhof was “exploited by the Nazis to facilitate the deportation and murder of Jews and other ‘undesirables,’” (Honegger 38). Moreover, the profession of doctor in post-war Austria calls to attention the doctors of the concentration camps, those doctors achieving “progress” in the medical field through murderous crimes. Bernhard lays out the beginning of a very convincing metaphor.
	However, Bernhard does not allow for this metaphor to come to fruition. He contradicts the surely purposeful comparison of hospital and death camp, saying, “Doctors can be blamed for many things, but however indolent they are, however lacking in conscience or even intelligence, basically all they want to do is improve their patient’s condition.” (9) This contradiction serves a major purpose with regards to truth and expressing truth. Bernhard rejects talking about death camps through metaphor by rejecting the very metaphor he lays out. He is aware that the metaphor would not be true and would not express truth. After all, Bernhard survived his trips to the hospital and was able to leave the bondage of the hospital. Also, it was undoubtedly with the help of doctors that he survived. He cannot assume the role of Holocaust prisoner and attempt to portray it in a true form for he is not that; the completed metaphor would be nothing more than a bastardized representation and thus the comparison cannot be made. Still, the shadow of his fractured metaphor covers the rest of the novel. We cannot help but see the outline of the ultimate sufferer in Paul even if this is, according to Bernhard himself, a falsification. This self-refutation allows Bernhard to approach the events of World War II while remaining “invulnerable”. Furthermore, the contradiction suggests an inability to achieve progress. Contradiction is used repeatedly in the novel, denying any sort of progress to surface. Stagnancy is present in repetition.
	Repetition, then, is a fitting theme for Bernhard. Through Bernhard’s use of repetition he is able to express the surrogacy of Paul and challenges the notion of progress in Austrian society.
	A particularly repetitive and important scene in Wittgenstein’s Nephew is when Bernhard, Paul, and a woman friend attempt to get a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Bernhard tells the reader, “I had to have a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung because I wanted to read an article about Mozart’s Zaïde that was due to appear in it,” (53) so the three of them drive to Salzburg, a “so-called world-famous festival city” (53) but fail to find the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. In his recount of the events, Bernhard lists every location in Austria and Germany he and his traveling companions went to to attempt to find the magazine. In the end, Bernhard tells us, they travel two hundred and twenty miles and do not succeed in getting the magazine. The repetition of traveling for an object and failing speaks to the notion of progress. There is an abundance of lateral movement in the scene and yet there is no progress — the trio is unable to complete their goal. This is despite the fact that these Austrian cities are “world-famous” (54) with regards to culture. To the narrator, these cities are “miserable shitposts, which thoroughly deserve this description, if not an even shittier one.” (55)
	This section is representative of Austria’s failure to achieve progress. For Bernhard, only charlatanry can exist in Austria because Austria is a “backward country with its backwoods mentality and its sickening folie de grandeur.” (55) Basically, Austria is stuck in the past, yet the past is absolutely horrific. The notion that the Austrian elite are charlatans (i.e. Salzer and the culturally elite Austrian cities) is important because they have maintained a level of power through falsification and domination. Bernhard is not angered in the failure of finding the Neue Zürcher Zeitung because he cannot read it. No, Bernhard is outraged because his culturally “world-famous” (54) country is not at all impressive and is, in fact, stagnant and failed. That the Austrian elite should cling to the past is disgusting and outrageous to Bernhard.
	This section is also expressive of the singular voice and role of surrogate Paul plays. Bernhard mentions, after telling the reader he and his companions were exhausted, that “Paul and I were very much alike,” (54) saying that if he and Paul were not exhausted they would have certainly continued together on their journey. The mutual traveling and sharing of goal further pushes narrator and Paul into one. Later on in this scene, we learn that “Paul had to spend a long time in bed” (55) after this journey. All three travelers contracted colds though Paul is the one who suffered most from the cold, despite the fact that Bernhard suffers from chronic lung ailments. This contradiction is made sense of when Paul is viewed as the vulnerable surrogate for the invulnerable Bernhard.
	One of the most striking instances in which the narrator and Paul are made the same is when Bernhard is describing Paul. Bernhard says of Paul, “He was a brooder, endlessly philosophizing and endlessly accusing…with the same words that I myself employ…in order not to be put down and annihilated by it.”(60-61) Bernhard “describes Paul in a way that uncannily resembles a self-portrait” (Cousineau) in that every trait which Bernhard lists is visible in the narrator himself. There is a recognition of this at the end of the quote, when Bernhard says he and Paul accuse and lambaste with the very same words. Wittgenstein’s Nephew itself has been, up to this point, a stream of accusations and philosophizing. With this, Paul has become an almost carbon-copy of the narrator. Bernhard crafts Paul to basically represent the vulnerable version of himself. Their traits and their suffering are almost indistinguishable, though it is Paul who is consumed by these things, not the narrator.
	In the end, Paul is the sacrifice Bernhard needs to survive. Bernhard says this, in his own roundabout fashion. On page 99 of Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Bernhard says ,”It is not farfetched to say that this friend had to die in order to make my life more bearable and even, for long periods, possible.” Paul is the destroyed object which allows Bernhard to live on; the surrogate allowed Bernhard to express himself and ultimately allows Bernhard to continue living. The suffering inflicted upon Bernhard is transferred to Paul, filling the subordinate role which Bernhard views as necessary to continue on. This continuing on is comparable progress, which begs the question: if Paul had to die for Bernhard to keep on living, can this be progress? Paul and Bernhard were both the oppressed of society, both due to their sickness and their status as outsider, but Bernhard is able to survive due to his own oppression and domination of Paul. Is survival progress if it is at the expense of another life? Given the fact that Bernhard “essentially tells the same story over and over again” (Cousineau) in his novels seems to suggest an ultimate stagnancy. As each novel ends with some sort of sacrifice-of-surrogate for the narrator and this sacrifice is repeated over and over, the idea of progress (especially with regards to Austria) seems impossible. Bernhard suggests that, because Austria has remained stagnant after World War II, the only way to survive is through oppression and destruction, just like Austria, which thrived off of oppression and destruction. While that point in history has ended, the ideals which accompanied it have not gone away, and so Austria is stuck. If anything, there can be only one marker of progress in Austria, a point which, through sacrifice, Bernhard was able to avoid: death.