Blog #6: Man Booker Prize Prompted Writing

1986. Some works of literature use the element of time in a distinct way. The chronological sequence of events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel, an epic, or a play of recognized literary merit and show how the author’s manipulation of time contributes to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

In Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, Ozeki’s flexible narrative structure and frequent shifts from past to present demonstrate that time is a human construct—less a number and more of a feeling. Nao, the narrator, at first wishes to “graduate from time”, but at the end realizes that if she focuses on living in the “time being”, and not concerning herself too much with the past or present, she can live a satisfied, if not happy, life (Ozeki 6). Ozeki’s manipulation of time, made of several mini-narratives, tells a story about the values of Japanese and Western culture and their relation to time.

At the beginning of the novel, both Nao and the second narrator, Ruth, are obsessed with time. Nao is obsessed with the future, counting down the days till she can “drop out of time” (Ozeki 7), a euphemism for committing suicide. She constantly reminds the reader of her book that she plans to go soon, but is vague as to the actual date. Ozeki heavily addresses the theme of depression and suicide in a superficial modern Japanese society, arguing that it’s this persistent worry about the future that drives people to kill themselves.

On the other hand, Ozeki also makes a good case for obsession with the past being just as lethal. Nao’s father attempts suicide frequently because he lives in his past, remembering his days as a hotshot programmer in Sunnyvale, California, and the dotcom bubble burst that cost him his happiness, job and home. Even as a gifted programmer in Japan, he doesn’t really attempt to find a job, too busy comparing his present circumstances to his past success. This is most clearly demonstrated by his love for a book by old Western philosophers—he can’t handle the present, so he must look backward.

Similarly, once Ruth, a Japanese American woman living in Canada (and loosely based on the author herself), discovers Nao’s journal, she decides to “slow down and not read faster than the girl had written…[to] most closely replicate Nao’s experience.” (Ozeki 38). This works well enough at first, but over time she becomes lost in Nao’s past. She no longer talks to people in real-time anymore, preferring to hole up upstairs and read. This parallels Nao, who doesn’t get along with her Japanese friends and communicates solely with her old best friend in California over e-mail. In this way, she falls into the trap Nao herself wanted to avoid, researching the pasts of the tsunami victims and trying to search for Nao online. This makes her fight with her husband and withdraw from the neighbors. It’s only once she finishes the journal and realizes that Nao doesn’t truly want to be found that she realizes her mistake and returns to real time.

Nao learns to focus on the present through her great-grandmother Jiko, calling her “the time being”, and admiring that she does everything very slowly “in order to spread time out so that she’ll have more of it and live longer.” (Ozeki 24). In addition, Jiko, a Zen Buddhist monk, practices a type of meditation, zazen that allows her to “enter time completely” (Ozeki 183). It’s only when Nao begins reluctantly to adopt this form of meditation that she also learns to focus on the present and put her unfortunate past behind her. Nao’s fixation with time is common to both Japanese and Western cultures (although she lives in Japan and is Japanese, she lived in California for several years) and the conclusions she draws from it show that she believes time is best lived out in the present. Still, she reflects that the present is very brief: every moment, past is becoming future, with only a small window where she really is in the “time being.”

But Ozeki also nests another narrative within the story—besides Ruth and Nao, we also hear briefly from Haruki #1, a reluctant kamikaze pilot and Jiko’s son. He, like Nao, anticipates his suicide, but under vastly different circumstances. This recounting completes all of the generations (Jiko, Jiko’s son Haruki #1, Nao’s father, Nao) and reflects that depression and discontent will always be a reality. Ruth’s life in present day augments this observation: she struggles between being happy with her husband, Oliver, living on a small sparsely populated island, and reminiscing about New York and the much more glamorous career she would’ve had there.

Lastly, Ozeki’s flexible structure—jumping from Nao’s adolescence to modern day, from Nao’s present day to her past, illustrates that time is something within our control. Part of the reason Nao recovers from her suicidal depression is her writing in her book. She’s able to control how she tells her story, and the sequence of events, and this increases her confidence.