DUST – TIME

Time in hypertexts can be linear, or not. You choose the way you want it to be. You can be reading a text in a webpage and you can click on a link that seems to call your attention, then you will be reading another interesting text related (or not) to the topic you were reading before; just in one second. And so on. That can hardly be done in a printed book. So I think that is an amazing feature of hypertexts, I mean, you can control the time the events take place, you can increase or decrease the time you wait to obtain a certain piece of information, which is wonderful when you are researching about something in particular (I suppose that everybody knows that searching things in a printed book is much more tiring and time-consuming, due to the fact that there are not links that take us directly to the point that we want to concentrate on).

After this introduction about time in hypertexts, I will carry on talking about time in “Dust”, where we can distinguish between outer time and inner time.

Outer time: It is a bit difficult to establish when the story takes place exactly. However, we can be helped by the context. “We were traveling on two different airlines” [...] “and woke later to an airline hostess”. These two quotations let us know that the story fits, at least, into the XX century. Actually, in my opinion, I would say that the story develops, at least, in the 1980s or 90s (or later, maybe) because of the facts that the characters go out to have dinner in a Chinese restaurant and that there are lots of people at night in the restaurant and in the cafe they visit (which was not very usual until 1960 or even later, depending on the culture).

Refering to the time the story lasts, I would say that it starts and finishes in one day. I have come up to this conclusion because of this deductions:

- First; taking into account that a flight from L.A. to New York takes around 6 hours, I suppose that Jane’s flight took off at midday and that Dan’s one did it at 3 p.m. or so ( Dan arrives in New York at dinner time more or less).

- Second; they go out to have dinner and to the cafe, and then they come back home at around midnight. They go to bed.

- Third; the last part of the story happens in the morning of the following day, when Jane wakes up and falls asleep again.

Within the development of the plot, Jane has some memories about their parents, which will have a very important effect in the significance of the text.

Inner time: It is clearly defined. The narrator uses past tenses (because of the simple fact that a story is usually narrated in past, it is supposed that it “happened” in order to be told) , while the characters (as they are usually talking about present events or actions) speak using present tenses. However, there are some examples in which they talk in past tenses:

‘"She's dead," I said’ or ‘"I didn't know this," he said.’ < When Jane says that her mother died some time ago.

‘"How was the trip?’ < Lucy asks Jane about a past event.

Also, we must say that there are a lot of time marks that place readers in time, such as “I fell asleep on take off, and woke later to”; “As I left the plane”; "Later tonight.”; “When you've finished with that”; “ Sometimes”; “ It was late”.

I would also like to mention something related to the time I have spent reading the text. I spent almost 2 hours to read and comprehend what the text meant. I have to say that sometimes it was hard to keep concentrated on the reading, due to some conversations that led to unexpected interpretations.

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© David Ibáñez Salinas
daisa@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press