Time

 

In this essay I argue that journal writing serves as the dominant leitmotif of the hypertext “Lies” on all levels of the story and influences both its structure and content. Writing a journal is done from a fixed point of time, the “now” and looks back on a period of narrated time of a certain lenght; the prevailent strategy is the flash-back. There are two time levels: the time of the events which are recorded in the journal, being the narrated time, and the time of writing. In reading a journal however, the times of writing get manyfold. A third level, the time of reading, emerges, which turns into the “now” of the time of writing. These three layers of time representation can also be detected in “Lies”. The narrated time of the text, which is about a year, by far exceeds the narration time, meaning the time a reader needs to read the story from beginning to end, in this case less than ten minutes for each reading.

 

Most obviously journal writing is reflected in the structure of the text, insofar as the nodes split the story up into several “entries” and contain little text. Moreover, the mode of narration with a single point of view narrator, allowing deep insights into his thoughts and actions, resembles journal writing.

 

High attention is paid to time references. Writing a journal means writing things down from memory. It means fixing things in time. As I will argue under the topic of “Space”, space is most often inherent to memory, while time, in terms of correct dates and hours, is not. The story therefore contains many time references, e.g. “July 25” and “last summer”. These help fixing events in the narrated time.

 

As a characteristic of journal writing there are also many deictic time references, e.g. “now”and “last night”. These set the frame for the “now”, meaning the time of writing for the narrator, but are already part of the past for the reader. Nevertheless, they create a feeling of  imediacy and actuality on the part of the reader. Extensively using such time references helps the reader in understanding the interrelatedness of the different levels of time, even though the events are presented in a non-chronological order.

 

The will to pin down events in time, which is probably the major object of journal writing, can also be detected in the story, when the narrator is himself concerned with the topic of memory: “I did not tell her when, because I don’t remember.” This impicitly states that telling the time of a certain event when talking about it, is the normal way of communicating things. The issue of when events are communicated plays a big role in the course of the story, as well as how often things take place. This clearly shows in the emphasis expressions like “three times” are given in the text.

 

There is probably no more imediate way to learn the thoughts of someone than reading their journal. The hypertext makes use of this in giving its reader the feeling of directly witnessing the action or reflection on the action by using many definite and deictic time markers.

 

The two levels of the story in broad terms are “past” and “present”. Taking the introductory remark “you will never truly understand a person until you understand her lies” into account, one could conclude that “Lies” and lies do affect all levels of one’s reality: past, present and future.

 

 

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Julia Reiss
jureiss@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de
València Press