Time's aspect
Time's aspect is an important concept in terms of analysing a
hypertext. It is a non-linear text, so this characteristic will
influence the content and consequently, time in the argument.
Firstly, I'll try to explain the
structure of the whole text. It consists of three parts: Charmaine's
story, Blat's story and the others' story.Each part have ten texts, so
the entire hypertext contains thirty links. When you click in any part,
you have a text and within the lecture, you can choose a link to
another part. For example, you're reading Charmaine's part but when you
click to the last paragraph, you'll go to the others' part. In this
way, non-linear reading is present all the time.
The more changes you do in this
aspect, the more complex is time's aspect, because if you follow a
complete story from the beginning to the end, the time will be
linear.For this cause, the time is not fixed. The reader is the only
one who can shift it.
Moreover, time is perpetually changing
because it changes also within the three parts: each one tells a
different story in a different time. We can compare the three
beginnings:
Charmaine:
"Now this. Son of a bitch might as
well''ve jumped me. I'm like, Excuse me, Professor? We're supposed to
be talking about my paper."
In this case, we're at the beginning of the situation, she's
asking him about a paper and she still doesn't thrown the book.
Blat:
"He's alone in the room, which is
airless and smells of disinfectant. The machine that supplies his
oxygen hisses. The machine that monitors his heart beeps."
In Blat's story, the action has ocurred yet, he's in the hospital with
her wife.
Others:
"Look, I say he gets thrown in jail.
What kind of shit is that? He locked her in his office and slid his
desk in front of the door!"
As same as the latter, the incident has passed and people are talking
about it.
That's why time in all the stories changes, so we can analyse time
saying that in hypertext reader can change the time as well as the
space, also in this hypertext which apparently seem to be linear.
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