Category Archives: paper

p.s.

A Tale for the Time Being

As A Tale for the Time Being starts out, we are introduced to the young and friendly Nao, a girl who writes to us – and to Ruth, of course – from at least two years back in time, when she and her family are at their lowest possible point.

As the story progresses, we learn how to be time beings, if only for the time being, and we learn that we have always been a time being, right alongside Nao.

But Nao’s time is limited – that’s much of what the first portion of the book seems to be about in my eyes. Nao and her limited time, even if Nao herself is the one limiting it. There’s a line early on in the book that sets the framework for the entirety of her chapters.

“Emma Goldman wrote an autobiography called Living My Life that Jiko is always trying to get me to read, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet because I’m too busy living my life or trying to figure out how not to.” (Ozeki, pg 69)

Though obvious that Nao wanted to write about the great-grandmother that she adored unconditionally, I believe the start of her tale was also a way that she was trying very hard not to live her own life. Instead she immersed herself in the life of Jiko Yasutani, who believed women could be strong and were mistreated, but still had a good heart of her own and compassion regardless of who or what you are. Jiko was unimaginably kind, and I believe that Nao wanted very much to be the kind of woman that her great-grandmother was, as opposed to the Nao Yasutani that was picked on regularly in school.  We see the dark side to Nao’s life immediately; Nao wants to be something, anything other than Nao, and it doesn’t take us long to understand why that might be the case. She becomes obsessed with the idea of suicide, largely in part at first because of her father. They say that having a relative attempt or commit suicide increases the risk of you yourself attempting it. (more info here)

In this way, Ruth is much the antithesis of Nao. Nao found comfort in the countryside, while Ruth felt more stifled; where Nao was uneasy because of the people who lived in the bigger area, Ruth found life in a big city relatively easy to deal with. From the start of the book, Ruth and Nao are set up as opposites Nao spends the majority of the book trying to find her place in the world, while Ruth already has her own. While their circumstances were significantly different and understandable in all regards, this is an important thing to keep in mind.

I felt further evidence revealed itself as the book went on, and while Nao’s life grew more chaotic, Ruth’s life began to make less and less sense as time went on.  She had dreams that seemed to influence Nao’s journal and her life, her memory began to act up. She began to have an existential crisis, wondering if perhaps she wasn’t real at all, and maybe Nao had just written her into existence.  By the end of the book this becomes even more of an issue when Nao (alongside her father) seems to choose life instead of death after the death of Jiko and finding the journal that belonged to Haruki #1. While Nao chooses life, Ruth becomes even more uncertain of her place in the world. She finds less and less comfort in her conversations with Oliver, to the point that he needs to tell her that she’s being irrational about her assumptions, and if she’s going to continue thinking about something so out there that she should at least be somewhat logical about it instead of basing it on information that doesn’t really exist.

Nao finally finds her place in the world, and in a way Ruth loses hers. Stability is replaced with instability, and stability is replaced with instability.

As for the ending, I think there are a few different things that Ruth could be. One of the first – and perhaps more logical – might be that her dreams and memory issues were in fact an unfortunately early onset of Alzheimer’s. This could account for a number of things, but I think in a world such as this, for time beings such as Ruth and Nao, that this explanation is a bit too simple.

In that way, I think the next best possibility would be that Ruth was, in essence, a time being. I think that what she was didn’t really matter a great deal, because she had all she needed to be a time being, even if her time was built in a different way than someone else’s might be. She could be a creation of Nao’s, but does it matter?

p.s.

A Tale for the Time Being

As A Tale for the Time Being starts out, we are introduced to the young and friendly Nao, a girl who writes to us – and to Ruth, of course – from at least two years back in time, when she and her family are at their lowest possible point.

As the story progresses, we learn how to be time beings, if only for the time being, and we learn that we have always been a time being, right alongside Nao.

But Nao’s time is limited – that’s much of what the first portion of the book seems to be about in my eyes. Nao and her limited time, even if Nao herself is the one limiting it. There’s a line early on in the book that sets the framework for the entirety of her chapters.

“Emma Goldman wrote an autobiography called Living My Life that Jiko is always trying to get me to read, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet because I’m too busy living my life or trying to figure out how not to.” (Ozeki, pg 69)

Though obvious that Nao wanted to write about the great-grandmother that she adored unconditionally, I believe the start of her tale was also a way that she was trying very hard not to live her own life. Instead she immersed herself in the life of Jiko Yasutani, who believed women could be strong and were mistreated, but still had a good heart of her own and compassion regardless of who or what you are. Jiko was unimaginably kind, and I believe that Nao wanted very much to be the kind of woman that her great-grandmother was, as opposed to the Nao Yasutani that was picked on regularly in school.  We see the dark side to Nao’s life immediately; Nao wants to be something, anything other than Nao, and it doesn’t take us long to understand why that might be the case. She becomes obsessed with the idea of suicide, largely in part at first because of her father. They say that having a relative attempt or commit suicide increases the risk of you yourself attempting it. (more info here)

In this way, Ruth is much the antithesis of Nao. Nao found comfort in the countryside, while Ruth felt more stifled; where Nao was uneasy because of the people who lived in the bigger area, Ruth found life in a big city relatively easy to deal with. From the start of the book, Ruth and Nao are set up as opposites Nao spends the majority of the book trying to find her place in the world, while Ruth already has her own. While their circumstances were significantly different and understandable in all regards, this is an important thing to keep in mind.

I felt further evidence revealed itself as the book went on, and while Nao’s life grew more chaotic, Ruth’s life began to make less and less sense as time went on.  She had dreams that seemed to influence Nao’s journal and her life, her memory began to act up. She began to have an existential crisis, wondering if perhaps she wasn’t real at all, and maybe Nao had just written her into existence.  By the end of the book this becomes even more of an issue when Nao (alongside her father) seems to choose life instead of death after the death of Jiko and finding the journal that belonged to Haruki #1. While Nao chooses life, Ruth becomes even more uncertain of her place in the world. She finds less and less comfort in her conversations with Oliver, to the point that he needs to tell her that she’s being irrational about her assumptions, and if she’s going to continue thinking about something so out there that she should at least be somewhat logical about it instead of basing it on information that doesn’t really exist.

Nao finally finds her place in the world, and in a way Ruth loses hers. Stability is replaced with instability, and stability is replaced with instability.

As for the ending, I think there are a few different things that Ruth could be. One of the first – and perhaps more logical – might be that her dreams and memory issues were in fact an unfortunately early onset of Alzheimer’s. This could account for a number of things, but I think in a world such as this, for time beings such as Ruth and Nao, that this explanation is a bit too simple.

In that way, I think the next best possibility would be that Ruth was, in essence, a time being. I think that what she was didn’t really matter a great deal, because she had all she needed to be a time being, even if her time was built in a different way than someone else’s might be. She could be a creation of Nao’s, but does it matter?

A Look at Time // Ozeki 305-End

“..I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

A Tale For The Time Being. Its all in the title. While this novel focuses on the different ideas surrounding time, the title absolutely explores this idea as well; It has a dual meaning. First, its primary interpretation to the average reader with no idea of the context of the story would believe that it is “a story to to pass the time”. While this is accurate, the title’s secondary meaning is more along the lines of “a story for everyone”. The dual nature of the title is clarified in the first few pages of the novel, but it is relevant to not only the idea of time, but another concept that we studied this quarter known as “dual-consciousness”. The book itself even expresses this, with Nao’s American and Japanese backgrounds. While not particularly explored in the novel, I appreciated how this relates in an historical context, bringing it back to its relevance to the time theme.

Time is also explored through Ruth’s reading of the diary. There was a particular part in the novel which brought to light the fact that the timelines of both of the characters don’t particularly coincide. Oliver and Ruth are having a conversation relating to an email that Ruth had sent to get information on Nao’s father, mentioning that it was urgent due to the girl’s suicidal thoughts. Oliver offhandedly says “Well, you’re not making a lot of sense. Its not like its happening right now, right?”(pg.312). This is the first moment in the novel that the time difference, about ten years, between Ruth reading the diary and Nao writing it is addressed. I found this to be interesting because, over the course of the novel, the reader may find themselves feeling much like Ruth, reading Nao’s words believing they are happening in the moment. The fact that it was addressed allowed for both Ruth and the reader to step back and realize that time essentially swallows up existence. Nao may have been dead the whole time Ruth was reading her diary, but that didn’t change Ruth’s resolve to find the girl, in the end. In a similar vein, I noticed very early in the novel that Nao’s journal had a distinct lack of dates, as typical journal entries do. I think this was a conscious choice by Ozeki, for the same reason’s stated above.

Historical representations of time were also explored. This is true in the case of Haruki #1′s letters, and similarly with the story of Jiko’s past. This, in my opinion, really sold the whole book for me. Not only was this a novel about a girl and her life, this was a story of how the past and the future meet. It is a complicated emotion for me to express, but this really reminded me of a lot of social issues surrounding technology in the world today. But I digress.

All in all, I found this book to be quite enlightening. It expressed so many things flawlessly, from life and death to identity to the big idea of TIME!

“I’m counting the moments.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

Hey, I know! Let’s count the moments together!”

 

Haruki #1 and Reading // Ozeki 204- 304

Reading in this novel has more layers than many fiction works I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The first, simple level of this resides in Nao. Specifically, during this section of the novel, we find Nao begins to read Haruki #1′s letters to Jiko.   I personally found these letters to be quite interesting. She not only has to translate them, but then she begins to read and understand Haruki’s struggle in the military. We find out that Haruki’s letters are disingenuous; he has a french diary that is later translated to hold his true thoughts and feeling. This way of reading the novel provided not one, not two, but three separate evolving opinions or the letters. Nao reads the letters, then Ruth, and then the reader proper, each with their own varying inputs on the letters.

The reader is then confronted with the fact that Nao’s entire point of view throughout the novel comes from a diary. Every word we read from Nao is also read by Ruth, and thus commented on in various ways. My favorite example of this is through the footnotes of Nao’s journal. I originally didn’t understand that the footnotes came from Ruth, until a particularly sassy one directed my attention to it.this offered the reader proper and Ruth to form a connection through Nao’s entries.

Finally, we are presented with Ruth and her varying degrees of understanding through the internet and Nao’s journal. It is expressed to the reader in such a way that they feel as thought Ruth is guiding them through this journey. I feel it’s important to differentiate between Ruth the character and Ruth the author, and I say my previous statement is related to both.

I found that Ruth Ozeki did a lovely job of using the theme of reading in her novel. It was by far a deeper, but also more enjoyable read for it.

Communication is Key //Ozeki 111-204

What defines communication? The Merriam-Webster dictionary relies on two separate definitions.

“: the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else

: a message that is given to someone : a letter, telephone call, etc.”

This novel is specifically linked with both of these. I’d first like to note that the latter definition describes this book almost in its entirety. A dairy, washed ashore to be read and deciphered by a woman unrelated to the original diary owner, twists itself into a tale of death, time and understanding. The whole diary is a message, a note to someone from a girl’s future. This is important to the reader; the author could have just written a story of two women, living their separate lives. So what was gained from portraying the novel this way? From what I could gather, this was used as a way to express a story which cannot be changed at the time of reading, which is crucial to the novel’s most prominent theme, time. These two themes piggy-back off of one another very frequently. While this is the most obvious form of communication used thus far in the novel, it is not even close to the only one.

There is many smaller, more frequently used forms of communication presented thus far. One example of this manifests itself early in the reading, after Nao had spent some time in Japan. In an eager attempt to retrace back to her american roots, she frequently messages her best friend from California, Kayla, via the internet and texting. Later she realizes that these roots are slowly disappearing around her as her life begins to change. This use of technology becomes crucial to Nao and some of her experiences. Another obvious example of this is when Nao’s funeral is posted online and sent to her. Nao and Old Jiko used texting to communicate with one another on some topics. In Ruth’s side of the world, while trying to decipher Nao’s cryptic journal, she looks many things up on the internet, which tended to become annotations for the reader.

In my opinion, this theme is incredibly important to the entirety of the novel, but is used more as a vessel for many deeper, thought-provoking themes to flourish.

Mississippi Masala

I thought this movie was so cute ! I don’t often see movies with Indian-Americans, so between this and My Name is Khan, I definitely would love to watch more! I really like seeing the Indian Culture!

So I payed attention to the music as the movie went along, which I don’t normally do. I just remember that Chico mentioned it before we started the movie. What I noticed is that there were 2 different types of music played. The first was down south music, and the second was traditional African music. At first the southern music was played only when the scenes were in Mississippi, and the African music was only played when the scenes were in Uganda. This changed when Jay visited Uganda after all those years and he visited his old home. The whole time he was in the United States he kept dreaming about his home Uganda. When he went back, he realized that it changed. Okelo had died. He didn’t know anyone there anymore, and his wife and daughter were in the United States. As he looked at the landscape from his old house, the music suddenly wasn’t African, but southern music. This is when he realized that this was no longer his home. His Home was where his family was.

“Home is where the heart is, and my heart is with you.”

A Tale For the Time Being 109-203

Environment

In the book it discusses how bullying was a huge problem for Nao. She was getting bullied in her school and no one ever did anything about it. When Ruth reads the about Nao’s death and how the video went online and people were wondering how could teachers or anyone participate. Then Oliver says “We live in a bully culture, Politicians, corporations, the banks, the military. All bullies and crooks. They steal, they torture people, they make these insane rules and set the tone” (121).

When I read Nao’s parts I think  ”Oh wow, this is terrible” but never realized how bad teenagers treated peers in the United States. I know that when I was growing up I would try to fit in and sometimes miss treat the people that I actually didn’t mind because we are taught that “normal” is the only way. In reality we are scared because we don’t know what normal really is.

The quote is valid. We do live in a society where if you aren’t “normal” then you will get mistreated. Don’t ask Don’t tell was a great example of not being able to be express yourself truthfully and being able to get kicked out of the military because you weren’t “normal. I truthfully didn’t realized how much bullying is an issue not only with teenagers but as a society. We are just so used to overlooking the situations that we never understand how bad things really are.

A Tale for the Time Being: Identity

Identity was an interesting theme in this book. We mainly saw examples of Nao having to question herself and if she was worth it. There were so many things that happened in her life that made her think her life wasn’t even worth living.

-Her classmates hated her so much, they bullied her everyday

-They tried to rape her in the bathroom

-The whole class, including the teacher had a funeral for her

-Her dad kept trying to kill himself. (Is she wanted as a daughter?!)

-Her mother didn’t seem to even have any time for her at all.

-Her “Best Friend ” Kayla didn’t seem to have much interest in her anymore.

It seemed like the only person who could help Nao feel like she was worth something was Old Jiko. She helped her form her identity, with her supapawa. She taught her how to ignore what everyone else was doing her, and move on.

A Tale for the Time Being: Communication

Communication was really an interesting thing that was played with in the book.

1.There was Nao communicating with the future. At least she hopes she was…as long as somebody would find her diary. And she did.

2. There was Nao and Ruth communicating..sort of. Nao got to communicate with Ruth, without Nao ever realizing it. And there was Ruth who really really wanted to be able to communicate back to Nao, but didn’t have a way to.

3. There was the author Ruth Ozeki…communicating with whoever was reading the book. I thought some of the footnotes were interesting. It seemed like every once in a while a little bit of personality would pop out of the footnotes, versus just being totally informational. It was like Ruth the author was communicating with me, completely outside of the story.

4. There was Nao communicating with not only the future, but also the reader of her diary. She would ask things like “What do you look like?” “Are you male or female?” Etc.

5. Jiko and Nao mostly communicated through text, which I think is funny because Jiko is supposedly 104 years old and most people decades younger than her don’t even want to have anything to do with cell phones.

6. Haruki #1 communicated to Nao as a ghost, and was able to tell her a few things.

 

A Tale for the Time Being: Loss

There were so many examples of loss in this book.

1: Self-Confidence. It seems like Nao lost all of her self confidence and also sense of self when she had to move back to Japan. She was so happy with her life in California, and completely changed when they moved back. It must have been especially hard for her since she was 15. That’s such  an important time for young girls when they are learning all about their self identity.

2: Nao’s Father: Ever since he started becoming depressed, it was like he was no longer there for Nao. There were so many times in the book where she had to worry about him killing himself. Or where she would try to communicate with him and she just couldn’t get through to him. It seemed like he always looked right through her. I started having hope for their relationship when they went to visit Old Jiko and he stayed for a little while. I was hoping like she was that he would stay with her for the summer and they could bond. Instead, he just left without saying goodbye.

3. Loss of purpose: Nao feels like she no longer has any purpose to her life. Everyone hates her. She has no friends. She can’t go to school without being bullied extremely bad. It’s so sad that a girl who is only 15 years old and has her whole entire life ahead of her, can’t even think of a reason to live. I am hoping that Old Jiko will give Nao enough hope to live. I still have about 50 pages left in my reading so I don’t know what happens to her yet!  It seemed like at least through the parts I read though that Old Jiko changed Nao’s view of the world, and definitely gave her tricks to get through the rough times, so hopefully she doesn’t end up committing suicide.