Time In Jennifer Egan's Dealing With The Dead

Time is a very mysterious, yet compelling concept. Although it has become an accepted and comprehended necessity in our society, how it developed to be so is perplexing. Some will even go as far as to say time is just an illusion and does not actually exist, since there is no way to measure or prove of its existence. Be that as it may, the idea of time has been an integral part of human existence for thousands of years, influencing how society has shaped as a whole, and how we interact with each other. There is a circular quality present in time itself, which can be seen in several texts, including The Ring of Time (E.B. White), Dealing with the Dead (Something Borrowed) (Jennifer Egan), and Nothing Gold Can Stay (Robert Frost). Each of these

To her, time itself is an intangible quality that cannot be taken away because it does not exist. However, tangible objects can hold priceless memories of people and situations of a pre-existing time. Time does not stop regardless of the situations in the moment, it is infinite and only controlled by itself. People can die, and there lives will stop, but time will go on and life will go on with it forever. Egan’s way of coping with the loss of others is keeping material items from the important people in her life and continuing to wear them long after their passing, in order to keep them alive in some form. Her ideology behind this is that, “When the clock stops on a life, all things emanating from it become precious, finite, and cordoned off for preservation. Each aspect of the dead person is removed from the flux of the everyday” (¶ two, Egan). When someone dies, their circle of time ceases, and the only thing remaining for the people still alive are the intangible items such as the memories, experiences, and words of the deceased individual, along with the tangible items such as what they owned, which is clothes in this case. By holding onto the tangible items, the narrator also feels more connected with the intangible ones, believing there is a connection between the two. By wearing the clothes she feels like she is continuing their circle of time and of life, explaining that “Borrowing

Frost observes the changes he notices outdoors, writing, “Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold. / Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour” (lines 1-4). Here he is noting the changes in the colors outside, along with the life cycle of a plant, originally only bearing leaves but then blossoming into flowers later on throughout the seasons. Although the poem’s main focus is that things cannot stay forever and do not last long, it can also be argued that seasons themselves are prime examples of the circular notion of time. Each year the four seasons repeat themselves, starting and ending on the same day each time. Although the plants living outside go through several different phases, they often restart at the beginning of their cycle after they’ve ended their previous one. This pattern continues in a never-ending circle. Time has no effect on plants, only the weather and outside forces do. Time is not a factor in nature itself, because organisms will go through their phases regardless of time. The rebirth of plants is unsimilar to that of humans because we have one life, one circle of life and time, while plants can have many different circles. The seasons and plants remain fairly constant, but our lives can change drastically within a year. Springtime during one year