64 pages • 2 hours read
Ruth OzekiA Tale For The Time Being
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Crows
Crows recur as an important motif throughout A Tale for the Time Being. Crows are first mention when Nao’s dad tells his wife and daughter that instead of going to work, he has been going to the park and feeding the crows since he does not actually have a new job. After Ruth reads this part of Nao’s diary aloud, Oliver mentions that he has seen a species of crow native to Japan flying around their home. He refers to this crow as the Jungle Crow. After this, Ruth starts to notice the Jungle Crow watching her whenever she comes and goes from the house. She feels as if the crow is waiting for something and has a message for her. Eventually, she has a dream in which the crow transports her back in time to Japan where she encounters Nao’s dad just as he is waiting to meet the other people from his suicide club. She tells him that his daughter is also thinking about committing suicide and persuades him to go find Nao at Jiko’s temple instead of killing himself. The Japanese Jungle Crow thus comes to represent a link between Nao’s world and Ruth’s.
Although Ruth is unsure what to make of her dream, some of her friends on the island remind her that in many cultures crows have special powers. Callie, for instance, tells her that “in Sliammon mythology [crows are] magical ancestors who can shapeshift and change into human form” (121). After Ruth tells Muriel about her dream, Muriel suggests that the Jungle Crow is Ruth’s totem animal which came “from Nao’s world to lead [her] into the dream so [she] could change the end of her story” (376).
In his French diary, Haruki #1 also refers to a tale about “crow wars” by the early 20th-century poet and children’s literature author Kenji Miyazawa. While he is in the military, thinking about how he doesn’t want to give his life for the war, Haruki #1 thinks of this quote by the Crow Captain in Miyazawa’s story: “Blessed stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate. Were such a thing to come about, I would not complain even if my body were torn to pieces again and again” (324). Although Haruki #1 loves flying, as do crows, he does not want to fly his plane into a battleship to kill the enemies he cannot hate. In the end, he chooses to remain true to his nonviolent beliefs and flies his plane into the ocean instead of an enemy ship.
Schrödinger’s Cat
Schrödinger’s Cat is a famous thought experiment used to explain the behavior of quantum particles. Near the beginning of the novel, the narrator mentions that the cat’s real name is Schrödinger but that its owners always call it Pest or Pesto. Although it is not mentioned for most of the novel, the paradox comes up again when Oliver uses it to explain the possibility of multiple worlds to Ruth after they learn about Haruki #2’s special encryption software and begin to wonder if there are multiple versions of Nao’s story. Physicists believe that quantum particles exist in all possible states until the moment that they are measured or observed; at that time, they choose one state in which to remain. To demonstrate just how strange this behavior is when it is applied to larger objects, Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment in which a cat is placed in a closed box along with a radioactive substance that has a 50% chance of killing the cat. When we open the box, we learn whether the cat has died. If we thought about the cat according to the laws of quantum physics, however, the cat would exist in both possible states and would be simultaneously dead and alive until the moment of observation. While common sense tells us that the cat is either dead or alive prior to it being observed, our usual modes of reason cannot be applied when thinking about quantum physics because particles behave in ways that we cannot observe in our daily lives. Oliver explains that quantum mechanics has been used to develop a theory of many worlds, which holds that everything that could happen in the universe does happen. According to many worlds theory, when Schrödinger’s cat is observed, it begins to exist in two separate worlds, one in which it is dead and one in which it is alive.
After giving a summary of many worlds theory to Ruth, Oliver observes that it may be possible for multiple versions of Nao’s story to exist and that they all may exist in other worlds. Oliver’s explanation of quantum physics is also used to partially explain the relationship between Ruth and Nao—even though they exist in different worlds, they still manage to interact and influence each other’s lives. This mirrors the principle of entanglement in quantum physics in which entangled particles can exert influence on each despite the great distance from one another. This aspect of quantum physics resonates with the emphasis in Zen Buddhism on the interconnectedness of the universe and Dōgen’s idea of time as a continuous flow of discontinuous moments.
Dreams
Dreams recur as an important motif in the novel and at times add to the surrealism of the story. Both Nao and Ruth have dreams that appear to have effects on their realities. Nao has a dream in which she stabs her cruel classmate Reiko in the eye; she later learns from Daisuke that earlier that week Reiko wore an eye patch to school. After beginning to read Nao’s diary, Ruth starts to have dreams about a Buddhist nun, who appears to be based on Nao’s great-grandmother, Jiko. In time, Ruth starts to feel as if these dreams are premonitions.
The most significant dream in the novel occurs when Ruth dreams that she intervenes in the lives of Nao and Nao’s father and saves them from committing suicide. Even though common sense tells Ruth that there is nothing she can do to save a 16-year-old on the brink of suicide living ten years ago, her dream leads her to believe that she may have actually had something to do with changing Nao’s story. In her dream, the Jungle Crow transports Ruth to the park where Nao’s dad is waiting to meet with the members of his suicide club. Ruth tells him that his daughter is also contemplating suicide and that he should stay alive to help her. She tells him that Nao has gone to see his grandmother as she lies dying. After this conversation, the Jungle Crow takes her to Nao’s temple where she finds herself holding Haruki #1’s French diary. She puts the diary in the empty box meant to contain Haruki #1’s remains so that Nao and her family will be able to find it. After her dream, Ruth discovers that the ending of Nao’s diary has changed. The remainder of the pages are no longer blank, and Nao goes on to explain how her dad came after her and how they both found Haruki #1’s secret notebook. It comes to seem as if Ruth really was able to cross over into Nao’s world through her dreams. The novel’s use of dreams is one of the reasons some critics have described it as a work of magic realism—a type of fiction in which a primarily realistic story also contains fantastical elements.
Related Titles
By Ruth Ozeki
