Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Tale for the Time Being, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Impermanence, and the Present
The Difficulty of Communication
Life vs. Death
Coincidences and Connections
Sexual Perversion and Violence
Summary
Analysis
Quantum mechanics studies how energy and matter operate differently at the smallest scales and atomic increments. It studies superposition, which means that a particle can occupy multiple forms or locations at once. Quantum mechanics also studies entanglement, which happens when two particles act like a single system across space and time. It also looks at the problem of how observation is affected when the observation process itself is observed. Ruth thinks that Zen Master Dogen would have liked quantum mechanics and would have easily understood its principles.
Since quantum mechanics studies how multiple possibilities can simultaneously exist, Ruth likens it to the Zen Buddhist idea of how “everything is connected in time.” To Ruth, both seem to deal with the connectedness of all things.
Themes
