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
Ruth describes Schrödinger’s thought experiment. She says that the cat is shut in a box with a mechanism that might kill it. Through this, Schrödinger illustrates the impossibility of precise measurement in quantum mechanics. The moment an observer opens the box, he or she will find the cat to be either dead or alive—the “cat’s state is singular and fixed in time and space.” However, before opening the box, the cat must simultaneously be both dead and alive. Ruth wonders that if there isn’t an external observer, if even people would “exist in an array of all possible states at once.”
Through this thought experiment, Schrödinger wanted to demonstrate that it is impossible to accurately measure subatomic particles, since they are in motion until they are “fixed” by being measured. Ruth likens the behavior of the subatomic particles to people’s lives, wondering if people, too, lack the freedom to “exist in an array of […] states” only because an external observer “fixes” them into a single state. Ruth seems to believe that this is the case, since people can otherwise exist in multiple, connected states, as Zen Buddhists believe. Ruth sees the similarity between Zen Buddhist thought and quantum mechanics. This also hearkens back to the idea that Nao, as the writer, only existed when Ruth was reading her words—and that Ruth, as the reader, only existed when Nao was writing to her.
Themes
