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
(1) Ruth sees a glint under some tangled kelp on the beach. She pokes the kelp with a stick, untangles it, and sees a plastic freezer bag encrusted with barnacles. Ruth isn’t surprised, since the ocean is full plastic trash; she thinks that this bag must have been in the ocean for a long time. She decides to take it home to throw it out.
Given that Ruth’s narrative is presented alongside Nao’s, the reader can infer that there will be some kind of connection between these two characters. Ruth’s discovery of the plastic freezer bag that washed up on her beach is a complete matter of chance—or of destiny—and it may connect to Nao in some way.
Themes
(2) Later, Ruth is cooking dinner when her husband, Oliver, spots the plastic freezer bag she found on the beach. Ruth meant to throw it in the trash, but she forgot and left it on their porch. Ruth asks Oliver not to bring the dirty bag into the house, but he is very curious about it. Oliver discovers a Hello Kitty lunch box inside the freezer bag; he says that there is something inside the box, and he opens it immediately.
Again, this passage is full of coincidences that lead to Ruth discovering the contents of the Hello Kitty lunch box. If she had already thrown the bag in the trash, or if Oliver had listened to her and not brought it inside, Ruth would have missed out on whatever the box contains.
Themes
(3) Oliver neatly lays out the contents of the lunch box on the kitchen table. There is a small stack of letters written in Japanese, a bound book with a faded red cover, and an antique watch with a Japanese engraving etched into the back. Ruth cannot read a single word of the Japanese letters, since the handwriting is old and cursive. She says that the etchings on the back of the watch are Japanese numbers. Ruth picks up the red book and reads the French title, which is A la recherche du temps perdu, a novel by Marcel Proust.
The old watch inside the lunch box is a symbol of passing time, and it will reappear later in the novel to remind Ruth of this fact. The English translation of Proust’s novel is In Search of Lost Time, which also connects to the idea that time passes quickly and is lost—and that people need to be aware of this and live every moment mindfully. Ruth also tries to read the Japanese letters, but she fails. Still, this s that she knows some Japanese and probably has some cultural connection to Japan, which is where Nao lives. For this reason, it seems like destiny that the contents of the lunch box made their way to Ruth, since she seems like the right person to receive them.
Themes
(4) Ruth is a novelist, and she and Oliver both like books. She comments that she has never read Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Oliver says that he hasn’t either, but that he wouldn’t try to read it in French. Ruth agrees and opens the book to look at the first few lines. She is shocked to see the page covered in “adolescent purple handwriting” instead of the old printed pages she was expecting.
This is another instance in which a chance action leads to a surprising discovery. Ruth can’t read French—but, in any case, she happens to open the book with the French cover even though she has no plans to read it. If she hadn’t opened it, she would have never discovered the writing inside. The “adolescent purple handwriting” heavily implies that this book is Nao’s diary.
Themes
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(5) As Ruth stares in confusion at the writing in the book, she sees that most of the words are in English, with a few Japanese words interspersed between them. She feels “the writer’s presence” in the words, and she guesses that the purple handwriting belongs to a teenage girl. Ruth thinks that the book must be a diary of some kind and is curious about it, so she begins reading Nao’s words.
The diary Ruth found is indeed Nao’s—her chance finding of this book further imbues the connection between the two characters as somehow predestined. Ruth feels an immediate bond between herself and Nao, the writer, as soon as she looks at Nao’s handwriting. Ruth feels Nao’s “presence” in her words and accurately guesses her age and gender. This seems to be evidence of the “magic” that Nao hoped to create between herself and her reader.
Themes
(6) Oliver says that the lunch box that floated up on the beach was probably flotsam. Ruth is reading the diary and doesn’t want to be disturbed, so she dismissively says that it is either flotsam or, more likely, jetsam. Oliver clarifies that flotsam is “accidental” stuff that is found floating on the sea, while jetsam has been “jettisoned.” He says that Ruth is right that the contents of the freezer bag are probably jetsam. Picking up the lunch box, Oliver says that scientists predicted that all the stuff that the Japanese tsunami washed away would end up on the coastline of their little island. He thinks that it has started to appear earlier than expected.
Oliver’s theory that the lunch box was jettisoned during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 ends up causing Ruth a great deal of worry for Nao’s safety and well-being. Also, this theory builds on the idea that it was a very fortunate—and even magical—coincidence that the lunch box made its way all the way from Japan to Ruth’s Canadian island.
Themes
