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 finally meets Benoit at the island’s garbage and recycling dump where he works. Benoit tells Ruth that she looks a lot like her mother, Masako. He says that he and Masako were “great friends.” It had slipped Ruth’s mind that her mother often visited the “Free Store” at the dump, which was filled with good-quality discarded items that anyone could take for free. Benoit would ask Masako if she’d “found any good bargains,” which always made her laugh.
Ruth worries that she might get Alzheimer’s like Masako did. Anytime Ruth forgets something, it triggers her fear that her forgetfulness is a symptom of Alzheimer’s. In this passage, Ruth not only forgets that Masako and Benoit knew each other, but Benoit also says that she looks just like her mother—which must make Ruth even more anxious that she’s becoming like her mother.
Themes
Benoit glances through the French booklet and asks Ruth if he can keep it so he can work on making a full translation. She feels hesitant to leave it with him, but she doesn’t want to offend him by refusing. Benoit notices the stack of Japanese letters too, and he recognizes that those letters and the French booklet were written by the same person, since the writer used the same pen for both. He guesses that the “sky soldier” probably wrote the booklet in French in order to keep his thoughts a secret from his squadron-mates.
Haruki #1 was a kamikaze pilot and wrote letters to Jiko, so the reader can infer that he is the “sky soldier” who wrote the letters. Nao also found out that Haruki #1 was bullied during his military service, which explains why he would want to decode his writing to hide it from his squadron-mates. Benoit seems confident that he’ll be able to translate the French booklet—if he’s successful, the booklet will serve as yet another connection between Ruth and Nao.
Themes
(2) At home, Ruth tells Oliver about Benoit’s guess that Haruki #1 was the author of the letters and the booklet, and that he wrote the booklet in French to keep it a secret from the other soldiers. Oliver remarks that it is an “excellent security feature,” and as soon as Ruth hears him say this, she recalls that Nao wrote the same thing about hiding her diary inside the Proust cover. She thinks that “Secret French diaries run in the family,” and she is faintly annoyed that Oliver made the connection while she didn’t.
Nao and Haruki #1 both used French writing to hide their diaries from the people who bullied them. It is an eerie coincidence that they both faced similar problems and devised similar solutions to their problems. This is yet another example of how people can be connected despite vast differences in their respective time periods and circumstances.
Themes
(3) It’s been nine day since Ruth emailed Dr. Leistiko, and she still hasn’t heard back from him. She resends it with a note of apology for her persistence, but she then feels guilty for bothering the professor. Ruth also feels terrible for ignoring her memoir for so many days.
Ruth’s impatience and persistent guilt about her memoir show that she hasn’t quite mastered the lessons in Nao’s diary about the transience of life and the importance of focusing on the present.
Themes
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(4) That night, Oliver says that he has news for Ruth: a scientific article on quantum computing that appeared on his newsfeed is authored by someone named “H. Yasudani.” Ruth gets very excited and wants to email the author right away, but Oliver says that he already did that. He also tells Ruth that instead of searching for new leads, she should “focus on what’s tangible in the here and now” and have the Japanese letters translated.
In yet another coincidence, an article by someone called “H. Yasudani” pops up on Oliver’s newsfeed. Of course, Ruth and Oliver think there is a good chance that the author might be Haruki, as the last name and field of study are a match. Meanwhile, Oliver gives Ruth the advice that she needs to hear: that she needs to focus on the “here and now.” This sounds like something Jiko would say. Toward the beginning of the novel, when Nao doesn’t know what to write in the diary, Jiko tells her that she should “start where [she is],” and Oliver’s advice to Ruth mirrors this.
Themes
(5) Oliver and Ruth make the trip to Arigato Sushi, a restaurant in Campbell River, which is the closest city to Whaletown. The owner of the restaurant, Akira Inoue, and his wife, Kimi, emigrated from Fukushima, Japan many years before. Right when they were planning to sell the restaurant and move back to Japan, the nuclear plant melted down, and their old city became uninhabitable. So, they decided to stay in Canada. Presently, Kimi glances through the bundle of letters that Ruth has brought, and she says that she can read the old-fashioned writing. She agrees to write down the translations for Ruth.
Ruth has been worried that the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hurt the Yasutanis. To have the Japanese letters translated, she ends up taking them to Akira and Kimi, whose lives have also been adversely affected by the earthquake and tsunami. This is yet another link between the characters in the novel, again making the point that people from all different walks of life are connected in untold ways.
Themes
