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
In an excerpt from Master Dogen’s Uji, Dogen writes that time is not separate from the “time being.” He says that every being in the world is “linked together as moments in time”—but, at the same time, they “exist as individual moments in time.”
The characters in the novel are connected in various ways—whether through the events they experience, the ideas they have, or the metaphysical communication that happens in dreams and ghostly conversations encounters. However, they are also separate people with separate experiences. This is what Dogen means in this passage—while all beings exist as individuals, they are all also linked.
Themes
