In A Tale for the Time Being, characters find it difficult to communicate with one another. Even when they love each other—like Nao and her father Haruki, or Ruth and her husband Oliver—they are rarely able to speak about their fears or concerns. As a result, they lead isolated lives. Their loneliness is exacerbated by the environments they live in, which they perceive as strange, unwelcoming, or even hostile. Yet the book suggests that a person like Jiko, Nao’s great-grandmother who is a Buddhist nun, can form true connections because she is deeply generous and loving—according to the novel, her attitude is a product of her spiritual beliefs. The novel also suggests that the bond between a writer and a reader can be just as deep as an intimate relationship—both spirituality and the written word offer alternate paths for people to meaningfully connect.
The novel has many examples of how characters who love each other are unable to communicate and end up suffering in loneliness. For instance, Nao is severely bullied at her new school but doesn’t tell her parents about it. Every morning, her father, Haruki, walks her to school, and Nao says that the “important thing [is] that [they are] being polite and not saying all the things that [are] making [them] unhappy, which [is] the only way [they] know how to love each other.” Though Nao and her father care for each other deeply, their refusal to speak openly about their problems creates a huge rift between them. Haruki, too, has his own troubles that he doesn’t share with anyone. He feels a deep sense of shame because he doesn’t have a job and can’t provide for his family, and because of this, he tries to commit suicide twice. Haruki never speaks to his family about his deep sadness. They, in turn, willingly turn a blind eye to his troubles—they even laugh off his suicide attempts as being silly accidents. Their refusal to acknowledge his problems closes the door to compassion and support. Similarly, Ruth finds it difficult to communicate openly with her husband, Oliver. She reads Nao’s diary aloud to Oliver, and they spend a lot of time discussing Nao’s problems. However, they never talk about Ruth’s loneliness and isolation that are hampering her work as a writer. Additionally, Ruth finds it difficult to express her admiration and love for Oliver. After an argument, Ruth thinks about how Oliver is “the most intelligent person she [knows]” and the “least egotistical man [she’s] ever met”—yet she’s unable to say these things to him. Like Haruki’s relationship with his family, Ruth and Oliver’s bond is stifled by their inability to meaningfully communicate.
The characters’ loneliness is intensified by their environments, which they perceive to be foreign and hostile. However, Ozeki hints that the characters’ environments only mirror their state of mind rather than cause it. Nao is forced to move from an affluent life in Sunnyvale, California to a shabby apartment in Tokyo after her father loses his job. Nao blames her isolation and unhappiness on the fact that she isn’t fluent in Japanese or familiar with the country’s culture. However, when she goes to live with her great-grandmother Jiko in a temple—a place where the rituals and language are even more foreign than in Tokyo—Nao easily adapts to the new routines and thrives there. Since she is comfortable and happy with Jiko, the unfamiliarity of her environment is irrelevant. Similarly, Ruth perceives herself to be a perpetual outsider on the tiny Canadian island that she moves to from New York City. While her move isn’t as traumatic as Nao’s, Ruth nevertheless finds herself unmoored by her island life, living among people whose ideas and mannerisms she finds strange and annoying. However, these islanders repeatedly prove themselves to be kind and helpful neighbors, suggesting that Ruth’s sense of dislocation is more a state of mind than a fact.
While even loving relationships are sometimes inadequate in encouraging true communication, Ozeki suggests that a spiritual outlook can help foster connections between human beings—like Nao’s relationship with Jiko. While Nao finds its impossible to share her fears and worries with her family and friends, she easily confides in Jiko. Nao knows she has Jiko’s unconditional love, so she feels free to tell Jiko exactly what is on her mind, even when she knows it is not the “correct” thing to say. For instance, when Jiko tells Nao that they should work together to help people attain enlightenment, Nao replies, “No way! […] Forget it! I am no fucking [nun]!” Jiko isn’t angered by this response. Instead, she still looks at Nao like she is “saying a blessing” for her—which is how she always looks at Nao—and Nao says that this makes her feel “safe.” The consistency of Jiko’s affection—which is a product of her Zen Buddhist practice that preaches love for all creatures—helps her win Nao’s trust.
Ruth’s character is a stand-in for Ruth Ozeki, the author, and the novel can thus be read as metafictional (self-referential as a work of fiction). The book is an account of how characters and stories call across time to their writer and form a deep bond with them. The writer, in turn, shares these stories with her reader—and if they connect with the reader, it is like “making magic,” in Nao’s words. While Nao can be seen as a character who calls to Ruth and whom Ruth writes into existence, Nao is also a diary-writer who holds her reader (Ruth) in thrall. The magic and power of this relationship is demonstrated by Ruth’s (the reader’s) ability to enter a spiritual dream to rescue Nao (the writer) from death. To Ozeki, this link across time and space between a writer and reader has the heft of a spiritual connection, giving people a different way to meaningfully connect with others.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Difficulty of Communication ThemeTracker
The Difficulty of Communication Quotes in A Tale for the Time Being
Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present,
writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you’re reading this, then maybe by now you’re wondering about me, too.
“But Granny, it’s going to take forever!”
“Well, we must try even harder, then.”
“We?!”
“Of course, dear Nao. You must help me.”
“No way!” I told Granny. “Forget it! I’m no fucking bosatsu…”
[…] I think maybe she was saying a blessing for me just then, too. I didn’t mind. It made me feel safe, like I knew no matter what happened, Granny was going to make sure I got onto that elevator.
But since these are my last days on earth, I want to write something important. […] I want to leave something real behind.
But what can I write about that’s real? Sure, I can write about all the bad shit that’s happened to me, and my feelings about my dad and my mom and my so-called friends, but I don’t particularly want to.
[…] Dad would walk me to school and we’d talk about stuff. I don’t remember exactly what, and it didn’t matter. The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.
But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the thinnest veneer. Engulfed by the thorny roses and massing
bamboo, she stared out the window and felt like she’d stepped into a malevolent fairy tale. She’d been bewitched. She’d pricked her finger and
had fallen into a deep, comalike sleep. The years had passed, and she was not
getting any younger. […] Now that her mother was dead, Ruth felt that her own life was passing her by. Maybe it was time to leave this place she’d hoped would be home forever. Maybe it was time to break the spell.
I already thought my father was insane, because this was at a time when I still believed that only insane people try to kill themselves, but at the back of my mind, I guess I was hoping that my mom was normal and okay again […]. But at that moment I knew she was as crazy and unreliable as my father, […] which meant there was nobody left in my life I could count on to keep me safe. I don't think I’ve ever felt as naked or alone. My knees went all soft as I sank, crouching there, cradling my fish. It thrashed one last time, rising up almost into my throat, and then it flopped back down and just lay there, gasping for air. I held it. It was dying in my arms.
It’s the cold fish dying in your stomach feeling. You try to forget about it, but as soon as you do, the fish starts flopping around under your heart and reminds you that something truly horrible is happening.
Jiko felt like that when she learned that her only son was going to be killed in the war. […] In fact, she said she had lots of fishes, […] but the biggest fish of all belonged to Haruki #1, and it was more like the size of a whale. She also said that after she became a nun and renounced the world, she learned how to open up her heart so that the whale could swim away. I'm trying to learn how to do that, too.
Over and over, I ran at the sea, beating it until I was so tired I could barely stand. And then the next time I fell down, I just lay there and let the waves wash over me, and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get
back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones
would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets.
Today during a test flight, I remembered Miyazawa Kenji's wonderful tale about the Crow Wars. […] [As] I was soaring in formation at an altitude of two thousand meters, I recalled the Crow Captain lifting off from his honey locust tree, and taking to wing to do battle. I am Crow! I thought, ecstatically. The visibility was good, and since this was the very last of the special training
flights, I flew in all directions to my heart’s content.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful to her. I really was. She was my only friend, and if I couldn’t hang out at Fifi’s Lonely Apron, where could I go? My home
life was a disaster. Mom [...] was killing herself working overtime. Dad [...] was depressed like I’ve never seen him before, like he’d finally and truly lost all interest in being alive. He avoided any contact with me and Mom, which is a trick in a small two-room apartment. [...] [S]ometimes, if I happened to pass him in the narrow hallway and catch his eye, his face would twitch and start to crumple with the weight of his shame, and I had to turn my head away because I couldn’t bear to see it.
I have written to you of my decision to die. Here is what I did not tell you. […] [T]he ticking of the clock is the only sound I am able to hear now. Second by second, minute by minute…tick, tick, tick…the small, dry sounds fill every crevice of silence. […] [M]y being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time, marching toward my death.
If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! […] I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But no, there is no […] way of stopping time, and so I lie here, paralyzed, listening to the last moments of my life tick by.
I don’t want to die, Maman! I don’t want to die!
But the fact is, you’re a lie. You’re just another stupid story I made up out of
thin air because I was lonely and needed someone to spill my guts to. I wasn’t
ready to die yet and needed a raison d’etre. I shouldn’t be mad at you but I am! Because now you’re letting me down, too.
The fact is, I’m all alone.
[…] Everyone I believed in is dying. My old Jiko is dying, my dad is probably already dead by now, and I don’t even believe in myself anymore.
“[M]y theory is that this crow from Nao’s world came here to lead you into the dream so you could change the end of her story. Her story was about to end one way, and you intervened, which set up the conditions for a different outcome. […] .”
[…]
“I see. So what’s your second theory?”
“[…] That it’s your doing. It’s not about Nao’s now. It’s about yours. You haven’t caught up with yourself yet, the now of your story, and you can’t reach her ending until you do.”
Ruth thought about this. “You're right,” she said. “I don’t like it. I don’t like having that much agency over someone else’s narrative.”
Muriel laughed. “That’s a fine way for a novelist to talk!”
