A Tale for the Time Being Final Third Analysis

A Tale for the Time Being Final Third Analysis: Sanity, Reality, and Time-Being

In this last part of the novel, Ruth finally finishes the diary and learns (partially) the fate of Nao and her father. Except, Ruth’s “finishing” of the novel happens twice, in a way. I found this double end interesting because of a question lingering at the back of my mind since we first began this story: is any of this real? And, in conjunction: is Ruth going insane? Ruth reads the first ending of Nao’s journal where she “catches up” to now: “Nobody sees me. Maybe I’m invisible. I guess this is it. This is what now feels like” (341). She turns to the next page, but there’s nothing there. Ruth knows that there was more “because on at least two occasions she had checked, riffling through to see if the girl’s handwriting had persisted to the end of the book, and indeed it had” (343). And yet, the words are gone. The reader begins to question the reality of things, especially when she reaches the point of Ruth’s dream where she interacts with Haruki #2. What exactly is real? 

            Throughout the novel, the author calls attention to Ruth’s faltering memory. Over and over again, she forgets. She worries that she’ll become her mother, slowly losing her mind to Alzheimer’s. This makes me wonder if perhaps Ruth truly is struggling with memory issues. The words slipping off the page and then magically reappearing seem incredibly implausible, even in a world that manipulates and molds quantum mechanics in its exploration of time. What do these disappearing words mean? Is the journal real? How do we know it’s real? Certainly, the other characters have seen its existence, but I wonder if perhaps this story is one of Ruth’s imaginings—if not in whole then in part. I realize that Ruth confirmed the existence of Nao and her father with the emails to the professor, but how can we know that communication is true? This novels questions everything—from how we experience time to our understanding of reality. The question arises: does the internet confirm existence? For Ruth, it acts as a reassurance that the diary’s contents have some foundation in reality. But this dual ending where the words reappear calls into the question Ruth’s mind. I can’t help but think of her mother, who asked questions and didn’t make sense, and the parallels between her decline and Ruth’s current state. Ruth’s third person narrative seems to lend a measure of credibility to her experience, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something just outside of the perspective’s periphery that unlocks the truth. Time, this book emphasizes, is malleable. Ruth and Nao seem connected even though Nao’s present is Ruth’s past. But I wonder if time is malleable, does that mean reality is as well?

            Again, I come back to Ruth’s mother and her fight with Alzheimer’s. For those who struggle with memory issues, time escapes its linear trappings. The past is present, the present is unreachable, and the future is the past. Reality bends for them, just as it does for Ruth. And, with the ending, I think Ruth’s question is relevant and pointed: “Who had conjured whom?” (392). Perhaps quantum entanglement might explain the novel’s happenings, but I think there may be a deeper discussion about the malleability of time and reality within one’s mind and not necessarily in the greater stretches of the universe. 

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