Finale of A Tale for the Time Being

 Emma Straus  

21st Century Literature and Time  

Final 3rd of A Tale for the Time Being  

September 2022  

 

 

A Tale for the Time Being brings an ending that is hopeful with a touch of realism in only a way the novel itself could accomplish. It is filled with messages that are universal to the readers, as well as the characters, such as Ruth, in the novel. The ending encapsulates both mysteries and lessons to be learned.  

At the end of the diary, Ruth finds herself confused and even a bit sad. The idea of “we’ll make magic together...” comes back, and Ruth is left to many questions. Of course, when the novel began, Nao’s and Ruth’s overlapping narratives were an essential part of the story. Throughout the story, Ozeki plants metaphors and plot points for readers to understand the way in which everything in itself is connected. The ending of the novel comes with the entanglement of the metafictions and metaphysics the novel previously established. And at the closing, readers do not particularly know how it ends. Ozeki beautifully crafts this by creating a fictional universe in which two storylines can come together, not because one can ever verify the other but because their journeys are fundamentally the same. The novel begs a question of mortality, and if mortality defines our existence. “Time is so interesting to me now that I have so little of it...” Nao’s father writes. And this motif carries throughout the novel. Established in the beginning, the novel places a heavy emphasis on the preciousness of time and what humans- or other metaphysical beings- do with it.  

Readers, along with Ruth, do not truly find out what happens to Nao. It is an ending that on the surface looks unsatisfactory. But there are still echoes of Ruth and Nao being connected. “... I feel like I would recognize you if I passed you on the street or caught your eyes at Starbucks … You may be only make-believe, but you are my true friend and you’ve helped me. I really mean that.” (385) The idea is universal and grounds readers to some realism. There is the idea of never quite knowing how a seemingly ‘ordinary’ interaction can help one’s own life in an extraordinary way. But there is also this sense of both consciousnesses needing the other for some particular reason, or even to help the other. Perhaps Nao was not writing for anyone particular, and that is part of the beauty of the novel. Her story, which could have been picked up by anyone, found its way to Ruth, who needed to read it. In reading the novel, the audience may have wanted to see Ruth and Nao's connection after reading the entanglement of their lives. But the end is just as satisfying, as it leaves the end up to the ‘reader’. In doing so, it allows the reader to make their own “magic” in their own time, as Nao suggested at the beginning. As for Ruth’s own time, Oliver’s question of if whether or not she is happy is met with a simple yet beautiful answer: “...I suppose I am. At least for now.” The simple dialogue allows for two things to happen. Ruth finds her happiness in her present ‘time being’, and the wordplay on ‘now’ alludes to the fact that perhaps she is saying, “I am happy for Nao.”