18 April 2012
Perception, Belief, and The Time Machine
Something I'd like to bring up in my post is the extent to which reading a novel about science literally transforms the reader — Hamilton's own Peter Rabinowitz actually argues this idea in his paper, "'The Impossible Has a Way of Passing Unnoticed': Reading Science in Fiction." In it, Rabinowitz claims (using Rebecca Goldstein's Properties of Light) that when we're reading fiction that incorporates science (whether "real" or "fake" — as we alluded to in class), we assimilate the material in a way that makes us forget — at least, within the world of the novel — that the science may in fact be implausible. Rabinowitz writes that the same thing happens in The Time Machine, and that the rhetorical function of science is one of full absorption and acts as a catalyst for various events: "The content of the science, of course, doesn’t determine the plot even though it helps enable it: the same scientific claim can be used in different ways. Thus, for instance, Wells introduces a time machine to enable us to experience an alternative society — for most of The Time Machine, time travel is not significantly different from the kind of geographical travel we get in Gulliver’s Travels." He also argues that reading about science makes us into different kinds on people — so what I want to ask is: does reading The Time Machine actually alter our sense of self? This question is especially relevant given that the narrator himself is not fully developed, and the simple but strange Eloi are so radically different from what he knew before. In addition, how might The Time Machine be another instance of what we've been talking about regarding perception and geography? Can a novel actually figure as an illusion, just like in the psychology lab and in the representation of time and landscape on geographical contour maps?
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This question about whether the novel can actually figure as an illusion in the representation of time and landscape is interesting to me, especially in context of Chapter XIV. In this chapter, the narrator moves quite seamlessly in time, while remaining in the same geographical place. When the narrator is on the beach, he sees the monstrous crabs coming toward him, and he decides to put a month between him and crabs-- but then they are still there in greater numbers. Later, when he moves on one hundred years, he finds "there was the same red sun- a little larger, a little duller- the same dying sea, the same chill air, and crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks" (147). And, as he views this beach at thousand year intervals, he witnesses much "sameness," which to me appears frighting. Though, what's even more frightening is the thick darkness that eventually overtakes the sky, suggesting a sort of quiet, desperate finality.
ReplyDeleteThe representation of time seems to be non-linear here: to me, it read as sameness followed by nothingness. It distorts our perception of what we think time and science is. The first sentence of the next chapter, to me, seems to speak volumes: "So I came back" (149). This scene the narrator has witnessed is so intense, so sublime, that he starts to break down at the end of the chapter, and the only way to resolve the issue is to act the same way Thel does: to run back.
There is something comforting about the fact that we can believe the impossible when reading a novel. In real life it is easy to overanalyze a text and the plausibility of time travel, for instance, but in novels we are able to let go of what we know to be true and experience something awe-inspiring. If life were all science, there would be far less pleasure. It is fun to be able to imagine a world where people can fly (as they do in Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie), or grow taller or shrink smaller (as Alice does in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll). As children we are not thinking of the impossibility of these events, we simply accept them as fanciful and exciting these things are. Forgetting "that the science... may in fact be implausible," as Allison says, is our way of returning to those mystical and magical experiences we had as children, but in more advanced ways.
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