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Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Concept of Time in Literature
Comparative literature and cross-cultural analysis

Time’s a Mess, and So Are We

Time in literature isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character, a bully, a lover you can’t shake. It’s slippery, cultural, and deeply personal, and the way writers across the world wrestle with it tells you more about humanity than any philosophy textbook. I’m obsessed with how time bends in stories—how it’s a straight line in some cultures, a circle in others, or just a big, messy knot. Let’s talk about how different literary traditions handle this beast, and why it hits us in the gut.

Take Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Time in that book is a fever dream. It loops, it repeats, it suffocates. The Buendía family is cursed to relive the same mistakes, generation after generation, like they’re stuck in some cosmic rerun. It’s not just a plot device; it’s a whole Latin American worldview where history isn’t progress—it’s a spiral of memory, trauma, and maybe a little magic. I read it in college and felt like I’d been punched. The way Márquez makes time feel heavy, like a humid afternoon you can’t escape, is so different from, say, the crisp, forward-marching clocks of Western novels. I mean, who even writes like that anymore? Nobody in New York or London, that’s for sure.

Now, swing over to Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Japanese literature often treats time like it’s a river—fluid, reflective, sometimes pooling in weird places. Murakami’s characters drift through moments that feel untethered, like they’re floating between past and present. There’s this scene where Nakata, this old guy who talks to cats (because, Murakami), senses time slowing down, almost stopping. It’s eerie, but it’s also deeply Shinto, rooted in a worldview where time isn’t just linear—it’s layered, spiritual, alive. I remember reading it late at night and feeling like I’d slipped into some parallel dimension where clocks didn’t matter. Compare that to, like, Charles Dickens, where time is a factory whistle, ticking away at everyone’s misery. Murakami’s time feels like a dream you can’t wake up from; Dickens’ is a schedule you’re late for.

Clocks vs. Cycles

Here’s the thing: Western literature loves its clocks. Think about Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Time is literally chiming in the background—Big Ben, ticking away, reminding everyone they’re mortal. It’s so precise, so British. Every moment in that book is measured, like life is a ledger you’re balancing before you die. I love Woolf, but man, that obsession with minutes makes me antsy. It’s like she’s saying, “Hurry up, life’s short!” And yeah, she’s right, but it’s exhausting. Western stories—especially from the 19th and 20th centuries—often frame time as a resource you’re burning through. It’s capitalistic, honestly. You’re supposed to do something with it, or you’re a failure.

Now, let’s hop to something like the Ramayana, the ancient Indian epic. Time here isn’t a straight shot; it’s cyclical, eternal, part of this massive cosmic wheel. Rama’s exile, his battles, his return—it’s all part of a repeating pattern, a dharma that keeps the universe spinning. When I first read it, I was thrown by how unhurried it felt. There’s no ticking clock, no “get to the point.” Time stretches, repeats, doubles back. It’s less about progress and more about endurance. That cyclical vibe shows up in modern Indian writers too, like Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things. Her characters are trapped in moments that echo across generations, like ripples in a pond. It’s haunting, and it makes you rethink what “moving forward” even means.

I’m not saying one approach is better. Western clock-time gives you urgency, a sense of stakes. Cyclical time, like in South Asian or Indigenous storytelling, gives you depth, a sense that everything’s connected. But they hit differently. Western time makes me feel like I’m running out of minutes; cyclical time makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger, but maybe also stuck. Both are true, and both kind of mess me up.

Time as a Trickster

Let’s get weird for a second. In African literature, time can be a straight-up trickster. Take Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The Igbo sense of time isn’t just about seasons or harvests; it’s about ancestors, spirits, and community rhythms. When the British show up with their calendars and their churches, it’s not just land they’re colonizing—it’s time itself. They impose this rigid, linear schedule, and it’s like they’re trying to strangle the Igbo’s whole way of being. I read that book in high school and didn’t get it at the time, but now? It’s devastating. The way Achebe shows time being weaponized—it’s not just a plot point, it’s a gut punch.

Then you’ve got someone like Toni Morrison in Beloved. Time in her work is a ghost, literally. The past doesn’t stay past; it haunts, it invades, it demands to be felt. Sethe’s trauma isn’t “back then”—it’s right there, in her house, in her daughter’s ghost. African American literature often does this: time isn’t a line you walk; it’s a weight you carry. I read Beloved on a plane once, and I had to put it down because I was tearing up in public. Morrison makes you feel like time is alive, vengeful, and way too real.

Why This Matters (Or Does It?)

Okay, so why am I so obsessed with this? Because time in literature isn’t just a nerdy thing to analyze—it’s how we make sense of being human. Every culture’s got its own way of wrestling with it, and that shapes how stories hit us. Western novels make me anxious, like I’m failing some cosmic deadline. Eastern traditions, like Murakami or the Ramayana, make me feel like time’s a puzzle I’ll never solve. African and African American stories remind me that time can wound, but it can also hold you together.

I keep thinking about how we live with time now. We’re all so obsessed with productivity, with “hacking” our days, like we’re machines. Literature, though—it reminds us time’s not just a resource. It’s a story we’re all telling ourselves, whether we’re aware of it or not. And different cultures tell it differently. Márquez makes it a curse; Murakami makes it a dream; Morrison makes it a ghost. I don’t know which one’s right, but I know they all feel true.

The Internet’s Messing with Our Time

Here’s a curveball: the internet’s screwing with how we experience time, and that’s leaking into modern literature. Think about it—we’re all doomscrolling, refreshing feeds, living in this eternal now where nothing feels permanent. Writers like Zadie Smith or Ocean Vuong are starting to reflect that. In On Beauty, Smith’s characters are caught in these fleeting, hyper-connected moments that feel like they could collapse any second. Vuong’s poetry, like in Night Sky with Exit Wounds, treats time like it’s fractured, like memories are shards you’re piecing together in real time. It’s not cyclical or linear—it’s chaotic, like a bad Wi-Fi connection.

I’m kind of in love with how messy that feels. It’s not the clean arcs of Dickens or the mythic loops of the Ramayana. It’s time as a glitch, which is honestly how I feel most days. Literature’s always been a mirror, and right now, it’s showing us how fractured our sense of time has become. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s definitely real.

So, What Now?

I could keep going—there’s Russian literature with its brooding, eternal winters, or Indigenous stories where time’s tied to land, not clocks. But here’s the thing: time in literature isn’t just a concept to dissect. It’s a feeling. It’s why I cry reading Morrison, or get anxious with Woolf, or feel unmoored with Murakami. Every culture’s got its own way of twisting time, and it’s like a punch to the soul. I’m not done yet, but I’m pausing here because, honestly, I’m getting a little carried away. Let’s just sit with this for a second: literature doesn’t just tell stories—it rewires how you feel time passing. Western clocks, Eastern cycles, African ghosts, internet glitches—they’re all trying to make sense of the same impossible thing. And maybe that’s why I can’t stop reading. It’s like every book is a new way to survive the ticking.