If you could ask Anna how old she is, you would get a very confused look in response. If you pressed her, she might struggle to put the answer into some context she could understand before finally saying she was born during the Kishtar moon. This is because Anna’s world, like many others, has a circular view of time rather than the linear view held by most readers.
Linear Time? Time passes, and as it does we anticipate events that will take place in the future and remember events that took place in the past. We count time as it goes past and measure how long until something will happen or how long since something has happened. We do this so automatically that we don’t even stop to consider what we are doing or that this perspective on time is a learned, cultural behavior. The fact is that not everyone has viewed time in this way. Author Thomas Cahill has written an outstanding book entitled The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels which documents that civilizations once viewed time as circular. This is also the concept of time held by some Native North Americans. Circular Time? A circular view of time is not hard to understand. Think about how the sun or moon travels a circular path through the sky in a seemingly endless pattern and you can appreciate this very different perspective. Expand this point-of-view to include the seasons and you quickly arrive at the idea that time is an endless cycle of birth and death, with our participation amounting to some portion of a much larger curve. This is not to suggest that those who held – or hold – a circular view of time cannot appreciate change and progress. They can and do. They simply do not count these as milestones in the way someone with a linear concept of time would. Rather they might view them in the same way as a change of the seasons or the rising of the sun. Night is obviously not the same as day, so any change is just as easy to understand. Okay. So, why? A circular view of time is so obviously different that it makes for an easy way to differentiate Anna’s world of four kingdoms from our world. In this sense it serves the same purpose as Anna’s sun rising in the west, her moon traveling north to south, C.S. Lewis’ talking animals or Tolkien's elves. Fantasy is fun to read, but if it looks too much like the real world it can quickly turn sanctimonious. This is not to suggest that fantasy can’t convey important ideas, and circular time in Anna’s world does just this. Circular time is so different from our perspective that there is a natural tendency to view it as primitive and those who see time this way as unsophisticated. This is wrong. Circular time is just different, in the same way that each of the four kingdoms in Anna’s world has unique characteristics. One Last Thought There’s one final, practical reason why Anna’s world has a circular view of time. Anna views Estralog, the individual who caused the fall of the original kingdom, to be a living, active person. Circular time allows this view and avoids the need for a complicated spiritual explanation. No one asks “How old must Estralog be by this time?” because the question falls outside their concept of time itself. The same holds true for Anna’s belief that the Dovarsha-Issen stands frozen in a physical place but can still intervene in a distinct, different physical place. Time and space are clearly interrelated, and a circular view of time promotes a different view of spatial reality. This is the reason Reya does not ask how the Dovarsha-Issen could have saved Anna, only why.
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