Time Theme Analysis

“What is time made of?” is Geryon’s favorite question. The yellowbeard, a philosopher Geryon meets on a trip to Buenos Aires, offers the unsatisfying answer that time is an “abstraction” that humans “impose upon motion.” Implicit in such a view is that humans construct the idea of time to measure and “impose” structure onto the trajectory of their lives, which otherwise is beyond their ability to control. In quantifying the passage of time into hours, days, and years, humanity can reflect on time in a way that makes sense. What this explanation misses, however, is the palpable way the march of time connects to the human experience of mortality. Thinking of time as a mere abstraction obscures how directly time affects us all. As Geryon states, “A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, / like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.” In other words, the forward motion of time universally results in the real, non-abstract consequence of death.

Geryon’s question then becomes, if one cannot dismiss time as an “abstraction,” how does one deal with a problem that is beyond one’s ability to control? Geryon uses photography to impose the illusion of structure and control over time, most notably in the 15-minute exposure photograph he takes of a fly drowning in a pail of water. He learns of the idea from Herakles’s grandmother, who shows him a 15-minute exposure photograph she took years ago during the eruption of a 1923 volcano that decimated Hades, Herakles’s hometown. The photo, entitled “Red Patience,” is striking because it shows the difference 15 minutes can make. Geryon finds the image disturbing, yet he can’t take his eyes off it because it illustrates the core of his anxiety about time (its uncontrollability) as well as a potential solution to that problem. When Geryon later records his own 15-minute exposure of a fly drowning in a pail of water, he captures the process of the fly’s death, which symbolically allows him to “move[] through time” on his own terms. In this way, photography gives Geryon the power to manipulate and reflect on time in a way that allows him to work through his anxieties surrounding death.