Essay on "Time"

In the poem "Time", the speaker is a man whose loss of innocence was the end of the world. Thus, his view of the effect of lost innocence for a hypothetical, abstract boy he portrays is negative. The fact that the abstract boy's loss of innocence is portrayed as being somber illustrates that the speaker feels on a whole that the loss of innocence is a terrible thing. Personification, diction, and finally, form and punctuation, are the literary devices employed in “Time” to portray innocence and the universality of innocence lost.

The use of personification in stanza two of “Time” establishes the innocence of the speaker as a boy--an innocence which will be lost at the conclusion of the stanza. In the second stanza, the speaker describes his past self. As a boy, the "grass lived" (12-13) and the "trains whistled" (13) in his world of childlike wonderment. Moments later the speaker (as a boy) witnesses a river "choked" (14) with old vehicles. The personification of a "choked" river here is perhaps the very last time the speaker personified an object. This can't be known for sure, but the choking suggests a death, not just of the river, but also of innocence. Thus, the personified, figurative death of the river in stanza two illustrates the death of the speaker's innocence.

The diction in the poem points to the universality of the death of innocence and how every young person has—and will—experience this death. The poem starts off with a glimpse into the future, "The years to come..." (1), where a boy will "clamber" (5) up on top of an empty boxcar and "gaze" (8) upon a river. The use of the word "will" twice in the first stanza—"will sometime stay" (4) and "will run" (6)—signifies that the events being described have yet to happen. The protagonist knows what will happen because the death of innocence is inevitable. In the second stanza the speaker remarks about his past as a boy and how he "took that kind of walk" (11).  The “walk” is parallel to the future boy’s “run”; as both actions lead them to a river that will take their innocence. What's important, however, is the effect the river had on the speaker: the day he witnessed the "choked" river "was the day the world ended" (15). Effectively, through diction, the poet was able to foreshadow the future (the future boy's unique "end of the world" event) based on the protagonist’s past experience with the "end of the world". Therefore, the inevitability of the death of innocence is noted.

The form and punctuation employed in the poem pinpoints the different phases of the process of the death of innocence. The last phase--which will be called the rumination phase--is chronologically first in the poem. The speaker ruminates that the "years to come" (1) will "[in] sometime stay, rusted still" (4). Before the presence of the semi-colon, the first half of stanza one is filled with words that connote oldness/physical maturation/immobility, such as: "empty" (1), "waiting" (2), "forgets" (2), "stay" (4), "rusted" (4), and "still" (4). Thus, the semi-colon--a punctuation mark that often links two independent clauses closely related in thought, but are often opposite in nature--is appropriate after this first half because the second half that follows is full of words that connote youth/mobility, such as: "little" (5), "boy" (5), "clambers" (5), "run" (6), "along" (7), "jump" (7). In short, the poet's semi-colon marks a direct shift in time and maturity that allows the reader to more clearly separate the rumination phase from the pre-maturation phase.

Secondarily, the poet plays with enjambment, indentation, and end-stopped lines to highlight various nuances of the loss of innocence. The enjambment of line 8--"and gaze down...that rive" (8)--into line 9, "near every town" (9), places dramatic emphasis on line 9. This calculated emphasis is crucial to the poem because this line singularly illustrates the speaker's argument: that the loss of innocence is universal. This is because, metaphorically, the river that takes innocence is in every town. Therefore every young person will encounter it—which clearly depicts the universality of innocence lost. The indentation of line 10, "Once when I was a boy" (10)--aside from marking the narrative of a new boy (the speaker himself)--suggests a vast distance between the speaker as a boy and the speaker as he is now, an old man with a vastly different worldview. This distance, thus, is indicative of a disconnect between himself now and himself as a boy. The last major effect--end-stopped lines--dovetails well with the effect of the punctuation, thus both devices will be addressed together. The most important instance of end-stopping occurs in the last two lines of the poem, "The river was choked with old Chevies and Fords./And that was the day the world ended" (14-15). Very obviously the use of endstopping emboldens the word "ended" (15). However, the more powerful end-stop--ending with a period--occurs in line 14, where the line--which could have flowed into the dependent clause--is cut short. Cutting it short gives one the feeling of something—a life, for example—being cut prematurely, or more graphically, a river choking to death. The river's death implies the death of the speaker's inner boy--a way of life taken too soon that cannot be renewed. This explanation is why line 15 "And that was the day the world ended" (15) is the perfect way to end this poem.

Indeed, the end of the world at the end of "Time" is the perfect thought for this poem to end with being as though, textually, the loss of innocence is the death of something happy and blissfully ignorant. The jaded tone of the protagonist suggests the heavy toll the burden of knowledge and adulthood takes on him. For the protagonist to ruminate on the future of a boy who has yet to exist illustrates somewhat of an obsession with his own past as a boy, which he felt was ruined by the realization/witnessing of something that remains ambiguous. Through personification, diction, form and punctuation, the poet is able to establish a protagonist who views the loss of innocence as a negative thing.

Reflection

New Criticism is marked by as much of a closed, objective reading as possible, meaning the absence of any thoughts, feelings, or opinions of the critic that go against the grain of the work. The New Critic has to validate every literary device used to best capture the purpose of the work they compose. Also, the critic can only work with the text—no outside background information regarding the author, his time era, etc. can be used. This is because it is unimportant in the view of the New Critic, who believes the work’s message transcends the poet and time itself, which consequently leads to the universality of the work itself. As a New Critic I had to leave out speculation about the author; neglect reading about the author; personal experiences; my personal opinions (for example, losing innocence can be a good thing); etc. There were things I had to include however, as a New Critic: emphasis on universality and emphasis on ambiguity. I focused more on the latter, however I brought up some ambiguity in my original draft in regards to the mystery of what each boy saw in his river.