Blank Time

Blank Time

Does the world take time for granted?

Imagine yourself falling asleep reading a book in the early afternoon and waking up later that night. You realize you lost the page you were reading and say, “I’ll finish reading tomorrow,” close the book, and go to bed. That’s what happens when we have no sympathy for time because we assume that time will continue to move just for us. People make appointments, meeting times, events, etc based on the time that is given to us each day. But what if something changed? What if nobody knew what time it was and all we knew was when it got dark or when it got light? How would the world transform back to the past while already used to the future?

“They were giving us a chance to get used to blank time,” (Pg. 70)

I remember reading that quote one night and being confused on what the author meant. I felt like it was such a special quote but made to be skipped over so quickly. I wanted to demonstrate a visual image of this quote. It doesn’t give us a particular image to imagine in our heads but gives us the freedom to create the image ourselves. For my image, I wanted to make something that represented the quote but also the book as well. I drew the characters of the book to represent what book the quote was from.

In the image you can see four handmaid’s standing in a line next to a clock. They are supposedly looking at the clock while standing there doing nothing. They all have the same facial expressions and are wearing the same cloak with their “wings,” or hats. The clock is a fully working analog clock but is missing the hands that tell you what time it is. I removed the hands on the clock to represent the part of my quote that says “blank time.” Even though the handmaids live in a similar society that we live in, they are put in a community that doesn’t give them access to the normal world. Everything is reconstructed in the ways the program wants it to be. Now this image doesn’t actually happen in the book but I wanted to make an example of what the handmaid’s feel like in this separate society. They are looking at a clock with no way of telling the time so they are expected to just guess what time of the day it is. I feel like this can also be interpreted as they might know the time but they are convinced that they are being a handmaid for the rest of their lives. It’s a scary concept but it could be the truth because the book has made it seem like it’s very difficult to escape this program of some sort.

I want those to look at this quote and imagine what life would be without time. Would it drive you crazy or will you get used to it?