The Time Keeper

“This is a story about the meaning of time and it begins long ago, at the dawn of man’s history, with a barefoot boy running up a hillside. Ahead of him is a barefoot girl. He is trying to catch her. This is often the way it is between girls and boys. For these two, it is the way it will always be.”

The introduction of Dor and Alli is framed as both specific and universal. Here they exist as unique characters in a specific historical moment, but they will also stand for mythological characters who span narrative time, juxtaposing the brevity of human mortality with the immortality of myth.

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.”

The narrator switches between narrating the lives of the characters and addressing the reader as “you,” explicitly connecting the themes of the novel, such as timekeeping, with the lived experience of his readers.

“Victor thinks about the doctor. There’s not much we can do. What does that mean? Months? Weeks? Is this the end of him? This can’t be the end of him.”

The theme Acceptance of One’s Mortality is highlighted by Victor’s terminal diagnosis and his desire to cling to life. Victor’s wife Grace acknowledges the gravity of the situation while Victor feels defiant, as though life is being squeezed from him without his consent.

“And tomorrow, when the sun cast a shadow exactly to the stone, that moment would be…the same moment as today. In fact, he reasoned, wouldn’t every day contain one such moment? When the shadow, and stone aligned?”

Dor begins to use scientific reasoning to understand how time can be measured using a rudimentary sundial. He realizes that each day the sun would be in the sky in the same place and the stick’s shadow would be in the same position. His discovery is both unique, in that each day the phenomenon would be a new moment, and yet it would also be repeating.

“History does not show it, but as Dor grew older, he dabbled in every form of time measurement that science would later credit to others.”

The protagonist Dor is a mythological figure who embodies humanity’s drive to measure time. Although the narrative acknowledges the history of time measurement from various civilizations, Dor is established as the ultimate timekeeper and the forefather of all future time measurements, reinforcing the fantastical elements of the text. It also implicitly refers to the Eurocentricism of the science of time which often does not “credit” contributions from non-European cultures.

“There are as many expressions with ‘time’ as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting. Then Dor began. And everything changed.”

Dor’s measuring of time is presented as a pivotal moment in human history with far-reaching consequences extending even to the conception of the world held by contemporary readers. This is the inciting incident of the text. Readers are challenged to consider a world unlike their own where time is not a shared concept.

“‘I will never forget our childhood,’ Nim said. ‘But we will not see each other again.’”

Nim has been a foil to Dor, but in this passage, he also becomes an antagonist. Their differing ways of seeing the world create a personal conflict between them and lead Nim to banish Dor and his family.

“If one were recording history, one might write that at the moment man invented the world’s first clock, his wife was alone, softly crying, while he was consumed by the count.”

This passage juxtaposes Humans’ Relationship with Time with The Need to Live in the Present. Dor is obsessed with measuring time but is not cherishing the time he has. Unlike Alli, who appreciates the beauty of the last sunset where they have lived their whole lives, Dor understands the sunset as a repeating moment of the day, a pattern to be charted, not a unique moment that will never come again.

“There was no divine battle between day and night. Dor had captured them both in a bowl. He dumped the water. God saw this, too.”

Dor’s invention of the clock is a transition from superstition to scientific reasoning. The ability to measure time is framed as a shift in humanity’s understanding of natural forces as something of which the gods are agents to something that can be understood and charted apart from the divine, setting up a conflict between human and divine knowledge.

“What happened next is a matter of debate. The way history tells the story, the Tower of Babel was either destroyed or abandoned. But the man who would become Father Time could testify to something else, because his fate was sealed on that very same day.”

The theme of humans’ relationship with time is explored in the myth of Dor as he becomes Father Time. Up to this point, he has been obsessed with the measurement of time to the detriment of his personal relationships, but here he is willing to take an enormous risk to try to stop time in order to save his wife. The story of the Tower of Babel is conflated with the origin of Father Time so that humanity begins timekeeping and becomes multilingual in a single event.

“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

The divine messenger develops the theme of humans’ relationship with time in this passage as a loss of innocence. Dor’s measuring has produced new knowledge for humanity, but it has also produced increased misery that Dor is now cursed to listen to until the divine messenger returns and Heaven and Earth meet.

“‘What Grace wants to ask,’ Victor said, ‘is how much time do I have left?’ ‘Optimistically,’ the doctor answered, ‘a couple months.’ Death was coming for him. But death would be in for a surprise.”

Victor struggles to accept his own mortality and his inability to control how much time he has. He has experienced power, wealth, and success and expects time to obey him, believing that his resources can grant him more time. Through this element of his character, Albom critiques a capitalist outlook on life.

“And thus, unknowingly, did Dor begin to serve his sentence— to hear every plea from every soul who desired more of the thing he had first identified, the thing that moved man further from the simple light of existence and deeper into the darkness of his own obsessions. Time. It seemed to be running too fast for everything but him.”

Dor’s punishment is connected to the theme of humans’ relationship with time. By measuring time and wanting to understand the patterns of time, Dor has stripped humanity of its initial innocence and introduced humanity’s obsession with trying to control time and marking their days with time. Dor, however, has lost the very thing that he was obsessed with, since time no longer exists for him.

“Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity. And the desire for more became an endless chorus in Dor’s cave.”

The Tower of Babel creates disunity as people begin to all speak different languages and scatter throughout the world, but the measurement of time unifies humanity in its misery. Time becomes a common concept and humans lament not having enough of it. The common relationship with time in the text is dissatisfaction.

“This final plan would be up to him. We are, as we die, who we most were in life, and since he was nine years old, Victor had been accustomed to doing for himself.”

Victor’s desire for immortality is a desire for self-preservation rather than a desire for more human connection. He doesn’t want to try to convince Grace to try cryonics with him; in fact, he decides not to tell her about it at all. He doesn’t picture her in his future; he just wants to make sure that he has a future. Albom presents this as a paradox since Victor wants to extend life rather than enjoy it.

“With each new carving, he spoke out loud. He was doing what man does when left with nothing. He was telling his own life story.”

Dor has nothing but time. He does not age; he cannot die, but he is miserable. Unlike Victor who wants time over connection with people, Dor now craves connection, valuing the moments of his life shared with his family over his ability to measure time.

“Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.”

Sarah desperately wants Ethan to love her. She is willing to change her nature, lie to her mother, skip school, drink alcohol, and more to win his approval. Similarly, Grace attempts to show her love for Victor through cooking for him despite the fact that he doesn’t acknowledge her love or efforts.

“And when hope is done, time is punishment.”

In contrast to Victor, who wants to prolong his life indefinitely no matter what it takes, Sarah’s emotional heartbreak makes her want her life to stop. Time for her has become a burden because she isn’t sure what to do with the challenges in her life with Ethan, her mother, or the other kids at school.

“She wanted to blame him, to blame her whole rotten existence. But seeing Ethan, seeing her mother, seeing the world after the world she had known, somehow took her to the very bottom, the end of self-delusion, and the truth enveloped her like a cocoon, and all she said was ‘I was so lonely.’ And Father Time said, ‘You were never alone.’”

Sarah comes to terms with the consequences of her suicide, the heartache that she causes those she cares about, specifically her mom, and the lack of concern by those whom she wanted to care, specifically Ethan. Sarah also learns her connection to Dor through time: Her voice was heard even when she thought it wasn’t. This underscores the novel’s message about the importance of human connection.

“‘Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Hope.’”

Dor explains to Sarah the importance of every moment and how any moment can potentially change one’s life, highlighting the importance of living in the present and not letting any one moment overshadow the rest of her life. Her decision to deny herself time didn’t allow her the chance for time to change her life.

“‘There is a reason God limits out days’ ‘Why?’ ‘To make each one precious.’”

Dor develops the theme of acceptance of one’s mortality by emphasizing to Victor that scarcity makes something precious. This opposes the capitalist ideals by which Victor lived his life. For Dor, living in the cave beyond a normal lifespan was a curse and taught him that the days he had with his family were truly precious.

“He explained how once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied. There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between sunrises was gone.”

Time keeping is seen as a loss of innocence that causes humanity to lose the simple joy of living. In relation to the theme of humans’ relationship with time, once humans can track time, they become obsessed with making the most of time with productivity rather than savoring each moment.

“In their normal lives, they never would have met. Sarah Lemon and Victor Delamonte were of two different worlds, one high school and fast food, the other boardrooms and white tablecloths. But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand. And at this moment, with the universe stopped, only the two of them could change the fate of the man who had tried to change theirs.”

Victor and Sarah are contrasting characters, based on background, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. They also both want different things from time; Victor wants more time, Sarah less, but they are connected narratively by Dor and come together to help him after he has shown them visions of what the world would look like if they both succeed at their plans.