Ch. 7 Spirals
The Timeline isn’t the Point
Jane’s whole thing about spirals seems to be not that they don’t have a linear timeline of some sort, but rather that the linear timeline isn’t the point.
A spiraling narrative could be a helix winding downward — into a character’s soul, or deep into the past — or it might wind upward, around and around to a future. Near repetitions, but moving onward.
So rather than arriving at the end of a timeline, we’re reading through a series of events that result in an emotional cumulation, which is why the order they fall in time-wise isn’t what’s pull the narrative forward.
However, there’s a part of me that want’s to argue that the passing of time tends to result in this kind of emotional cumulation, whether we intend for it to or not. Time changes us. Human beings have a tendency to reflect on their experiences.
On the other side of the paywall, we’ll be looking at the work of Terese Mailhot as an example of a spiral.
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