47 pages • 1 hour read
Time of the Child
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Literary Devices
Figurative Language
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The author uses figurative language—words, phrases, and sentences that go beyond their literal meaning to add additional layers of interpretation—to craft the narrative. Williams’s syntax is complex and elliptical, and his diction is elevated and descriptive. These linguistic patterns describe the characters’ internal experiences and ways of seeing the world. Furthermore, Williams’s syntax and diction create a claustrophobic narrative atmosphere, which mirrors the sometimes-stifling predictability of life in Faha.
In Chapter 1, for example, the narrator describes Jack’s experience of Sunday Mass by saying,
In the parish, the doctor had the standing that close acquaintance with suffering bestowed. Beneath his waved grid of silver hair, his sunken eyes said that acquaintance came at a cost. […] Although he lived in the magnificent dilapidation of Avalon House, and carried himself in a manner that Faha might have summarized as Not like us, he was vouchsafed a place of honor in the parish (5).
This ornate passage creates a heavy mood and thus captures Jack’s state of mind while sitting through church. The narrator’s descriptions of the doctor and Avalon House also convey how Jack regards himself in the context of his community.
In another passage, where Jack is driving through town, the narrator notes that the local shops have “the design of bottlenecks and the doorways [are] thronged, those trying to get in meeting those trying to get out, making for a swarm look” (24). This description depicts the bustling, cramped scene that Jack is observing. The narrative also employs archaic and ecclesiastical linguistic patterns. These stylistic choices authenticate the era in which the novel is set and the Faha townspeople’s Catholic traditions.
Flashback
The author uses flashbacks throughout the novel to emphasize his characters’ fraught relationships with the past. Each temporal shift out of the narrative present also nuances the narrative structure. For example, the majority of Chapter 1 is set within the confines of the church during Sunday Mass. However, Jack’s internal musings transport the narrative out of the church and into scenes from the past. His mind wanders to Annie Mooney; this instigates a flashback, which begins, “It had not been a storybook love. After the death of her husband, Annie had taken over the running of the chemist shop in the village” (5). The narrative reorients into scenes from Jack’s recollected experiences with Annie. Such allusions to Jack and Annie’s romance recur throughout the novel and highlight Jack’s sustained longing for and heartbreak over Annie.
The author uses flashbacks to convey Jude’s and Ronnie’s complex personal histories, too. In Chapter 2, for example, when Jude visits his brother’s grave, the narrative again shifts into the past and details the day that Jude saw his brother die. The flashback provides insight into Jude’s emotional unrest in the present. In Chapter 3, the author uses the same technique when Ronnie is sitting alone in her room after Charlotte takes her book. Alone, Ronnie’s mind shifts into memories of when she began writing—flashbacks that convey her relationship to her pastime and her sustained love for storytelling. This literary device thus deepens the novel’s characterizations and thematic explorations.
Point of View
The author writes Time of the Child from the third-person point of view. This third-person narrator alternates between a limited (restricted to a single character) and omniscient (has access to the thoughts and feelings of all characters) stance. At the start of Chapter 1, the narrator assumes a comprehensive vantage point as they introduce the reader to the fictional world of Faha, saying, “Resolve was the first requisite of life here. It was the hares that discovered it. […] The first floods drove them back. The first storms put salt in their ears” (1). This omniscient point of view establishes a mythic tone that mirrors the point of view and tenor of the biblical creation story. Throughout the remainder of Chapter 1, the narrator is situated closest to Jack’s psyche. The narrator inhabits his consciousness and presents the narrative world according to Jack’s perspective. The descriptions of parish life, Father Tom’s halting Mass, and the Faha landscape are all dictated by Jack’s distinct outlook. These same formal principles apply to Jude’s and Ronnie’s portions of the novel. In Chapter 2, the narrator assumes Jude’s point of view and renders the world through his lens, while in Chapter 3, the narrator inhabits Ronnie’s interiority and depicts the world according to Ronnie’s experience of it. In Chapter 4, the narrator shifts back to Jack’s consciousness.
These formal choices contextualize the novel’s themes within all three of the primary characters’ storylines. The common third-person narrator connects the characters, emphasizing their communal ties despite their frequent feelings of loneliness. Jack, Jude, and Ronnie don’t narrate their accounts from the first-person point of view because they all feel disconnected from themselves. The third-person limited narration highlights this level of removal and in turn authenticates Jude’s, Jack’s, and Ronnie’s emotional experiences.
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