Mikhail Bakhtin, in his essay "Forms of time and chronotope in the novel", argues that the "chronotope" of a literary work - the configuration of time and space in the imaginary world that the text projects – is inextricably connected with its characters: "the image of man in literature is always intrinsically chronotopic". (Bakhtin, 85). In this article I will apply his theory to two radically different texts dealing with time travel: The Time Machine by HG Wells and Kindred by Octavia Butler. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayH.G. Wells' The Time Machine contains three different chronotopes: the chronotope of the story's narrative plot, the chronotope of the future world of 802,701, and the chronotope of the post-apocalyptic world. The chronotope of the frame narrative is the chronotope of time travel, in which temporality and spatiality merge together: time becomes "a fourth dimension of space" (Wells, 8), and therefore is a nexus in which both time and space are isotropic. A corollary of this unified space-time continuum is predestination, because the ability to travel through time presupposes a fixed history, to avoid various logical paradoxes, such as the grandfather paradox. Therefore, the free will of the characters located in the fictional world built around this chronotope has no ontological consequence; they do not have the power to change their reality or shape their future. I suggest that the predestination that governs this fictional world is precisely the cause of the characters' lack of psychological depth: they are all stock characters, most of whom are named only by their profession and their compliant behavior. to their professional stereotype: the Doctor is sceptical, the Director is curious and eager for scoops, the Psychologist listens carefully and pretends to understand and the Time Traveler is eccentric and fervent, like every "mad scientist" archetype. Their inherent flatness is the structural result of the time travel chronotope: complex characters with rich backgrounds, personal desires, passions, thoughts, and quirks are ill-suited to a world on which they have no impact. The future world chronotope of 802,701 is the chronotope of evolution. This future world is the end result of environmental changes brought about by higher class humans, which in turn led to the division of the human race into two distinct species, one decadent and the other animalistic, due to the mechanism of natural selection, which prevents the preservation of traits no longer necessary for the survival of a species, such as intellect in the case of future human beings. Natural selection, as outlined by Charles Darwin, links events together by contingency rather than design, because it relies on random changes in the environment. It can be argued, however, that natural selection does not negate determinism, since it is possible for a force beyond nature to govern environmental alterations that appear random. However, the implied author of the narrative remains faithful to the Darwinian paradigm and constructs the timeline of this fictional world is changeable, as is evident in the Time Traveler's behavior: he acts as if he has free will and his actions have consequences. Furthermore, he blames the human race for its own deterioration: "It pains me to think how short the dream of the human intellect was. It had committed suicide." Therefore assuming that the humans responsible for the situation could have acted differently. Therefore, from the ontological point of view of the implied author, the imaginary world of the embodied narrative is governed by thecontingency. Consequently, his chronotope is the intersection of unlimited space and linear time, with a shifting timeline, bounded only by the Time Traveler's search for the Time Machine: the moment he retrieves it, the Time Traveler leaves this world and the time of discourse of this narrative comes to an end. The chronotope of evolution shapes characters differently than the way they were shaped by the chronotope of time travel. The Time Traveler is no longer the archetypal mad scientist, but rather a complex man struggling to survive in a dangerous world. We are given a much deeper insight into his emotions and frailties: at first we see him lose control - "I remember running violently... beating the bushes with closed fists... laying my hands on them and shaking them Together". He later wastes his precious matches to amuse the Eloi and towards the end of his journey accidentally burns an entire forest. However, the Time Traveler's psychological complexity is most clearly manifested in his attitude towards Weena: he claims that "she was exactly like a child", yet he flirts with her - "he kissed my hands. I did the same with my his". ; he complains that he "found as much annoyance as comfort from her devotion", but immediately clarifies the complaint: "Yet she was, in some way, a great comfort"; finally he feels "the most intense misery over the horrible death of little Weena", but states that "she always seemed to me, I imagine, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human". In this context it is interesting to note that the Time Traveler perceives affection as an intrinsically human trait, because none of the characters in the narrative frame demonstrate affection, although they are all "human" in the usual sense of the term. Furthermore, the Time Traveler himself only expresses affection towards Weena. To recap, the Time Traveler's transition from a world built around the chronotope of time travel, to a world unified by the chronotope of evolution, results in his transformation from a flat character to a round one. , which expresses the range of irrational behaviors and conflicting thoughts and emotions that are the hallmark of psychological depth. We can therefore assume that in this novella the complexity of the characters is made possible only in an imaginary world that implies temporal fluidity. Furthermore, time in the future world of 802,701 leaves its marks on the Time Traveler "His coat was dusty and dirty... his face was frighteningly pale, his expression was haggard and tense, as if from intense suffering" while time in the fictional world of the frame the narrative does not appear to alter the characters physically or mentally. This contrast is another corollary of the difference between the chronotopes of the two worlds. It is also worth mentioning the third chronotope of the tale, which is located at the center of the fictional post-apocalyptic world. In this chronotope, space is unlimited, while time is boundless and static at the same time. On the one hand, temporality is a dimension of this world, because otherwise there could be no movement within it. On the other hand, life on this world is almost completely extinct: the sun is dying, civilization is long gone, and the only remaining creature is "a round thing... black against the blood-red boiling water" and without life time is in many ways meaningless. Be that as it may, the chronotope of the post-apocalyptic world has little chance of influencing the time traveler, as he quickly flees in "horror of this great darkness". The difference between the formation of fictional characters by the time travel chronotope their formation byof the evolutionary chronotope may also offer a solution to one of the central mysteries of the text: why does the time traveler decide to undertake another time journey, despite escaping unscathed the first time? Apparently, he travels in search of more tangible evidence of his travels. However, the Time Traveler ipso facto cannot report evidence substantial enough for people to believe him, because then in all likelihood the future he describes would be avoided due to the precautions taken in his present time, and if the future he describes does not exists anymore, then it is not possible for him to have traveled to this future, thus creating a logical paradox. The Time Traveler, as a scientist, is probably aware of this paradox. Therefore, I suggest that he undertake a second time travel because he wishes to enter, once again, a world structured around a chronotope that, to the best of his knowledge, does not dictate a fixed timeline. He is well aware that the future of his world is fixed, but by traveling to a world where, from his limited perspective, the future can be open, the Time Traveler believes he is once again taking control over his life. and master his destiny. Maybe that's why he "never came back". Octavia E. Butler's Kindred contains two chronotopes. The first chronotope, like that of the narrative plot of The Time Machine, is the chronotope of time travel. To distinguish it from the chronotope in The Time Machine, I will henceforth call it the "modern chronotope", since it deals predominantly with space and time in the 20th century. The temporal movement permitted by the modern chronotope is much more limited than that permitted by the Time Machine's time travel chronotope. Dana, the narrator and protagonist, can travel across a vast stretch of time and space in a matter of moments, but this travel is limited to trips between her new home in Altadena, California, over the span of a few weeks between 9 June to July 4, 1976, and in Rufus Weylin's immediate vicinity in Maryland, during Rufus's lifetime between 1830 and 1850. It is important to note two things about this chronotope, regarding cases in which Dana does not time travel. First, on a diegetic level the temporality is linear: the narrative moves forward in time from Dana's birthday to an unknown moment - "as soon as my arm was good enough" (at the end of time travel). On an extradiegetic level there are some analepsis external and an internal prolepsis (the loss of Dana's arm), but these anachronisms are irrelevant to the discussion of the chronotope, because if we were to reconstruct the story from narrative discourse, these events would be part of a linear timeline. Secondly , with the exception of the narrative anachronisms mentioned above, space is bound to Dana's house, precisely because of its spatio-temporal movement abnormality: "I was still afraid to leave the house... Driving, I could easily kill myself, and the car would have killed other people if Rufus had called me at the wrong time. Walking, I could get dizzy and fall while crossing the street." . Therefore, the modern chronotope is an intersection of limited isotropic time and limited space. However, despite the logical paradoxes of time travel, this chronotope does not create an imaginary world governed by predestination. There is no textual indication that the actions of fictional characters are devoid of ontological consequences, thus reducing them to the level of pawns of a fixed future. In contrast, Dana is portrayed as a particularly independent and free-thinking young woman, who answers her boss, decides to become a writer despite the objections of her aunt and uncle, marries the man she loves regardless of racial differenceand family disapproval, and stands her ground when her husband tries to force her into activities she hates, such as typing. Thus, although the implied author is clearly aware of the paradoxes of time travel, as she articulates through Dana's reflections regarding Rufus: "His life could not depend on the actions of his unconceived descendant. No matter what I did, he would live to become Father Hagar." , otherwise I couldn't exist. it nevertheless creates an impossible world that contains both isotropic time and freedom of will and action. This impossibility can be forgiven, because in Kindred time travel is used to defamiliarize the past, portraying it through the eyes of a homodiegetic narrator who has much more in common with the implied reader than with the average African-American slave. The narrative then recreates the horrors of slavery in a way that is intended to shock an audience already numbed by countless slave narratives and documentaries. However, this affection is based on Dana's depth and complexity, and therefore it is crucial that she is free to make her own choices on an ontological level, in at least one of the fictional worlds of the novel. Thus, the modern chronotope of confined space and restricted multidirectional time, combined with ontological freedom, shape the characters as free beings who are constantly in struggle with the oppressive forces that oppose them. Dana and Kevin, her husband, do not wait with resignation for her sudden abductions in the past, but make every effort to increase her chances of survival: Kevin provides Dana with a weapon – "On my side there was a canvas bag containing ...the biggest switchblade I've ever seen" searches the local library and also travels with her to the past, and Dana supplies herself with drugs and a map of Maryland and asks for help when she realizes she can't do it alone shopping. The novel's second chronotope is that of slavery, in which space is bounded by Weylin's slave plantation, and time is linear - the narrative advances in time from Rufus's early childhood to his death - and fragmented: the world is depicted in discontinuous sections of time, bounded at the beginning by a moment in which Rufus feels his life is in danger, and at the end by a moment in which Dana feels her life in danger. This fractured time creates fractured characters, because both narrator and reader have access to it only in isolated phases of their lives, with substantial gaps in between. Dana first meets Margaret Weylin, for example, when she is an overprotective young mother who beats her son's savior. Dana meets her a second time four years later, and she is still overprotective, fiercely jealous and vindictive. However, when Dana meets her for the third and final time, Margaret is eleven years older and has profoundly changed: vulnerable, weak and pathetic. Both Dana and the reader find it difficult to accept Margaret's change, because for Dana only a few months have passed (including both time spent in the past and time spent in the present), and for the reader only a single chapter separates between Margaret's previous meeting Dana with Margaret and the current one. So, we see here an example of how science fiction projects narrative techniques from the extradiegetic to the diegetic level - the narrative ellipses become actual ellipses in the timeline of the fictional world - which creates an affinity between the time travel experience of Dana and the reader's reading experience. This in turn results in the deconstruction of fictional characters as unified entities that gradually change over time. All the characters in this world, except Dana and Kevin, are incompleteand, as much as Dana loves Carrie, hates Tom Weylin, and pities Alice Greenwood, her perception of them is inconsistent and she can never relate to them as fully related to each other. The chronotope of slavery brings us once again to the question of predestination. This problem manifests itself on two levels. On the one hand, the question of whether the timeline of the fictional world is fixed or changing must remain ambiguous, for the narrative to maintain its credibility and intensity. If the fictional world were clearly deterministic, the preservation of Dana's ancestry would be assured and she would likely abandon Rufus until his death, thus bringing an abrupt end to the story. However, if the fictional world were openly subject to change, then the narrative would lose its raw power to depict Dana's attempts to instill modern moral values ​​in Rufus and alleviate the suffering of plantation slaves as "gambling against history”, a struggle doomed to failure. At the end of the narrative it is still unclear whether the timeline of the imaginary world is fixed, in which case Dana has no choice but to save her ancestor, or rather whether it is open, in which case she really saves her lineage and herself through his resistance and resourcefulness. This ambiguity is heightened by the absence of any mention of Dana in the newspaper reporting Rufus' death – "I could find nothing in the incomplete newspaper records to suggest that he had been murdered", thus suggesting that his death was predetermined, and it is of little importance that Dana was the agent of death. On the second level, the novel deals extensively with the notion of socio-historical determinism: "how easily slaves are created." It explores how the chronotope of slavery inevitably breeds slaves and slave owners. In other words, the issue at stake at this level is not determinism arising from logical paradoxes, but rather the extent to which human behavior is controlled by spatiality and temporality (chronotope). This issue is dramatized through the process in which the chronotope of slavery inexorably destabilizes the identities of Dana and Kevin, as they are shaped by the modern chronotope—as liberal thinkers, modern writers, and warm, open-minded lovers—and reshapes them respectively as one slave and a slave owner who becomes an abolitionist. In this context, it is very significant that Dana's black skin color is only mentioned in her second trip to the past, three chapters into the novel, when Rufus states that her mother called her "just some kind of nigger." she was a white woman in the fictional world structured around the modern chronotope, and it is the chronotope of slavery that has suddenly blackened her. At this stage she is still secure enough in her modern identity to return a reprimand: "'I'm a black woman, Rufe. If you have to call me anything other than my name, that's all.'" However, her attitude toward derogatory language Rufus's changes on his next journey, when Kevin wishes to chastise him for exclaiming that "'Niggers can't marry white people!'" but she puts "a hand on Kevin's arm just in time to stop him from saying anything." he would have said." On the same trip Dana tries to assert her otherness: "we weren't really involved. We were observers watching a show...poor actors. We never really got into our roles." but her words contain a certain degree of self-deception, since earlier she had been vaguely ashamed when Tom Weylin caught her leaving Kevin's bedroom - "I almost felt as if I were actually doing something shameful, playinghappily whoring for my supposed owner." thus betraying that the chronotope of slavery has already begun to reshape her identity. Even her attempt to teach Nigel to read and write is an act typical of a rebellious slave, not of a modern woman. Kevin's identity has been similarly reshaped, as we can see in his declaration that nineteenth-century America "could be a great time to live in." His abolitionist activities mentioned later in the story are still one once characteristics of an enlightened white man of the nineteenth century, not of a young liberal from California in 1976. Thus, at the end of this journey Dana is ready to admit that "every now and then... I can't keep my distance. I'm being dragged to eighteen-nineteen." Dana's next journey into the past marks a further step in the chronotope of slavery's reshaping of her identity. She now considers the plantation her home: "I was surprised to find myself saying wearily: 'Home at Last,'" thus seriously questioning the status of his home in twentieth-century California. Furthermore, while dining with Rufus he states, "I put down the cookie and held on to whatever part of my mind I had left in 1976 ." thus indicating that the change imposed on her by the chronotope of slavery is accelerated by her own fashioning herself as a slave, in an attempt to alleviate her suffering in the harsh reality that surrounds her. This destabilization of Dana's identity is articulated in Tom Weylin's interrogation towards him: "'Who are you?' he asked me. “What are you?”… “I don't know what you want me to say,” I told him. “You know me.” 'Don't tell me what I know!'" ; in fact, when Dana returns from her fourth trip to the past, it is no longer clear who she is. This is true of Kevin to an even greater extent: his identity has been reshaped so profoundly by the chronotope of slavery in the five years spent in the past, who feels like a stranger in his own home and in his own century. The reshaping of the characters by the two chronotopes of the novel is summarized in the juxtaposition of the sexual relationship between Dana and Kevin in the fictional world of California. 1976 and Rufus' attempted rape of Dana in the fictional world of mid-19th century Maryland. After returning to the twentieth century, Dana insists that Kevin make love to her, despite his doubts: "'Go to. bed,' Kevin said... 'Come to bed with me'... 'Come with me,' I repeated softly. 'Dana, your back hurts'... 'Please come with me.' She did." (189-90). This act portrays Dana as a willful young woman with a sexual appetite, who feels confident in her body and confident enough to ask her husband to pleasure her. Yet, shortly after, Dana returns to the past and is almost raped by Rufus, in the scene that marks the novel's climax. The first moments of this scene portray a completely different Dana: apathetic, submissive, and ready to give up her body to the exploitation of a man who will exploit her. she treats him like his slave. Initially she shows a meekness equal to the insistence with which she begs Kevin to come to bed with her: "I understood how easy it would have been for me to continue to stay still and forgive him this too. So easy, despite all my talk. " Thus, Dana's antithetical behavior in these two scenes reflects the extent to which fictional characters are shaped by the chronotopes of the worlds in which they live. Another example of this is Dana's agreement to write letters for Rufus, which is at odds with her stubborn refusal to write for Kevin Yet, despite textual evidence that the chronotope of slavery almost completely erodes Dana's modern identity and reshapes her as., 1927.