Moments and Time, Themes in the Narrative Beauty When the...

Time in Moments, Not Minutes When it comes to personal narratives, time is an important element. But what is time? Time can be defined in many different ways. When people think of time, the truth is that there are many definitions. Time can be seen as seconds, minutes, hours and days, but that’s not how everyone sees it. Time can also be defined by the moments in one’s life, not by the minutes that go past but by the significant times in a person’s life that defines lives. People can say, â€Å"When I was eight years old.† But they can also say, â€Å"When I was young.† And young can be defined in many different ways as well. What does young mean, really? When the individual was young or a time when the individual felt youthful? Time can bend to the moments in people’s lives that hold certain significance. In the narrative Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self, writer Alice Walker tells of her life through a series of moments that ended up defining who she turned out to be later in life. She tells of how one significant moment altered her future through a series of short stories of who she was when she was young. She uses time to effectively do that, telling the story in mainly chronological order, but occasionally stopping to put in single thoughts, such as â€Å"Did I imagine the anguish of never looking up?† (Walker, 43). With this technique she is able to tell her story and still be able to put in her own thoughts of what has happened to her, as if she is telling a close friend,