Chiang's Use of Order, Duration and Frequency

In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” Chiang utilizes narrative time in an impactful way, truly revealing the magic (or alchemy) that happens when someone writes down a story. In “Temporality and Literary Theory”, Martin refers to Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse in which narrative time is understood through order, duration and frequency. Identifying these three temporal relations in Chiang’s story reveals the impact that narrative time has on the reader. 

At the beginning of the story, Fuwaad ibn Abbas, our narrator, addresses the caliph in what we can assume to be “present” time. Then Abbas says, “I begin my story with the day I took a walk through the district of metalsmiths” (Chiang, 10). At this point, as readers, we understand that Abbas is going to be talking about events that happened in the past. Then within the story that Abbas tells time changes once again. We learn about the Gate of Years which allows its user to travel twenty years into the future. The use of time travel is another shift in the order of the narration. Chiang coherently writes about the order of events so that we can still understand and perceive the story. 

Chiang’s use of duration in the story also captivates the reader. As was addressed, the story begins with Abbas at the caliph’s palace. This is also where the story ends. It’s technically where the whole story takes place, but Abbas brings us back in time and forward in time through his story telling. Duration is defined as “how long the events of the story “actually” took versus how long the narrative spends narrating them” (Martin, 2). It’s fair to assume that the time it took Abbas to recount his story to the caliph is equivalent to the time it took us to read the words on the page. However, the time that Abbas spends on each account of time travel is skewed. He recalls the passing of years in just a few pages. This story is a perfect example of the impact of duration in a narrative because it shows the power of words on a page. 

Lastly, frequency seems to be the hardest element of narrative time to pinpoint in this story. A good example of frequency in “The Merchant and Alchemist’s Gate” is the use of the stories within the story. Chiang chooses to include the tales of the rope-maker, the weaver and the wife. As readers we perceive Abbas tell the story to caliph, and we also we know that Abbas first heard the story from Bashaarat. Furthermore, after Abbas recounts each tale, he usually proceeds to recall how he discussed each tale with Bashaarat. It gets a bit confusing to explain frequency, but in this method of tales within a tale we can see how Chiang uses it to emphasize context and morals in his narration. 

Overall, the use of the temporal relations of order, duration and frequency in “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” unpacks the complex nature of time in narratives, as well as the precise nature in which an author like Chiang must write for the story to be impactful and coherent. 

  


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