Time Theme Analysis

In Catching Teller Crow, linear clock-time is a misleading way of organizing reality. In the world of the novel, people should understand time as an index of their growth and progress: if they aren’t growing and changing, they aren’t really moving forward, even if the clock-hands keep ticking. This understanding of time is exemplified in Beth Teller and her father Michael Teller. Beth is a ghost, eternally 15 years old and always wearing the dress she had on when a car lost control in the rain and killed her. She remains haunting the physical world due to her father Michael’s obsessive grief, which called her back to the physical plane when she was about to move on. When the novel begins, Beth feels responsible for helping Michael return to the healthier psychological state he occupied before her death, so she tries to act as alive and happy as possible, not phasing through solid objects or crying where he can see. Beth’s unchanging physical appearance represents how her father’s grief is preventing her from accepting a dramatic change in her existence, i.e., her death, and progressing to an afterlife more appropriate to her new state. Though clock-time continues to move forward, Beth does not—until she realizes that remaining stuck in the living world with her father, half-pretending that she’s still alive, is psychologically unhealthy for both of them. This realization forces Beth to grow, change, and eventually move on. As Beth leaves the physical plane for the afterlife, she gains the ability to transform from a changeless ghost into a bright streak of yellow. That is to say, Beth’s appearance becomes capable of change only when she takes a dramatic step forward in her existence—suggesting that time is best measured by personal growth, not seconds and hours.