Defeating Isolation with Writing

Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and Weir’s The Martian both have a theme of isolation, which alters the main characters perception of time. After moving to Japan, Nao is bullied and lonely; she does not have any friends and her parents neglect her well-being because they are preoccupied with their own issues. She detaches herself from her present surroundings by writing a diary. As she recounts events, she addresses a future reader as a friend, who is a figment of her imagination that helps her to feel less alone. Similarly, Mark Watney in The Martian, is completely isolated from humanity because he is stranded on Mars. The astronaut recognizes his predicament when he acknowledges, “I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead” (Weir 7). He has absolutely zero human contact, so in order to keep his sanity, he writes in the space blog. Even though he knows there is no reader on the other end, he mimics conversation in his writing.

Both Nao and Mark are cut off from society and feel like they are dead to the world. Nao’s classmates pretend that she is invisible and perhaps went missing. Eventually, they progress to declaring her dead and give her a funeral. Naturally, Nao wants to escape her present circumstances and enter another time to either the past or the future through suicide. Although Mark displays remarkable problem-solving skills and perseverance, even he admits that he “got depressed again” (17). Mark also is justified in thinking that he is dead to the world because for a period of time he was dead. Everyone thought he had died on the mission and his crew mates still believe he is gone. The only person that knew he was still living was himself, but it did not matter because there is no one to tell on Mars.

Nevertheless, Mark’s fight to survive and find a way to get rescued keeps him from committing suicide and making his death a true reality. However, his complete isolation takes a psychological toll on him and causes him to become depressed. By logging the days, he can keep track of time and not lose his conception of time passing in relation to earth. Since he documents each day, he prevents himself from losing track of time. If he does forget the date, he will feel complete hopelessness in not knowing how long he has been stranded. One of the psychological tortures of solitary confinement is not only the lack of human contact but also the loss of time perception. Therefore, the danger for Mark is a lack of time awareness, which will lead to him succumbing to despair.

Knowledge of time is also essential to his plan of survival. He needs to know that “a sol is 39 minutes longer than a day, so it works out to be 1425 days. That’s [his] target: 1425 days of food” (18). His conversions between Earth and Mars’ time are key to figuring out how many extra calories he is going to need in order to make up for the eventual scarcity of food reserves. If he is not aware of time, he will not be able to know when the Ares 4 mission commences; thus, he will lose his only chance of survival. In order to keep time passing, he keeps himself busy so that he does not get bored and fall into deep depression, which would make time seem to be passing more slowly than in actuality. Having a task or mission for each day helps him to pass time. Additionally, documenting his day, even if it was a menial or meaningless day, aids him in staying busy and keeping his mind active. Ultimately, he explains that when you are stranded on mars alone, “you’re in a desperate fight against time and the elements to stay alive” (23). He and Nao learn and experiment with how to survive their “elements.” Mark’s is more of an extreme case where he is actually isolated from people and in his own time zone; whereas Nao’s is a situation of feeling detached and in her own time bubble. Nevertheless, both use writing to find and keep track of their present time.