#shells and time

Calvino’s “Shells and Time” is a lesson in perseverance—its narrator, Qfwfq, and his contemporaries refuse to give up on the construction of a great clock, no matter how many times they fail to succeed. It also demonstrates that people can view the same occurrence differently, that they often have differing perspectives. Qfwfq opens by explaining that time couldn’t exist without him. He expresses his interest in the construction of a great clock “that did not have to report what it was measuring,” (Calvino 361). His contemporaries, mollusks, also sought to create this great clock, which was in the form of a spiraling shell. Qfwfq didn’t care who finished the clock’s construction first—he simply wanted someone to succeed. What he noticed, however, was that after a while, the infinite, spiraling shell would come to a natural end and could be built no further. As a result, thousands of shells began to appear, but none of the mollusks ever finished what they set out to do. Even so, they’d keep on trying. Eventually, humans discovered the wasteland of imperfect shells the mollusks had created. Instead of viewing them as a failure as the mollusks had done, they viewed them as their “history.” In other words, the failed shells were fossils, which spoke of things such as petroliferous forests and dinosaurs.

Rating: 1.7/5 stars

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