How Does Hugh Maclennan Use Time In Barometer Rising

In Hugh Maclennan’s Barometer Rising, the author uses the time differently. He is working his way to the story which is the explosion that happened in Halifax on the Harbor. He uses his 304 pages to described the six days before the explosion. The reader knows that the explosion will happen eventually, but the lasting of events before is unbearable. MacLennan uses temporal markers in his novel to situate us through his novel. He uses weekdays and hours to put the reader into context. For the reader, it is an authentic way to read the novel, they become conscious of the time of this novel. By describing this novel day by day with the hours, it makes the story seem longer than it actually is. The story seems longer than what it actually is because …show more content…
Before the explosion, everyone seemed in awe of the ship that was stricken and on fire “By this time men were running out of dock sheds and warehouses and offices along the entire waterfront to watch the burning ship. None of them knew she was a gigantic bomb.” (211). The characters were not doing anything, they just stand there and watched the boat on fire and wondering what to do next, they never knew that an explosion was about to occurred. Times seems to slow down when a terrible thing like this is about to happen. Everyone gathered around on the dock waiting to see what was going to happen. Their life, as normal as they were before Thursday nine-five o’clock, were at a standstill. Time as stopped “the jetties and docks near the narrows were crowded with people watching the show, and yet no warning of danger was given” (212). He uses the motion and the silence to describe somethings: “everything else for miles around seemed motionless and silent” (212) until the explosion began and their lives were on high-speed trying to save as many people as they …show more content…
“He had been walking around Halifax all day, as though by moving through familiar streets he could test whether he belonged here and had at last reached home” (1). Time seems longer when someone is lost and not sure if they belonged to the world that they are in after they faced traumatic events like the war. The author uses words like “slowly” and “wandered” in his novel. In this passage from the novel: “They walked slowly southward, looking into gaping doors and battered interiors as they passed. Once they entered the empty shell of a house and tried to go upstairs but found the steps had fallen in. Roddie wandered out to the kitchen and saw the remains of a breakfast laid out on a table […] of broken glass.” (258) Roddie and his friends are walking around looking for something which we do not know. The use of slowly and looking makes the walk seem longer. When someone is looking for something they do not really the origin of, it would take some amount of time to find. The use of wandered here is not used in the same way as in the first pages of the novel where Neil is wandering around town, here, Roddie is walking around the house trying to find something, he is not lost. “wandering” is still a word that elongate the novel and make it seem like their adventure is longer than what is really is. Also,