Summary: The Baghdad Clock

Reality. My reality, your reality, their reality. Whose reality is the correct reality? Fantastic literature has been discussed for many years. There are multiple elements that make “The Baghdad Clock” by Cristina Fernández Cubas fantastic. One element that is found throughout the story is the element of liminality. Liminality can be defined as “the state of being at the boundary of an important social category, in the process of crossing or transcending it, at a threshold between one state and another” (Kerman 178). Cristina Fernandez Cubas includes liminality in the lives of her characters, which creates the theme of unpleasant change. She shows us that the lines that separate the spiritual and human world, life and death, and childhood and adolescence become blurred. This blurring of lines, or liminality, creates an uncanny atmosphere that shows us that change can be unpleasant. …show more content…
Each person’s definition of fantastic literature is slightly different but they all have some things in common. One definition is Judith Kerman’s; she states “Perhaps the fantastic is in fact usefully definable as a liminal artistic space, a place where we test ideas whose reality or potential reality we are not sure of… there has to be enough ‘reality’ that we can in fact imagine that the situation could be real, or want it to be real, or be afraid it is – solid characters, credible pseudoscience, magic that makes us wonder a little about what’s possible, terror that truly terrifies” (Kerman 182). The story should be believable but should also include content that makes us doubt the story. To be fantastic, a story must blur the line between two things that in reality have clear, set