Comment on The Narrow Path

  1. FernWithy on Chapter 5 Sat 13 Apr 2013 02:13PM UTC

    I can see your point. I think we both spent more time on the timeline than Collins did! Basically, I went with a literal reading of "a month ago" from the beginning section. After that, we managed to not have any vague time skips for eight days.

    Of course, that puts the Quell in July (eight days after the beginning, we get the news that it will be September "next week" -- first vagary), when it seemed like the Games are in late spring.

    Then again, mid-July to late August is five to six weeks, so I think we actually have about the same amount of time, just different terminology.

    Timelines always give me surprises. I looked at the one for "Deathly Hallows" and realized that the whole "Lupin runs off on Tonks" bit, treated like a major desertion, had the stunning duration of about four days. She probably didn't even realize something was wrong.

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    1. ETNRL4L on Chapter 5 Sat 13 Apr 2013 04:24PM UTC

      Always

      Oh, I've always considered the games were in early August. Since the Victor's tour was in Winter and it is well documented they happened almost exactly at the midpoint between games, it had to be during summer. Also, it was sweltering heat during the reaping for the Quell and that hardly happens in the Mountain states of Appalachia during springtime.

      This means Peeta was rescued just as summer was turning to fall, which correlates perfectly with the timeline of five to six weeks spent in the Capitol and fits the rest of the narrative perfectly.

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    2. CharlesTheBold (Guest) on Chapter 5 Fri 04 Mar 2016 12:14AM UTC

      Timelines give a lot of authors fits.

      Shakespeare was notoriously bad at them. Somebody figured out that there was no point between Othello's marriage and Iago's slanders where Desdemona and Cassio could have been alone together, let alone sleeping together. So Othello's paranoid suspicions make no sense if one takes the timeline literally.

      Dostoyevsky's Porfiry Petrovitch in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, one of the great fictional detectives, is described at one point as a young man with new ideas, and at another point as a veteran nearing retirement. So people filming the story have to decide whether to get a young actor or an old actor to play him.

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      1. FernWithy on Chapter 5 Sat 05 Mar 2016 02:19AM UTC

        Heh, I never even thought about that in Othello!

        Don Bellisario said, in conversation about inconsistencies and head-scratchers in Quantum Leap, "Don't investigate this too closely." :D

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