Michelle Hillman
ENG 377
Professor Charles Adams
October 3, 2014
No Beginning or End
Frank Conroy's memoir, Stop- Time, is a story about everything that went on in his childhood and growing up. But through his story we do not get a sense of time, rather, there is no-time. There is no "beginning" or "end".
"I could not resist the clarity of the world in books, the incredibly satisfying way in which life became weighty and accessible. Books were reality. I hadn't made up my own mind about my own life, a vague, dreamy affair, amorphous and dimly perceived, without beginning or end." (Conroy 160)
We know from fact that he was born in 1936 so we can calculate that he grew up in the 40's but throughout his memoir he does not give us a sense of surrounding. Though he describes his surroundings very well, he makes no point of including details about what period he grew up in.
Not that his story needs year or date to make sense, but it would be a lot easier for us to understand it and or picture what it was like with more element. This is one of the factors that add to the confusion of no sense of time. Another huge factor would be that Conroy uses the personal pronoun "us", "Neither of us knew exactly what it was, accepting it nevertheless as proof that the unbelievable act had taken place."(Conroy 37) This term makes the readers feel a part of the story as well as his childhood friends he is actually referring to. Randomly Conroy will shift to the present tense bringing us readers into his life right at that particular moment. "Today nothing happens in a gas station. I'm eager to leave, to get where I'm...