The Clock Tells Time.

Narrative:

In this world time has come and gone. People have lived here and died here, and now their traces have diminished. As the worlds of fantasy and reality mesh, the aspect of time is lost somewhere in between. Here lies the conception of time and space the way one human being chooses to view it. There are no rules. No exceptions. It seems as though his fantasy world is taking over the real world. He might just be losing all sense of real time and space. Until he finds out that reality is slowly seeping into his fantasy. The world around him is about to become raw and uncensored. With time he will discover his truth and must accept his life as it is and not as he wished it to be many years ago. On this earth time has always held the power over all human beings and will always find a way to catch up to them. Our friend, whose mind we are exploring, is no different than millions of other people who are just unveiling the same concept. One day, he too will wake up and accept the unsteady and mysterious thing we call life and try to understand it through time.

Analysis:

The main object that stands out in this painting is the exploding clock. Artist Salvador Dali does not only choose to destroy the concept of time, but also throws it in the ocean as if to get rid of it once and for all. What can be concluded from this painting then? Is it that time does not matter? Or is time passing by faster than we think and we must act upon this with caution? The answer truly lies in the hands of the viewer. Viewing it in the likes of structuralism and Ferdinand de Saussure I will attempt to put the pieces of the broken clock together. Structuralism allows us to understand the world around us through the structure of signs and urges us to then interpret the meaning of words. In Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, readers are presented with the study of signs otherwise known as semiotics. In his lectures Saussure reveals that within semiotics the signifier plus the signified equals a sign (Signifier + Signified= Sign). Saussure suggests that the signifier is what one sees or hears and the signified is the concept that derives from that sound or image (Saussure 857). When I first saw the clock in this painting I automatically thought of time as in hours of the day. Here the signifier is the clock and the signified is time. Hence, I relate the sign of a clock to the idea of time. Saussure also mentions that it is important to realize that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is completely arbitrary. Therefore when I see the clock and think of time the sign is not fixated, however at the moment that is my personal absolute meaning of the sign. It is also important to mention that by understanding the structure of signs then we are able to understand the meaning of words. Basically signs allow us to give meaning to words both spoken and written down, and help us connect with the world around us.

Works Cited:

Saussure, Ferdinand. "Course in General Linguistics" Ed. Vincent Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Second

Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2010. Print.

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