Pacing and Setting: Time in "Burning Vision"

Before the text starts, Clements includes a timeline of events. Some of the things on the timeline are notable enough to be common knowledge ("Dec. 7th, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor) , or to at least be vaguely recognizable ("1942: Japanese Canadians forced into internment camps"), but there are some names and events that don't quite register with the reader until he/she begins reading the story and is introduced to some of the characters on the timeline. The timeline's purpose is to show that — though it's an obvious statement — multiple events are happening at once, they are happening in response to each other, and they are happening with other events in mind.

This fact is not just seen in the timeline; it is also seen in the way the story is told. The plot does not have a linear trajectory in which one event comes after another, after another. Multiple narratives are occurring at the same time. This can be difficult to understand because of the medium through which the reader receives the story: in a written form. This medium can be restrictive because it forces us to read from left to right, one page after another, and it seems like we are stuck in a monotonous mode of storytelling. "Burning Vision" is a play, so we might not feel these difficulties if we saw the words on the pages performed on a stage, or even a screen, but it is the medium we are given and we just have to deal with it.

I read this play with different scenes in my mind: one scene with the two LaBine brothers, one scene with the Little Boy and the Fat Man, etc., and I let go of my inclination to read in a liner fashion. The play jumps from scene to scene, and it is easy to get confused and think that one person is linked to another conversation though he/she was originally part of another scene, but this in itself is a rhetorical device. It shows that, although different activities and conversations are happening in different places at different times, they are all part of the larger global conversation going on.

This reminded me of Sven Lindqvist's "A History of Bombing," which also steers away from linear storytelling. "Burning Vision" does not have directions at the beginning of the book telling readers how to interpret the play, it merely enables the reader to get lost, and forces him/her to figure things out on his/her own.