The Different Shapes of Time: Connections Between Humans and Nature

By: Katie Hu

“Time is relative”-- words I have often heard since childhood, yet ones that continue to puzzle me in the present day. Hearing this phrase always made me wonder: what even is time? I struggle to grapple with the very concept itself, let alone the idea of its relativity. In his novel, The Bear, Andrew Krivak explores this complexity of time through the journey of a girl and her father, who are the last two humans on earth. Residing on a mountain surrounded by vast wilderness, the girl’s father teaches her the ways of survival and prepares her for when she inevitably has to navigate the natural world alone. After her father’s death, the girl lives in the wilderness as the only human left on earth, and through her journey Krivak delves into the connection between relative time, nature, and human life. Krivak juxtaposes circular time with the linearity of human development to illustrate the girl’s gradual integration into nature and the inherent connection humans have with the natural world. Throughout her life, the girl’s animalization and change in what she considers “home” demonstrate simultaneously her linear adaptation into nature and time’s circularity. Upon her death, the circles of human life in nature and the girl’s linear journey with nature merge together to illustrate the fundamental interconnectedness of humans with the natural world.

The girl’s animalization incorporates both linear progression and cyclic time, specifically through her emotional change towards hunting and the intensifying animalistic descriptions of her character, all of which contribute to the depiction of the girl becoming more integrated into nature. The girl’s first successful hunt is when she goes down to the water alone one morning and reencounters a family of geese. She expresses to her father afterward that killing the geese has made her feel “like in the autumn, when…[she] pulls leaves away from the house, and the wind is blowing in a circle, so that the leaves…[she’s] removed…swirl around and settle back where…[she’s] just cleared them” (Krivak 55). The use of “circle” and “settle back” to describe the wind’s effect on the leaves utilizes the constant, repetitive nature of the wind to depict the restlessness of the girl’s thoughts. The girl repeatedly trying to “pull leaves away from the house” portrays her resisting the circular wind that keeps blowing them back. The thoughts or “leaves” that the girl is avoiding are her troubled emotions in response to hunting for the first time, and such emotions of uncertainty and guilt distinguish her as a human from all other animals. Forwarding many cyclic moons later to when the girl now roams earth alone, she ruminates on the ability to communicate with the trees. While pondering her connection with nature, the grown girl lets “herself be pushed in the direction of that wind farther into the forest, away from the route of her circular path” (Krivak 167). This paralleling moment is a stark development from the girl’s first hunt many years prior. The wind represents divergence from everyday cycles, embodying a force that sways the girl “away from the route of her circular path.” However, rather than defying the wind like before, the girl is now yielding to or letting “herself be pushed” by it. She is emotionally less resistant to the works of nature, allowing it to permeate her life to a new level and cause a break in her circular routines. This emotional acceptance toward nature lessens the gap between the girl as a human and the rest of nature’s animals. Shortly after, the girl finds herself starved nearly to death during the winter’s harsh conditions. Upon spotting a hare, “in one motion she slid an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, drew, and let go” (Krivak 175), and after hitting its neck, she “sucked at its neck wound through fur and fleas…tightened her grip, twisting the animal to wring it of life so that its neck snapped” (Krivak 176). The vivid imagery of the girl killing and directly eating the hare further emphasizes her drastic change in character. In the beginning, the girl finds herself both physically and emotionally unused to hunting, but while hunting the hare, she draws her bow and hits it in one quick, easy motion–without hesitance, guilt, and, more so, like an animalistic instinct or reflex. The language of her sucking at the hare’s neck “through fur and fleas” implies a ravenous predator catching its prey in nature. The predatorial and humanly apathetic descriptions of the girl in this graphic scene illustrate her shift from being a human distinguishable from the rest of nature to one of the animals, a part of nature. It demonstrates how the girl has adapted throughout her life, while also alluding towards the animalistic instincts and embodiment of nature humans inherently possess when it comes down to basic necessities. Furthermore, this imagery of the girl looping back into evolution and returning to this pre-developed state of humans is suggestive of the innately circular shape of time. The girl succumbing to the circular wind and her hunting the hare demonstrate her detachment from the physical and emotional strings of humanity and embracing being one with the beings of the natural world. Therefore, Krivak utilizes ideas of deviating from circular time to depict the girl’s linear advancements toward animalization and embracing the natural world. Additionally, the girl’s prominent animalization not only exemplifies her progression into nature but also hints towards the underlying concept of humans’ innate interrelation with nature.

In addition to the component of the girl becoming more animalistic, Krivak also demonstrates the girl’s transformation with nature through what she considers home, heavily involving concepts of circular time. In her final years as an old woman, the girl is back to where she was as a child–on the Mountain that Stands Alone, near the house in which her father raised her. However, the way in which she lives there now differs significantly. The girl “no longer went inside the house,” sleeping outside in which “each morning, she rose as though from the earth, then lay down to sleep again when…the only lights were the stars in the dome of the sky” (Krivak 218). Furthermore, the “wooden furniture her father had made had all fed fires that warmed her…the window glass was broken and scattered…the roof and walls slouched and buckled” (Krivak 218). The girl waking “from the earth” rather than a man-made bed and falling asleep under the stars, the natural lights of the sky, depicts her literal physical belonging in nature through day and night. The house and its items being used for fire is a powerful symbol of the girl’s initial “home” being overcome or replaced by nature, as fire not only is a necessity for the girl to survive outside, but also has been throughout the book the girl’s token for warmth, comfort, and home. Feeding parts of her man-made house to nature’s fire for warmth illustrates the girl’s perspective of home shifting from the human to the natural world. The roof and walls slouching and buckling paints a picture of the house succumbing to the vines, leaves, moss, and roots from nature, which feeds into the idea of nature taking over the girl’s home. Moreover, this linear reshaping of the girl’s relationship with the natural world is inscribed within the inevitable circles of time. The girl begins her life in her house on the Mountain that Stands Alone, embarks on a journey that transforms her vision of home, and returns back to the same place. Her linear change is reflected through this loop or circle present within her life, as if these seemingly antithetical concepts embody one phenomenon. All in all, the girl’s shift toward nature being her true home serves as a representation of her integration into nature through the juxtaposition of human progress and the arcs of time. 

The girl’s animalization and transformation in what she calls home are profound examples of linear human progression linking with circular time. However, the girl’s death marks the powerful moment when these two contradicting phenomena merge together, completing the picture of the girl’s linear journey being encompassed by the intrinsic circularity of her life and every human life in nature. After the girl takes her last breath, she lays “untouched throughout the fall and winter…and…in the spring when…shoots of grass, wildflowers, and young maples grew around and through her soft and sunken body” (Krivak 219). Upon the girl’s death, the earth does not merely hold her, but nature’s plants grow “through” the girl and combine into one with her human body. This imagery serves as a climax of the girl’s growth with nature throughout her life, so much so that she becomes physically united with it in her last moments. Simultaneously, the scene represents the interconnectedness of nature with human life. The girl–as the last-standing human–completes the circle of the human generation upon her death and rejoins the very entity that humans emerged from–nature. Therefore, through the girl’s death, which marks the end of human existence, Krivak cultivates a direct harmony between the linearity of her life toward nature and the circle of her and all humans’ lives in nature, demonstrating the innate foundation between the two.

Throughout The Bear, Krivak illustrates the girl’s animalistic progressions and her changing view towards home, which collectively convey her integration into nature using the concepts of both linear human progression and the circular nature of time. He incorporates vivid descriptions of the girl’s hunting and its emotional influences on her to depict her animalization, as well as symbolic scenes that parallel each other to portray her shifts in the idea of home. At the end, the girl’s last moments merge the juxtaposing ideas of linearity and circularity, demonstrating both her and all human life’s immanent interconnection with nature. Krivak’s novel shines light on what it means for time to be relative and, in turn, humankind’s deep-rooted connection with nature. In both The Bear and in real life, time is the accumulation of each consecutive year, but it is also the cycle of our days, weeks, and months. The beginning and end of time form both a line and a circle. In some perspectives, there is no beginning or end–rather, time is a point. The Bear highlights how humanity is a point, line, and circle in relative time, an emergence from nature that will eventually diminish back into nature. No matter the numerous complexities of humans or time, the relativity of time and the grounding of mankind in nature are undeniable.