If time was stolen, would you be the one looking for time?

This is a passage from The Man Who Seeks Time, and it is also the place where this book first touched me. In fact, since I opened this book, I have been moved by the repeated sentences about lack of time in the book-

Where did the time go?

There is always not enough time.

How time flies! When did it start?

Something is consuming our time.

These sentences are all in my heart, because I often feel this way. In ordinary days, no matter how hard you try to arrange your time reasonably, there is always not enough time. So, sometimes I can't help thinking, is there something wrong?

Yes, no matter how busy you are, you should have time to enjoy life!

However, in real life, many people are exhausted and enslaved by time. Some people say that wasting time is equal to wasting life, so we take our busy day and night for granted, even glory. Although we have complained that there is no rest and little entertainment, since most people do, we have to do so.

But in The Man Looking for Time, Gigi, a teenager, is a different person from us. In order to "buy some time" to make a birthday present for his mother, he went to the underground palace under the guidance of Anne and entered the eternal place of youth. Accompanied by an excellent violinist and an injured dog, he discovered the mystery of time leakage and put it back. So as to save two worlds.

Gigi, who comes from a musical family, is the first hero of the story. The story takes place in Kenwala, a rural town in Ireland. Gigi's parents are the only people in town who live together without getting married in order to let their children take their mother's surname.

Liddy's house is a traditional gathering place in Ireland. On the second Saturday of every month, people will take Kelly dance and group dance classes at Liddy's home. Some people even come from thirty miles or more. Liddy's family has the spirit of hospitality handed down from generation to generation, and it is obliged to provide venues for everyone, accompany dancers and provide beer and drinks for free. More importantly, the Li Di family has loved music and dance for generations and made outstanding achievements and contributions in this respect. For today's Gigi mother Helen, music and the name Liddy are all part of her life.

However, behind the glory, Gigi can easily feel the attitude of some people away from the Liddy family and their music. At first, he thought it was because his parents lived together without marriage, until someone told him about the family privacy of the Liddy family-Gigi's great-grandfather, that is, his mother Helen's grandfather, once killed the priest because of a flute. Kiki realized that everything was not as simple as he thought.

In the story, Gigi, led by Anne, went to the underground palace, crossed the film of time and reached the eternal place of youth. Here, he met some people with completely different living conditions compared with his own world.

These are two different worlds presented in the book. In fact, with the development of the plot, it is not difficult to find that one of them is mortal and the other is celestial.

On earth, people's study and work, whether wealth or rights, are obtained by labor and wisdom. No matter in the past or now, no matter whether there will be illness or death, everyone is as busy as ever for their livelihood. Time makes them grow and grow old, but time is extremely precious to them.

In the celestial world, their time is still, and the sun stays in the sky forever and shines on the earth. The land is lush and the air is fresh. Because there is no time to catch up, everyone is lazy, don't eat or sleep, don't want money, have no desire, and don't care about gains and losses. A few people just wander in the sun every day except playing music and dancing. Most importantly, they almost never get old.

This setting makes this book successfully use symbolic mythological methods, stimulates readers' interest in reading and produces a unique reading experience. The phenomenon that people can't control and control time in real life is interspersed with images full of imagination and magic, and readers can think smoothly.

What does time mean to us? How should we treat the famous saying that time is life, which has been deified for a long time?

In a man's village, the writer Liu Liangcheng once mentioned a villager named Feng Si, who did nothing all day. He is a self-made man. In the article, the author didn't comment on this, but said: People who have a busy day-it's getting dark. Lazy people are idle, so the days pass-it's getting dark.

In fact, when everyone comes to this world, they have their own lives to live, whether they are busy or lazy. They are all their own ways to treat life and resist the years, and there is no right or wrong. Feng Si, who traveled around the world and accomplished nothing, was not accused. As a life, he completed his life. Other people in the village who have been busy all their lives have not been praised, but have done their duty as farmers.

I'm not saying this to denigrate industrious people, nor to oppose enterprising and encourage laziness, but I hope that while you are "alive", you can leave more time for relaxation and thinking. Born as a human being, we can neither "live" blindly, nor always let "days pass by us".

The original English name of Time Explorer is New police, which means new police. When I read it, I always felt that the theme of the work should belong to the new police. Why did the translator translate the title of the book into The Man Looking for Time? The most important thing is that there is a new policeman in the book, but he doesn't seem to be the protagonist, but the real protagonist is Kiki who "buys time" from the real world to the celestial world.

It was not until the end of the story that I suddenly discovered that the new policeman Larry was the violinist Angus. Looking back, Larry was confused about his "reason to become a policeman" and finally decided that Gigi and Angus were people who went from their own world to each other's world to find time loopholes.

These are two clues to the story in the book-

The mortal world with Gigi and the new policeman Larry as the core figures: I heard the family secret-Gigi disappeared-the police searched fruitlessly-and returned on my own.

Fairy world with Gigi and Angus as the core figures: According to Gigi's subtle observation on earth, they are looking around the fairy world for places where time may leak.

The reason why we say "search" is because time is changing: in the mortal world, people seem to be unable to catch up with anything even if they try hard; In the fairy tale world, the sun above them is slowly setting from the west, and everyone is on the verge of danger.

Angus once said to Gigi-

So, in order to strive for leisure time for their own world, Kiki and Angus began to "search" to prevent those useless time from invading.

"Seeking" here means that the author tries to guide us to reflect on "whether modern people can arrange their time reasonably" and "how to take the initiative" through stories. In today's highly developed human civilization, people's meaning to real life is becoming more and more vague, and the arrangement of things is becoming more and more unreasonable and passive, even becoming slaves to machines and large industries. Much like the future Angus feared-enslaved by time and driven by greed.

Although we think Angus's life is not good, but there is no goal, no passion, no vitality! But our present, in their view, has been much better, and people are not afraid to avoid it? So the "search" here is to remind everyone to pay attention to the existence of individuals and avoid blind thinking and spiritual emptiness.

At the end of the story, Gigi discovered the secret of the leak. It turned out that the person who caused the storm in these two worlds was none other than Father Dougherty, who was "killed" by Kiki's great-grandfather. At that time, he took the flute in grandfather's uncle Gigi's hand and went to the underground to insert the film of time, and time passed from the cavity of the flute.

There is no doubt that Father Dougherty is the negative image in the story. His thoughts are rigid and dogmatic. In order to rule people's beliefs, people are not allowed to gather In addition, he has a deep hatred for A Qin Angel, who has been playing and dancing. His ultimate wish is to drive the Xian people and their evil way of life out of Ireland forever, which corrupts the hard-working Irish mind. He would rather die than turn their eternal youth into eternal darkness.

Finally, when the priest heard Gigi say that his wish had come true, Ireland today didn't know the existence of the fairy family, and the time of the fairy family was 1 1 point 15 (in fact, it was already dusk there), so the priest pulled out his flute and got up and returned to the previous world. The film of time has recovered, and the time leakage has stopped.

Kiki and Angus' wish finally came true, and their "search" achieved a perfect result, which restored China and Ireland to their original appearance.

Through The Man Who Watches Time, we also see that the difference between Gigi's mortal world and Angus' Chiange is the world, not people. They live in different worlds, but their growth, affection, humanity and love for music are never different.

At the end of the story, Gigi realized that Larry, the new policeman, Angus, the violinist and his grandfather were extremely happy. He wanted to tell his mother about it, but Angus stopped him because she wouldn't believe it, and if she did, it would be hard to accept it. As a result, these strange grandparents and grandchildren living in two worlds have established an intimate bond that is unknown to everyone.

Because music can flow between two worlds, when Gigi plays at Kelly's dance in his barn, people in Chinangor play with him. Only he, only Kiki, can feel the existence of that wonderful music. Others can only be infinitely surprised by Gigi's increasingly gorgeous performance.

In a word, the novel links the wishes and emotions of the characters in reality with the magical illusion in imagination, creating a poetic and imagery realm for readers. At the same time, it endows the immortal with ordinary people's feelings and achieves a unique and unique artistic effect. However, until the end of the story, the author didn't mention Gigi's friend Jimmy, who brought Gigi into the plot, which is undoubtedly an omission in the structure of this book.