Analysis Of Ida Finks: A Scrap Of Time And Other Stories By Ida Finks

There are 23 short stories that all together make up the compilation of Ida Finks book “A Scrap of Time and Other Stories”. All very different and unique in their own way, all tell or reveal different hidden secrets to the reader, but the first story is the most important. For in the first chapter of Finks book A Scrap of Time she reveals to the reader a hidden secret that they should carry with them in the back of their minds as they continue to journey through the pages of her book; the significance of time. For in this first story we see the importance of time to Fink. Not only does she spend the whole first page just primarily talking about time, but she also makes a distinction between two types of time. The first type is a time that

is “not measured in months or years… but in a word” (pg. 3). The second is a type of time “which is measured in months and years.” (pg. 3). However, Fink implements both of these senses of time into her stories in several different ways. Whether it be in a direct manner such as in her short story Night of Surrender where “everyday at 4” Mike would come get Anna to go for a stroll or in Inspector Von Galoshinsky where the main character states “there wasn’t much time …he wondered how much time had passed…It seemed like a fraction of a second” (pg. 70). To being portrayed in a very indirect manner, where she almost uses the scenery that she depicts to again paint this essence of time. For when she describes the rhododendrons at the beginning of Night of Surrender she says they are “in full bloom, covered with pale violet flowers” and then towards the end of the story describes the rhododendrons as “already yellow and withered”. However, it seems to the reader that Fink focuses more on this first type of time. For at the time period that finks book is written there was a much different sense of time than what we know of today. Time was more precious, it was more valuable and it was most certainly more dangerous. For the time we live in now seems to be much more driven by the hands of a clock than the changing events. The time that rules us is according to Fink, “this second” type of “time, which is measured in months and years” (pg. 3.)