Victor Delamonte How the Alienated Characters Appreciate their Time in Albom’s The Time

happiness with all their possessions and wealth, Grace tries to make Victor to understand and confirm her wish for having children from the marriage. Victor, however, denies his wife’s wish, ensuring her that their wealth—the houses, the villas, and money are enough to bring them happiness children can do. As Victor keeps getting busy with all his works and business, Grace is left alone in a marriage, which she feels to be plain day after day. Hence, although the two of them never talk about divorce, their turned down wishes—Grace for the children, and Victor for Grace’s happiness from the possessions have made the marriage something both of them can hardly cherish. Thus, the two are alienated from their own married lives. As a workaholic man, Victor turns into a selfish person. He thinks of nothing else beside his work even though his marriage with Grace is at stake. They live in a marriage without a child, yet it is merely Grace who always try to persuade Victor to start thinking about having kids around. Yet Victor, who is too busy working, keeps avoiding this kind conversation which makes them talk less nowadays. Even though they have been married for forty-four years, “the last ten they’ve been more like roommates” Albom, 2013:28. With money and power, Victor also becomes arrogant. He feels that he is a really important person, a person that this world cannot lose. His pride as the fourteenth richest man in the world is the reason why he feels that way. The arrogance of him leads to the paradigm that he will always be the winner. “Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him. He felt almost obligated to stay alive”. Albom, 2013:61. Victor’s way of thinking has made him an isolated man, not only in the house, but also the office. In the office, this man experiences the sense of both physical and psychological alienation. As stated by Karp and Yoels in Sociology and Everyday Life, the top-level managers are they who will likely to experience high self-consciousness, which eventually builds a barrier between them and their subordinates. This is not only caused by the fact that these top-rank managers are distinguishable among the other colleagues, but also the decisions they are making, which more less influence their subordinates’ lives and paradigm 1986, 204-205. As one of the wealthiest men in the world, Victor have made various decisions and plans for his success ladder. He has a well-operating company, which does not only give him and his family a fortune, but also holds the lives of a lot of employees, making him a psychologically-isolated top-rank businessman. This kind of alienation sense is not uncommon. In fact, James Henslin has stated in his book Down to Earth Sociology that the top-rank employers and business owners indeed tend to be isolated from the rest of the community. These people have certain rules to obey, not to mention regard their time as a very valuable thing which cannot be given to any commoners 1972:121. Victor—one of the world-s wealthiest business possesses this very valuable time that makes it is difficult for other people just to meet him. Thus, “he cannot be seen without any appointment” Albom, 2013:133. Regardless all the wealth he owns, Victor’s life is going to scramble, as his next obstacle is no ordinary. He is suffering from kidney failure and has to fight death. Different from what he feels about himself at the workplace, this illness has made a change on his paradigm about his life. He has a thought that everything will be tough—and he may lose. The doctor has revealed the time he has, which is not longer than two months, and this makes the wealthy man even feel more powerless and meaningless. Victor starts to encounter the sense of being isolated from his own life—he needs to give up the life to the illness, which he will never do, for any reasons. In the end, with his resource and cleverness, he finally finds the answer through cryonics. Cancer was a stumble. But the real hurdle was human morality. He finally found his opening when a researcher from his West Coast offices, responding to his requests on “immortality,” faxed a stack of material on cryonics Albom, 2013:61. Cryonics is not an affordable choice of prolonging life every common man can do. This is an almost impossible, very expensive method of preserving the body for a desired period of time until the cure for the illness is found. By doing this, Victor’s characteristic compromises Heslin’s that for modern society, life is not as simple as one in more conventional society. In modern society, everything is more complicated and thus, death becomes something requiring attention and efforts. People living in modern societies—although not all, tend to think they are able to control the way they live the life, and money is one of the means in controlling the life. Hence, people in different social classes might possess different chances of everything in life. The more money and wealth the people own, the more various their choices in life become. And the significance of social inequality is that it determines people’s life chances, the possibilities as to the fate one may expect in life, and the single most significant factor in deciding a person’s life chances in our society certainly is money. Simply put, if you have it, you can do a lot of things you can’t do if you haven’t got it. And the more you have, the more you can do Henslin, 1972:246. This phenomenon is definitely what comes to Victor’s mind when deciding to prolong his life by having his body preserved until the ultimate cure to his illness is revealed. With all his money, possession, and wealth, it is not impossible for Victor to undergo even the most costly treatment for the illness. As the fourteenth wealthiest man in the world, he has more varieties of choices for healing himself, including the high-priced cryonics. Victor’s decision of having the cryonics in one side shows the degree of his powerfulness which he gains from working very hard to become a successful businessman. Yet, on the other side, this shows an irony in his life on how fragile the wealthy man is. He is too afraid to die—which people in more conventional societies assume as a natural event in life. His plan of having the right method to cure his illness performed also shows Victor’s selfishness and distant thought about his marriage. He needs to thoroughly and carefully plan the perfect steps before the cryonics performed, yet he does not include his wife—his only next of kin, in it. He does not want Grace know or be a part of his plan. She wouldn’t accept it. Not a chance. Grace was a steadfast churchgoer. She did not believe in meddling with fate. And he was not about to argue with her. No. this final plan would be up to him Albom, 2013:70. Victor is too afraid to argue with Grace about his plan. He knows Grace would not accept it and it will ruin his plan. Therefore, he picks an easy way by not telling Grace about his method of medication and doing it secretly. This fact is also ironical, since in fact, both Victor and Grace are struggling in attempting to prolong Victor’s life. While Victor is busy preparing the modern curing method, Grace leads to a more down-to-earth method of prolonging his husband’s life expectancy. Victor concerns with his future second chance he hopes to get from the successful cryonics, while Grace struggles to improve Victor’s present condition by preparing healthy lifestyle for him—that Victor finds unappealing because of “the “healthy” meals: bland and tasteless vegetables”. In fact, Victor realizes the fact that Grace is trying to do her best for promoting more time for his life. “He thought she was trying to stretch his meager days, while he was planning for another century” Albom, 2013:119. Why Victor is eager to get the cryonics as soon as possible is also affected by his impatient personality. His illness makes him think that he is not able to face the time, which runs too fast while he is sick. Thus, in order to keep up with the time, he has to think quickly and precisely. In his mind, patience is the same with wasting your valuable time. This trait that Victor has is already figured out by Grace Albom, 2013:54. His decision of undergoing cryonics is also an illustration of how he possesses supreme domination over his life, seeing all the wealth he has, which make it possible for him to buy the science of cryonics that will be done in the recent research, and his future time that will be kept until he is able to come back to the world healthy. There is also a time when he first met Dor to buy a very old watch as a symbolical souvenir from present time before he freezes himself. In the quotation below, he shows his impatience toward Dor. “I’m looking for the oldest pocket watch you have.” The man closed his eyes. He appeared to be thinking. Victor, never a patient man, glanced at the owner, who shrugged. “He is very knowledgeable,” the proprietor whispered. “Well, let’s not take a lifetime,” Victor said. He chuckled to himself. “Or another lifetime” Albom, 2013:114. It can be seen that Victor cannot wait for Dor to think about his request. For him, Dor’s act is just wasting his time as he tries to laugh it out. Thus, because Victor lives for tomorrow, as he only thinks about how his business would survive if he were gone, he becomes an impatient man. Apart from implying Victor’s impatient characteristic, this watch purchase is also an event to show his powerfulness, which in fact, makes him alienated in his some of final days after getting sick. He thinks he is so powerful that he will be able to purchase himself “a timepiece”, which “he would make the cryonics people stop it the moment he was frozen; when he reached the new world, he would start it up again” Albom, 2013:119. When finally he is able to buy the watch from Dor, Victor is energized. He thinks he has been able to do something to prolong the time. However, he does not show Grace this watch, either, showing how much he is really alienated from his surrounding, including his wife. However, the sickness has made him even more alienated from the life he is fighting for. Every time he undergoes the dialysis, he feels a sense of being “imprisoned like an animal in a net”. He is sick of spending 12 hours per week for this dialysis and doesn’t favor the “dull routine” Albom, 2013:129. All the money and wealth he has is not able to keep him away from the disease which weakens him day by day. This dialysis, although he does go for it every week, is more for Grace than for himself. His alienation—being detached from the things he does grows more severely. He is disappointed that the dialysis will not be able to give him “an entirely new life” rather than merely another “month of the year”. He doesn’t like to be with the other patients, as well, as these patients remind him of his poor self, a wealthy man with all his possessions but with no time to enjoy it. This severe illness triggers self-estrangement in Victor’s life. He asks for a private room to do the dialysis instead of being with some other patients. As a rich and powerful man, Victor thinks he can “control his dying the way he had controlled his living” Albom, 2013:148. Thus, finding a method to prolong his entire life is not something uncommon and questionable. He does know that humans should one day die. Yet, he knows he can control death—his death. “Death would be expected. But death would never touch Victor. He would duck it. And jump a boat to the future”. Despite all of the negative traits he has, Victor is still a loving man. Although his motto is “holding on things will only break your heart” Albom, 2013:52, Victor has been loyal as a husband to Grace until his death. As he is lifted up into the ice tube, he sees Roger, his loyal chief assistant, and says a familiar keyword to cancel the cryonics process. It happened. A word was spoken. Upon hearing it, Roger screamed, “Hold it right now” He forced the coroner and doctor to back away, then immediately called for an ambulance. He followed his boss’s orders, as he always did, because he’d listened for the word and the word was clear: “Grace” Albom, 2013:234. The keyword is Grace, his beloved wife. By using his wife’s name to cancel the cryonics process shows that Victor cares for Grace although he is determined to leave Grace alone without her knowing that her sick husband is after immortality. Victor felt torn and guilty. His final sentence to Grace had been a lie. He would not be here when she returned. He would leave while she was gone, and be on his way to the cryonics facility. That was the plan, the reason he’d encourage her to attend the gala Albom, 2013:164. Right before Victor is about faking his death, he sends Grace to attend a gala where both of them annually donate a large sum of money to their charitable foundation. Although Grace does not want to go, Victor insists her to and says how it would mean a lot to her if Grace attends the gala and continues the tradition even without him each year. Despite his charming words, Victor hurts inside because he knows it is a lie. He feels guilty toward Grace. Hence, Victor is actually a caring and loving man. His love for Grace is one of those reasons why Victor expects to be able to use all his wealth and possessions to save him from death and prolong his lifetime, apart from his unreasonable belief that a powerful man like him should not give up his time on earth to an illness.

B. Moral Lessons Revealed Through the Alienated Characters in the Novel

As stated before, there are two major characters being used in the thesis, they are Sarah Lemon and Victor Delamonte. In the previous section, their characteristics and their appreciation of time has been discussed. Therefore, the writer found some moral lessons derived from both major characters.

1. Simple things in life will lead to happiness when fully cherished

It is known that all living creature on earth are mortals. Human beings are no exception too. Although humans know that their time is not limitless, they still consider death as something horrifying. They fear death because it is the end of life which is something they hold dear the most. These people are tied to their life. They do not want to let death come to them for many reason, such as power and wealth. Gonsalves mentioned in his book, Right and Reason, why power and wealth are important in life. The individual person as a conscious and free subject is not isolated and atomic. He or she is, however, as an individual, other than all the rest of the community and has his or her own ntrinsic worth and dignity. In order to create wealth, individuals must be free to be other and appreciated as other 1986:447. One of the characters in Albom’s The Time Keeper experiences the situation where he is in the brink of death but he still wants to continue his legacy as the fourteenth-richest man in the world. That man is Victor Delamonte, an old man who has lived for more than eighty years and has achieved success and wealth far more than everyone else can do. Even with all of his achievements, he still feels that he can accomplish more if he is given more lifetime for he is an ambitious man. Therefore, although his life is only two months away, he put all of his sources and efforts to find a cure to prolong his own time until he discovers a method called cryonics. “Think of the freezing as a lifeboat to the future—when medicine is so advanced, curing our disease will be as simple as making an appointment.” “All you have to do is get in the lifeboat, go to sleep, and wait for the rescue.” Albom, 2013:85 As a man who ranks the top twentieth-richest man in the world, Victor has everything and can get anything he wants. By working hard days and nights from zero, he is finally being a hero with a huge amount of wealth. But for every action there is a price to pay. He lost his time just for work and work without realizing that his company has alienated him from everyone else, including Grace who once remembers how Victor used to be in the past. She remembered a time when he’d kiss her at the door, lift her a few inches off the ground and spoil her with questions like “Where do you want to go this weekend? London? Paris?” Once, on the balcony of a seaside villa, she said she wished she’d met him earlier in life, and he said, “We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.” Albom, 2013:74 Another character in the novel faces situation where she is about to commit suicide. She is Sarah Lemon, a seventeen-year-old girl who is very bright and smart. Her tragedy begins from the moment she met a charismatic boy named Ethan. From there on, she has been on one-sided-love story with Ethan. When she finally decides to buy him a men-in-black watch as a Christmas present with all the money she has got, Ethan dumps her. On her Facebook, she sees herself how Ethan degrade her on his page. “Sarah Lemon made play 4 me. Whoa. Ain’t happening. That’s what u get 4 being nice.” Suddenly, she couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe. If the room had caught the fire, she’d have burned to a crisp, because she could not lift her body from the chair. Her stomach felt as if it were tying itself around a pole and pulling from both ends Albom, 2013:157 Then finally comes the final blow. Students from her school replies on Ethan’s status and all of them tells how unfortunate Ethan was. She is feeling hurt and heartbroken for believing Ethan as her white-horse-mounted prince. In her imagination, Sarah believes that Ethan would save her from her misery. But in reality, he is the one who sinks her down deeper into her loneliness. The feeling of humiliated and betrayal reminds Sarah about her pain. Memories of how fatty she is, how other popular girls in school treat her, and how her father cut off their father-daughter relationship after the divorce linger in her mind. Moreover, she has no one to share about her problems and no one to comfort her from her agony. Therefore, she finally decides to commit suicide by intentionally locked herself inside the powered-on car so she would die from carbon monoxide intoxication. There was blackness and solitude and she was never, ever going back to that school again. What would she do? What should she do? She thought for the first time about killing herself, the when and the how. She already had the why Albom, 2013:159. From the life of Sarah and Victor, particularly from the way they appreciate time, it can be concluded that they have one thing in common despite their difference in appreciating time; their dissatisfaction towards the life that they have. Sarah who wants less time sees her life is useless because she feels alienated and depressed; and Victor who wants more time thinks he still can do his best to expand his company. In other words, both of them are not happy with the life they have. When Sarah sits in the car waiting for her time to end, unconsciously she is shown flashes of her future. In the beginning, she sees Ethan and a young girl about her age inside a warehouse in which she and Ethan had spent the night together. She listened to them talk. She heard that girl say it was unfair, the way people were blaming him. “I know, right?” Ethan said. “I didn’t do anything. It was her fault. The whole thing is out of control.” Albom, 2013:202 Her eyes started to shed tears because Ethan does not feel sorry about her death after all. In the first place, she commits suicide to punish Ethan, but seeing how negligible Ethan is, she starts to doubt her action and cries. Then, her mind is shifted to the shelter where she used to work on Saturdays. There are many homeless people queuing for food. An older woman was scooping oatmeal. A man in a blue cap stepped forward. “Where’s Sarah?” he asked. “She’s not here today,” the woman said. “Sarah puts in extra bananas.” “OK. Here’s some extra bananas.” “I like that girl. She’s quiet, but I like her.” “We haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks.” “I hope she’s all right.” “Me, too.” “I’ll be praying for her then.” Albom, 2013:203 Their words make Sarah surprise that these people miss her, that her absence is significant to these people whom she had thought would not miss her if she were not around. Next, she moves to where her mother is. Lorraine is with Mark, Sarah’s uncle from North Carolina, in a parking lot of a car dealer-ship. As she watches them, she learns that their purpose is to sell Lorraine’s car in which Sarah had committed suicide. Lorraine kept her eyes locked on the car, until it disappeared around a corner. Then, she broke down, sobbing. “I should have been there, Mark.” “It’s not your fault—“ “I’m her mother” “It’s not your fault.” “Why would she do this? Why didn’t I know?” Albom, 2013:205 Sarah feels so sick to see her mother like this. She would not think that Lorraine would blame herself for Sarah’s death. Sarah would never calculate the consequences of her action. Committing suicide is only a quick solution to escape from her own misery without considering the collateral damage it would cause to everyone she knows. Having watched the consequences of her death, Sarah opens her eyes and wakes up in a hospital. She was taken to the hospital after opening the garage and crawling out from the car by her neighbor. Being conscious, Sarah learns that time