"The Temporary Job" by Hannah Gersen in One Sentence
How to create a tiny time loop
I hope you’ve been enjoying the long Memorial Day weekend, dear subscriber!
I’m blocking off next week to work on some behind-the-scenes things to get Lit in One Sentence ready for more audience outreach. I don’t know if anything of interest to current subscribers will come out of that, so you may not hear from me next weekend. But we will be publishing a story at Electric Literature in the meantime whose superstructural magic I’ve been excited to dig into for weeks, so you can look forward to that the following weekend!
For now, let’s look at a flash story that has long stuck in my brain for its own structural elegance and cleverness: “The Temporary Job” by
. The story is under 1500 words, so would take about ~10-15 minutes to read if you want to do that first. The breakdown below does contain spoilers.
The Emotional Superstructure of “The Temporary Job”
A temporary worker’s only job is to not answer a ringing phone.
How to Create a Tiny Time Loop
I picture this story’s structure as a tiny open jump ring. The first and last of ten tightly crafted sections are set up to carefully echo each other. The narrator’s entry into and exit from her main superstructural task are close reflections of each other, the story’s end contained in its beginning.
The job of the eight short sections in between are to continually evolve the main character, journey, and stakes to get us from point A to point B on that loop. Let’s go beat-by-beat to see how Gersen updates each of these variables in each section.
Character: A laid-off job seeker. Journey: Must keep phoning a business until someone answers (already an echo of her main superstructural journey). Stakes: Interview for a new job. The end, cleverly implanted in the beginning: there is someone on the other end of that phone line, who is not answering at first.
Character: A job candidate, then a new hire. Journey: Must agree to work on a temporary basis, then must understand her only job is to not answer a phone. Stakes: Getting hired, then getting paid.
Character: A new temporary worker. Journey: Must not answer the phone on a day it doesn’t ring. Stakes: Time to read, go for a walk, triple her usual pay, bragging rights with friends.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must continue to not answer the phone as it continues not to ring. Stakes: Time for reading and friends, good pay continues, but also the first appearance of stakes pulling her in a different direction, guilt that her life is too easy.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must continue not to answer the phone as it begins to ring, obnoxiously. Stakes: Same as before, but now the guilt eases because there’s a challenge, ignoring the phone and reading between the rings.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must navigate new anxiety when the phone goes silent again. Stakes: Perhaps, a terrible missed opportunity. Her ability to read and concentrate, perks of the earlier silence, go down as she frets about different future possibilities and how she should handle them.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: As the phone resumes ringing, must try to obtain a better understanding of the purpose of her task from her boss. Stakes: The phone’s effect is more irritating by now. Presumably, understanding the “why” of ignoring it will help her make a better informed decision about whether to continue. But there isn’t a “why” beyond the one we’ve had all along, that the job she’s being paid to do is not answer that phone.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must quit her job, though the phone isn’t ringing. Stakes: She’s overcome with anxiety, and answering the phone is the only way out.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must spend a day away from work. Stakes: She can’t stop thinking about the phone and understands that she hasn’t quit until she has answered it.
Character: A temporary worker. Journey: Must wait two weeks for the phone to ring again, then answer it. Stakes: Quitting the job she fears she will be stuck in forever.
The final scene contains just enough details to echo the beginning, from the 11 rings to the name of Echo Enterprises, to the familiarity of the voice inquiring about a job opening on the other end of the line, to neglecting to ask the name of the job seeker.
Is the protagonist literally stuck in a time loop, doomed to do this job forever (now her greatest fear)? Is that herself on the other end of the line? Was it herself answering the phone in the very beginning?
We’re free to read it either way, I think! And the story works either way. Whether the other party is literally her, someone like her was doing this job before and someone like her will be doing it after. We have glimpsed the whole cycle and understand that it can continue infinitely.
Key takeaway for story creators: To create a simple time loop effect:
Have your character’s entry into the superstructure mirror their only possible way out,
Require someone new to enter the story in order for them to exit,
Leave us a little unclear whether that someone “new” is truly someone “different.”