Can you imagine a world without telephones? No, you couldn’t, could you? Technology is a huge part of our society today and especially telephones. We do not think of telephones as a bad thing, quite the opposite. Telephones give us the opportunity to communicate with people all over the world. But what most of us don’t consider is that the invention of telephones also had a horrible consequence for a lot of black people.
The essay “Time and Distance Overcome” is written by Eula Biss and it focuses on the racial actions and lynching of black people committed by white people in the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.
The essay is written in chronological order and is divided into three parts. Even though, the three parts have the same main topic, telephones, a very different approach and mood to the topic are shown in the parts.
The first part begins with a short introduction to the topic, telephones. She introduces the essay with the question from The New York World:
“Of what use is such an invention?” (p. 1, l. 1)
In this way, she captures the reader’s interest because of two things. First, telephones and technology are very up to date and therefore the topic is relevant to us. Second, the question is kind of ironic to us nowadays because the telephone is so necessary to the most of us.
Eula Biss takes her starting point in the invention of the telephone back in 1876. Alexander Graham Bell was the man behind the invention and even though we cannot imagine it, the rest of the population did not welcome his idea.
Because of the people’s dissatisfaction, they started the so-called “War on Telephone Poles”, which was about people trying to stop the telephone companies from raising telephone poles.
“Homeowners and business owners were sawing them down, or defending their sidewalks with rifles.” (p. 2, l. 28)
The first part of the essay is based on the history of the telephone and how it has developed from being disliked to being declared as “one of the greatest events since creation” (p. 2, l. 1)
The mood is neutral as most of it is just information about the invention of the telephone and examples from the “War on Telephone Poles” and since we see telephones as a good invention, the mood is also quiet good.
Moving on to the second part of the essay, the mood changes dramatically. Starting with:
“In 1898, in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole.”
(p. 3, l. 63.)
The good mood is now turned into a horrifying mood with a steam of racial tragedies, example after example, as black people were lynched from telephone poles.
A lot of sentences have the same structure. They begin with:
“…a black man was charged with…” (l. 84, 100)
And end with:
“…was hanged from a telephone pole.” (l. 84, 87, 100)
The repetitions underline time after time the seriousness of the tragedies and the telephone that previously was seen as a positive invention is in the second part of the essay seen as a negative and awful invention.
However, the invention of the telephone is not directly mentioned in the second part, it is still, between the lines, ironically blamed as the reason for the death of many black men because if the telephone wasn’t created there wasn’t any telephone poles. (p. 3, l. 91-94)
Eula Biss compares the way the dead men are hanging with flags:
“They hung like flags in the still air.” (p. 4, l. 117)
The American flag is in general a very strong and proud symbol and by comparing it with the death of so many black people it becomes a contrast to what it otherwise symbolize and stands for – the diversity.
As a result of the changing view on the topic, the reader is left with a feeling of confusion because the first two parts of the essay are not completely connected with each other aside from the topic.
Lastly, the third part is a conclusion and it sums up what the story actually is about. The essay makes sense when you read the final part and the narrator is now turned into a first person narrator:
“When I was young, I believed that…” (p. 5, l. 138) and “Now, I tell my sister…” (p. 5, l. 142)