Richard McGuire's *Here* is a graphic novel that explores the passage of time through the unchanging perspective of a single location. It depicts billions of years of history, showcasing geologic time in contrast to human history.
The novel juxtaposes sweeping geologic changes with more specific, personal moments occurring in the same location. The use of non-linear timelines emphasizes the fluidity of time, presenting multiple moments as simultaneously real. The novel’s vast timescale challenges common human perceptions of time’s linearity and significance.
*Here* ultimately offers a unique and thought-provoking exploration of time's vastness and the human experience within its grand scheme.
Here explores how the passing of time appears to a casual observer of the same spot over billions of years. The graphic novel executes this by operating on two different levels: depicting wide-sweeping changes and exploring more specific, personal changes. Some pages in Here depict the corner of the room before the house—or even the human species—existed. Pages 150 and 151 show a view of a desolate landscape in the year 1,000,000 BCE, followed by pages 152 and 153 showing the year 3,000,000,000 BCE. By showing these extreme pre-historic ages, the novel demonstrates the vastness of geologic time, making the moments it depicts in the house appear brief and insignificant by comparison. Even though the majority of the graphic novel occurs in the corner of one room, those moments are essentially a snapshot. By depicting such a vast timescale, the novel challenges perceptions of time that depend on human experiences, emphasizing that the place was there before people and will be there after people as well. Here also depicts the many years of its narratives in non-linear order, creating a sense of fluidity in time. By using frames to show many years on one page, it creates the sense that all these moments happen at once, unobserved by the people in them but real to the space.
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