Conclusion
- Daniel Punday
Pry uses time in a way that enhances the elements in the story. There is little time spent learning how to read the media, and more time spent creating a timeline. Clear instructions allow the reader to use the multimedia elements as a way to elevate the readers understanding of the narrative. Pry’s main character is suffering from PTSD and constantly has unorganized thoughts, confusing reality, from hallucinations. By making the reader spend lots of time organizing the events of the story, the reader is interacting not just with the media, but the PTSD experienced by the books main character. They are not just reading about his PTSD but experiencing it with him.
Device 6 attempts use time to perform a similar function as time in Pry, but does not do it as eloquently. The premise of Device 6 is a puzzle game, but the narrative consists of an experiment that the reader is unaware of until the last chapter. The gaming aspect of the narrative could be considered tests/trials for the experiment, but the puzzles themselves are random and unimaginative. Although the text portion of the narrative is relatively simple where time works similar to that of time in print, considering that the reader spends a significant amount of time with the puzzles, they should have been more developed. The reader is then made to spend time answering random review questions that do not affect the narrative in any way. The time consuming gaming aspect of the story, does not affect the narrative in any way, making its presence useless.