“Kill Hitler”
by Rachel Marvin-Borger
Time travel captures the imagination. From fantastical rescues to missions to rewrite history to comedic loops that imprison the protagonist, time travel stories are everywhere-- spanning across many genres with varying tones, levels of seriousness, and reliance on tropes.
Typically there is only one “correct” answer to the question: what would you do if you could go back in time and change history? That answer is ”killI Hitler.” I take issue with one major assumption that many books and movies make about time travel: That it is possible to influence or change the past to effect a different future. The premise is that it is possible for someone to go back in time, insert an action into the course of history, and suddenly the future will be different. This framework is irksome to me simply because if a person traveled in time and carried out a particular action in the past, then that would have taken place the first time-- at that point in history. If you were going to have gone back in time and “killed Hitler,” you would have done so already.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is an example of a time travel story in which the actions of the protagonist from the future are enacted in the world from the very first time that the protagonist reaches that moment in history. Future Harry and Hermione impact the world of the past initially. Their actions in the past bring about the future. They don't alter the future and create some new timeline. They impact the world in the first place.
Recently while watching the TV adaptation of Stephen King's 11.22.63, I encountered another time travel story element that irks me.The protagonist is given a series of sports statistics in order to profit from sports gambling in the past. He has the record of the scores and the winners of games and matches. We're expected to believe that those results will be the same while the protagonist works his way through time living in the past. This is too much to be borne. Time travelers would impact sports scores. Sports scores are not like celestial events that hurtle on regardless of our piddling about. Sport scores are very specific snapshots. All of time and space have created the mix for whatever will emerge.
How many instances can you identify where a single moment changed your life? A car crash? The conception of a child? A chance meeting with a future lover or friend?
You matter and your actions have impacts. All you do has implications for this world-- so much more broad than just your experience of your impact and influence. Everything you do has far reaching implications. What we do in the present brings the future into being. We are co-constructers of the world we will all inhabit.
We cannot predict the exact indirect effects of our every maneuver. It's true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. However, I don't think the inverse claim is true. The road to heaven is not paved with evil intentions. So while we cannot tread with constant trepidation, fearful of what consequences our actions will unleash-- unbeknownst to us-- we ought to tread with reverence. We have the responsibility and privilege of spreading as much love and goodness in the world as we can manage.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)
