Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo
Temporality and the Uneven Experience of Apocalypse in “The Marrow Thieves” and “The Outer Harbour”

October 28, 2026

Dossier: “The Future of Threat is Forever”: Canadian Apocalyptic Fiction

Temporality and the Uneven Experience of Apocalypse in The Marrow Thieves and The Outer Harbour

By Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo

The apocalypse is often imagined as a sudden moment of destruction that affects everyone at once, clearly separating the past from a ruined future. This view assumes that collapse happens as a single, visible event that can be easily identified in time. However, this conception changes when catastrophe is considered in relation to time rather than spectacle, since not all forms of destruction appear suddenly or dramatically. In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon challenges this idea by introducing the concept of “slow violence,” which he defines as a form of destruction that unfolds gradually, often invisibly, and over long periods of time (2). This shifts the apocalypse away from a single event and instead presents it as something ongoing, etched in everyday life, and experienced unevenly. Fredric Jameson extends this perspective in “The End of Temporality,” where he argues that contemporary life is increasingly defined by a collapse of historical depth, leaving individuals stuck in an endless present that lacks meaningful connection to both the past and the future (708). When time functions in this way, the possibility of change is uncertain, since individuals struggle to imagine moving beyond their current situation. Within this context, apocalyptic narratives often rely on journeys to explore how characters live through critical conditions. Through Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and Wayde Compton’s The Outer Harbour, this essay argues that journeys reveal contrasting experiences of time in apocalyptic contexts, as movement becomes transformative in Dimaline’s work but repetitive and stagnant in Compton’s.

Spiralic Temporality and Purposeful Movement in The Marrow Thieves

In The Marrow Thieves, the act of travelling happens to be meaningful. Since it is shaped by a specific way of understanding time, it allows persistence within an ongoing apocalyptic condition. Dislocation is not experienced as aimless wandering, but as a purposeful path that unfolds within a broader temporal framework. From the beginning of the novel, Frenchie’s journey is defined by vulnerability and immediate danger, as he is forced to flee after his brother is taken by the Recruiters, leaving him alone in a world where collapse has already reshaped everyday life. His attempt to survive is driven by urgency and fear, captured in his description of climbing a tree to hide: “I shimmied up, belly to the wood, butt pulled down tight” (Dimaline 11). At this stage, his actions remain reactive, fragmented, and are reduced to immediate escape within a hostile environment. This situation changes once he encounters Miigwans’s group. His path becomes part of a collective effort that provides both direction and meaning, allowing extension beyond the present moment. The group consistently travels north, turning escape into a structured journey that resists the disorientation produced by collapse. This shift shows that survival in an apocalyptic world relies not only on physical displacement, but on the framework that gives it coherence as well. Thus, trajectory gains significance when it is oriented toward a future that remains imaginable, even within conditions of destruction, rather than limited to avoiding immediate danger. This process is reinforced through storytelling, which connects spatial progression to continuity across time and prevents the group from being fully absorbed by the chaos surrounding them. When Miigwans shares “Story Part One,” he situates the group within a history that extends beyond their immediate situation (Dimaline 28), allowing them to understand their place within a larger continuum. Laura Maria De Vos defines spiralic temporality as a model in which past, present, and future remain interconnected (2), a structure that allows change to emerge even in unstable conditions. Within this framework, the past actively shapes present action and guides future direction, ensuring that the apocalypse does not fully sever temporal continuity. The group’s journey reflects this logic, as each step forward carries historical knowledge while opening up new possibilities to survive. Kyle Powys Whyte’s concept of collective continuance further clarifies this dynamic by emphasizing that survival depends on the ability of communities to sustain life across generations (602). The group embodies this principle through cooperation and shared responsibility, transforming endurance into a collective process rather than an individual struggle. This connection between time, memory, and community is also expressed through the concept of dreams, the novel’s backbone. As Miigwans explains, “Dreams get caught in the webs woven in your bones. That’s where they live, in that marrow there” (Dimaline 24), suggesting that, even in an apocalyptic world, the body carries continuity. Protecting it ensures that both life and knowledge can endure. In this way, change in The Marrow Thieves depends on how time is structured within collapse, rather than on physical mobility alone.

Slow Violence and Survivance

With that said, the novel also makes it clear that survival must be actively defended within an unequal world shaped by extraction and colonial power. The setting of The Marrow Thieves is not defined by a single catastrophic event, but by an ongoing condition of environmental collapse and systemic violence that affects populations differently. Nixon’s concept of slow violence, which describes forms of destruction that unfold gradually and often remain invisible, aligns with Dimaline’s story (2). In the novel, this violence appears through the loss of dreams among the non-Indigenous population and the harvesting of Indigenous marrow, a process that turns specific bodies into resources and extends colonial exploitation into the future. Indigenous communities are targeted in particular, revealing that the apocalypse is not experienced in the same way by everyone, but is shaped by historical and political inequalities that determine whose lives are protected and whose are made extractable. Survival then cannot rely only on structure, as it also requires forms of resistance that challenge the system itself. Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance, developed in Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence, helps clarify that. He defines survivance as “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion” and insists that it is “the continuance of stories” rather than passive endurance (1). This emphasis on presence reframes survival as action. Thus, the character of Minerva concretizes that idea. When she is captured by the Recruiters, the narrative represents her as someone who disrupts the system from within:

The Recruiters would later be identified through dental records. Minerva hummed and drummed out an old song on her flannel thighs throughout it all. But when the wires were fastened to her own neural connectors, and the probes reached into her heartbeat and instinct, that’s when she opened her mouth. That’s when she called on her blood memory, her teachings, her ancestors. That’s when she brought the whole thing down. (Dimaline 172)

Minerva’s resistance emerges from the very source the system seeks to exploit. She draws on memory and ancestral knowledge, turning them into a force that interrupts the process of extraction. In this moment, the past loses its symbolic nature and enters the present as an active force that reshapes the outcome of events. Her actions refuse the role imposed on her and expose the limits of a system that depends on control over bodies and histories. This moment’s impact extends beyond her death, as the group continues forward while carrying the consequences of what she has done. Resistance therefore accumulates across time and across individuals. This reinforces the idea that survival in the novel depends both on structure and on action, on the ability to move forward and on the capacity to challenge the conditions that threaten that movement. The apocalypse, then, does not operate as a universal experience. For those grounded in spiralic temporality and collective continuance, it remains open to interruption and transformation. For those positioned within systems of extraction, it persists as an ongoing condition that shapes the present and limits the future.

Repetition and the Everyday in The Outer Harbour

While the northward journey in The Marrow Thieves is shaped by direction, memory, and communal purpose, movement in The Outer Harbour unfolds within a different form of chaos: urban, normalized, and embedded in everyday life. The characters traverse the city extensively, yet their paths do not accumulate into a coherent journey, since their doings remain detached from both intention and futurity. This suggests an apocalyptic condition that no longer appears as visible destruction, but as a gradual erosion of meaning within ordinary life. A night of substance use highlights that, when Riel and his companions leave the apartment and wander through Vancouver, their route is described in precise spatial detail: “They leave Frances there and go sleeplessly down the apartment stairwell, on past the intersection of Broadway and Fraser, and all the way up Main to Terminal, west to Pacific Avenue, and through Yaletown, till they finally reach Sunset Beach” (Compton). At first glance, the accumulation of locations suggests progression, as if the characters were advancing toward something. However, this apparent succession ultimately reveals the absence of direction, since the journey lacks any purpose that could give it meaning or allow it to produce change. Unlike The Marrow Thieves, which displays clear continuity, this trajectory unfolds within a system that absorbs movement into reiteration, reinforcing disorientation rather than resisting it. Henri Lefebvre’s The Everyday and Everydayness clarifies this dynamic by showing how repetition structures modern life in ways that neutralize transformation. He explains that “the everyday is situated at the intersection of two modes of repetition: the cyclical, which originates in nature, and the linear, which comes from the social organization of time” (10). In Compton’s case, the characters are caught within a linear form of repetition that lacks the regenerative quality associated with natural cycles, which are central in Dimaline’s work. Their wandering through the city does not generate new possibilities but extends into the “monotony of the same actions and the same gestures” (Lefebvre 10). Even as they move across different neighbourhoods, their experience remains unchanged, suggesting that the apocalypse here is not a sudden rupture but a condition that organizes life through repetition. Lefebvre further argues that the everyday operates as a deep structure that produces passivity and limits the ability of individuals to act beyond the systems that contain them (11). This shows in Riel’s perspective, as he observes his roommates with a sense of “twitching despair,” watching them “grinding their jaws, chewing on nothing” (Compton). This image conveys a form of activity that continues without purpose, where physical motion persists but fails to generate meaning. Life is reduced to mechanical patterns, stripped of the “prodigious diversity” that once defined everyday experience (Lefebvre 7). In this sense, the characters’ circulation through the city reflects a broader condition in which individuals remain active yet unable to transform their circumstances, revealing a desolate state in which collapse has been fully integrated into routine. The trajectory through the city therefore shows that movement can persist without leading anywhere, since it is not placed in a temporal framework that allows for progression. The characters’ drug-fuelled experiences and nocturnal wandering function as temporary disruptions, yet they fail to alter the underlying structure of their lives, which quickly reasserts itself once the moment passes. As a result, they continue to move yet reinforce the situation they attempt to escape. Survival cannot be reduced to physical displacement alone, since movement that lacks temporal direction becomes indistinguishable from paralysis. Without a connection to memory or a meaningful orientation toward the future, dislocation remains trapped within what Lefebvre describes as the “colossal technical means” and “terrifying dangers” of a mode of life that resists change (11). This reveals a structure that sustains immobility, not a path toward transformation.

Slow Death and the Foreclosure of the Future

However, the apocalyptic condition in The Outer Harbour does not only operate through patterns of activity, but also through cumulative effects on the body and mind. The characters’ routines, shaped by substance use, insomnia, passive observation, and cyclical social interactions, do not simply repeat over time but accumulate as exhaustion, producing a steady erosion of physical and emotional capacity. Even when they leave the apartment and wander through the city, their experiences fail to generate renewal and instead deepen this sense of fatigue, suggesting that spatial dislocation does little to interrupt the temporal logic that governs their lives. The apartment itself becomes central to this condition, not merely as a site of repetition, but as a space where time seems to fold inward, creating an atmosphere of ongoing exhaustion rather than movement toward change. Lauren Berlant’s concept of slow death helps to understand this process, as she describes the gradual wearing out of populations under structural pressures that blur the distinction between living and declining (754). In The Outer Harbour, this wearing out takes shape through the characters’ never-ending detachment and fatigue, where both body and mind are steadily drained without the intervention of a crisis that might force transformation. Their condition unfolds slowly, making deterioration difficult to perceive in the moment, yet impossible to escape, since each repetition leaves a trace that accumulates. Therefore, apocalypse appears as a continuous process that reshapes everyday life from within, producing erosion rather than rupture. The collapse of futurity further intensifies deterioration, removing the possibility of imagining alternatives and confining the characters within an extended present. Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? sharpens this idea by arguing that contemporary capitalism produces a widespread inability to conceive of different futures, effectively closing off the future as a space of possibility (8). Riel’s academic crisis reflects this condition with particular clarity, as he becomes aware of his failure while remaining unable to envision a different path, captured in the statement, “If he flunks out, he has no alternative plan” (Compton). This awareness without action aligns with what Fisher names “reflexive impotence,” a process where individuals recognize their situation yet feel incapable of altering it (28). The looping words on Riel’s computer screen highlight that:

He opens a program and stares at its grey-framed whiteness, thinking about writing. He stares and breathes until the screen saver finally blips back on, scrolling words that he punched in seventeen months earlier. The scrolling text says to him, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY… GET OUT OF PORT CORBUS. (Compton)

Although the message suggests urgency and direction, its repetition gradually empties it of force, transforming it into a reminder of paralysis rather than a call to action. What emerges from this pattern is the absence of change alongside a narrowing of possibility. To put it into perspective: repetition produces exhaustion, exhaustion produces inaction, and inaction reinforces the conditions that prevent transformation. Therefore, dislocation in The Outer Harbour does not just fail to generate change but actively contributes to a condition in which evolution is increasingly impossible.

Two Temporalities of Apocalypse

When read together, The Marrow Thieves and The Outer Harbour show that movement alone does not determine survival in an apocalyptic world. What matters is the way time is experienced, and more importantly, who has access to a form of time that still allows for change. In Dimaline’s narrative, the journey unfolds within a temporality that keeps the past, present, and future connected, allowing displacement to carry meaning and to contribute to survival. In Compton’s narrative, by contrast, dislocation takes place within a temporal structure defined by repetition and inertia, where movement continues but fails to produce any lasting effect. The contrast is not simply between motion and stillness, but between two different ways of inhabiting time within conditions of collapse. This difference is particularly significant when considered through an intersectional lens, since the apocalypse does not affect all individuals equally. In The Marrow Thieves, the apocalyptic condition is directly tied to colonial histories and environmental destruction, where Indigenous bodies are targeted through systems of extraction. Yet within this uneven distribution of violence, the characters retain access to forms of memory, relationality, and cultural continuity that allow them to resist and adapt. Kyle Powys Whyte’s concept of collective continuance helps clarify this dynamic, as it emphasizes the importance of community-based practices in sustaining life across generations (603). Miigwans’s group moves together, shares knowledge, and supports one another, ensuring that their journey remains oriented toward a future that, although uncertain, is still imaginable. Then, movement becomes transformative, as it is embedded within relationships that extend across time. On the other hand, this relational dimension is largely absent in The Outer Harbour. In fact, the apocalyptic condition takes a different form that is less visible but equally constraining. Rather than being marked by a clear external threat, collapse is internalized within everyday life, where repetition and exhaustion gradually limit the characters’ ability to act. Mark Fisher’s concept of reflexive impotence adds to that, as it describes a condition in which individuals recognize their situation but remain unable to change it (28). Riel embodies this dynamic as he continues to navigate the city while remaining temporally fixed, unable to translate awareness into action. This suggests that movement, in itself, does not generate transformation, since it depends on the conditions that give it direction and meaning. The contrast between the two texts becomes even clearer when their respective conceptions of time are placed side by side. De Vos’ “spiralic temporality” describes a structure in which repetition does not trap individuals but instead allows for renewal, as each return to the past contributes to future survival (2). This model explains how the cycles in The Marrow Thieves are productive, as memory strengthens the group’s ability to endure and adapt within an ongoing apocalypse. By contrast, Fredric Jameson’s collapse of temporality describes a condition in which time is reduced to an endless present, severed from both historical continuity and future possibility (708). Eventually, repetition does not lead anywhere, and time fails to accumulate meaning in The Outer Harbour. Reiteration itself is not the problem. Its effects depend on the structure of time in which it operates. In one case, it generates continuity and transformation. In the other, it produces stagnation and exhaustion. That distinction essentially reshapes how the apocalypse must be understood. Rather than appearing as a single, shared moment of destruction, it emerges as a temporal condition that is experienced differently depending on one’s position within systems of power, history, and access to futurity. In Dimaline’s work, time remains open enough to allow for resistance, adaptation, and survival, even within conditions of ongoing violence. In Compton’s work, time closes in on itself, preventing change and confining individuals to a present that cannot lead elsewhere. Movement, therefore, does not guarantee transformation but only becomes meaningful when supported by a temporal and relational structure that allows life to continue as something more than endurance.

This essay began with a simple question: if characters keep moving in an apocalyptic world, does that movement still lead somewhere? What the comparison between The Marrow Thieves and The Outer Harbour reveals is that the answer has less to do with movement itself than with the conditions surrounding it. In one case, movement allows characters to carry memory, build relationships, and continue forward. In the other, movement exists without direction, repeating the same patterns until nothing changes. Seen from this perspective, the apocalypse no longer appears as a distant or sudden event but as something much closer. In The Outer Harbour, collapse is already part of everyday life, where exhaustion, repetition, and limited possibilities shape how people live. In The Marrow Thieves, that same collapse exists, but it does not function in the same way because characters still find ways to connect the past to the future. The key difference lies in whether movement leads somewhere, or whether it keeps returning to the same place.

Works Cited

About the Contributor

Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo

Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo

Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo is an emerging artist and writer with a transdisciplinary background. Originally from Antananarivo, Madagascar, and based in Canada since 2023, she is pursuing studies in the arts and social sciences at the University of Moncton, where she plans to graduate in May 2027. Her practice blends writing, music, and audiovisual...

Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo is an emerging artist and writer with a transdisciplinary background. Originally from Antananarivo, Madagascar, and based in Canada since 2023, she is pursuing studies in the arts and social sciences at the University of Moncton, where she plans to graduate in May 2027. Her practice blends writing, music, and audiovisual media to bring her professional and personal projects to fruition. She is particularly interested in contemporary issues, deep conceptualization, and the way ideas take shape through sound and image.

Photo credit: Idealy Tiffany Rafidinarivo
Cite this document:
Rafidinarivo, Idealy Tiffany. « Temporality and the Uneven Experience of Apocalypse in “The Marrow Thieves” and “The Outer Harbour” ». Discours/e: Digital Catalogue for Atlantic Literatures and Cultures, 28/10/2026. https://discours-e.ca/en/2026/10/28/temporality-and-the-uneven-experience-of-apocalypse-in-the-marrow-thieves-and-the-outer-harbour/, consulté le 29/10/2026.
Université de Moncton

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