A Very Hungry Week: Challenges of Timekeeping in the Anthropocene

Modern human modes of timekeeping such as the clock and calendar conceive of time as uniform and stable, attributes that can obscure the multiplicity and instability of natural temporal processes and cycles. Because of this, some ecocritics argue we must understand time itself as a form of power that renders intra- and cross-species relations in and out of sync, and ask who is given agency through our temporal depictions, who is denied it, and how we might approach time otherwise (e.g. Nixon; Haraway; Huebener). With these ecological stakes in mind, this article will consider how Eric Carle’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969) attempts cross-species temporal alignment through mapping the caterpillar’s process of becoming onto the days of the week. Attending both to the material structure of Carle’s book, which depicts the days of the week as frozen and calculable slices that are nevertheless uneven and penetrable, as well as to the cultural presuppositions implicit in the modern week itself, I outline how The Very Hungry Caterpillar highlights key problems of translating environmental processes into human modes of timekeeping. I then suggest what environmental insights The Very Hungry Caterpillar can provide for considering the unique temporalities of other-than-human beings during a period of climate upheaval.