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“Times and Distance Overcome”

America is known as the land of opportunities with all its inventions like the railway, the telegraph, and the electric light bulb. All with their own extraordinary story with their ups and downs, but they were completed because of people believing in “The American Dream”. The telephone that is mentioned in this text is no exception. “Time and Distance overcome”, from 2008, written by Eula Biss, describes the challenges the telephone faced in its early- and mid-years: The American people as opposition and the involving of lynching and burning of black men. The installation of the telephone was not done without difficulties, and it was not until the middle of the nineteen century, brighter days were to be seen for the telephone.

The essay’s composition is like a timeline that brightens up important events of the history of the telephone. Every event has its own section, like it has its own importance to the development and installation of the telephone. These sections are split up into three parts; the invention of the telephone, complications with the civilians and racism, and then the author, Eula Biss, rounds of, with his own relationship to the telephone. These sections or events are in some occurrences commented or summarized by a small section, no more than a few lines: “Even now it is an impossible idea, that we are all connected, all of us.” (Page 1 Line 9) This section comments the section written before this and says that even now, after the technology has developed, the telephone is still seen as an impossible invention and idea.

As the essay progresses, the events become with more importance and seriousness. It starts with a presentation of the immediate pivotal point, evolves into th...

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...res along the roadways were beautiful.” (Page 5 Line 138-139) But as he grew older, he soon was to realize that the telephone had a dark and terrifying background, nothing he would ever have thought. But the complications were fought and with time and distance Graham Bell succeeded.

The intension of Eula Biss was it to give an example of the phrase “Time and Distance Overcome”. He wants people to believe that problems are not here to stay, they are here to be solved, and that is just what happened with the telephone; it overcame its problems with the American citizens and its none deliberately association with racism. He also experienced the American Dream himself, by listening to the history about his grandfather, and how he was a helpful and opportunistic worker who believed that wiring a whole country into one was possible with determination and manpower.