Margo Lanagan's White Times

A Triumphant Defeat over Fear
In the book White Times by Margo Lanagan, it is an inspirational story. It tells about problems and challenges that several different characters face. The story takes place in the future at something like a career day in a school, known as occupation testing day in the story. Most does take place in a lab called white times where people can go to and travel through time but also travel to different places. The protagonist of the story is Sheneel Carpenter, a teenage girl that must go see what occupation she will do by being tested. We start off the story seeing Sheneel talking with her friends as she prepares to go to her first place, the White Times lab, while her friends go to other places. When she enters the changing room, she meets a man who puts her in a special suit. After talking with the man, asking him questions, she is then told to jump into a dark hole. While she is inside the “White Time” she begins to see things will she travels through time and to different place.
She begins to realize that this job is not the job that she wanted, so Sheneel is pulled out and is taken out of the suit. She then goes to eat lunch with her friends as she describes her day. After talking with friends, her nerves being to calm down and she began to relax, Sheneel comes to the conclusion that she must overcome this fear or she will never get anywhere, so she sets out to do it again, with a little encouragement from her friends. She begins to head back to the White Times Lab try once again. She goes into the darkness once again and calmly relaxes and she starts to see she two jelly fish like creatures that intrigue her. As she goes closer to see then, they vanish, she realizes she has floated even further out into the darkness and begins to realize that there is not there to