In Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” (1931), the theme that Dali is expressing is that time isn’t as important as many people think, and everyone should live life ignoring time. In the paining, there are three clocks that appear to be melted, along with a sleeping animal, with one of the clocks melting over it, as well as another clock that is orange and has bugs crawling over it. One of the clocks is melting on top of a tree. In the background, we can see the ocean and brightly colored rocks. These rocks being brightly colored are meant to show the beauty of nature, as it isn’t corrupted by time. This painting is meant to symbolize the importance of time, how it controls people’s lives, and how nature goes on without paying any attention to time. In today’s capitalistic society, people’s lives revolve around time, as if it is the only thing that matters. People feel like they have to do everything in a hurry, and live their lives in a rush against time, in order to get all of their tasks done. Dali, however, tries to show us that time isn’t important, as shown by the clocks being melted and bent, along with the animal sleeping in peace. In “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali, Dali contrasts capitalistic time with natural, rhythmic, cyclical time to demonstrate our relationship to busyness in modern society.

Today’s society, especially in America, is revolved around time. The role that time plays in people’s lives is immense, and it is detrimental to people. Time is associated with money, work, and even relaxation/ vacation. As Caroline Butler explains, “For Americans, time is a commodity. It can be saved, spent, invested, and wasted. Therefore, wasting time is just as bad as wasting money” (Butler). Americans, along with people all over the world, value time so much that they equate time to money, which is ridiculous, especially as the centerpiece of capitalism is money. Time is linked to materialism because of how people care only about the time on clocks, not the time that isn’t measured, such as the time they spend enjoying themselves. In nature, time passes by unnoticed by animals, which allows them to live their lives relatively unbothered. Most people are so bothered by time that they change their whole lives to make more time, which they’ll do more busy work with. Dali is telling us to take a step back from our busy lives, and enjoy life, and all of its beauty. People are always too preoccupied with their lives to see how great life is, and it shows how the society that we live in is much too chaotic, as people have to work 24/7. Dali shows multiple natural objects and animals in the painting to show us what we are missing by not paying attention to nature.

The nature in this painting is portrayed by the bugs crawling over the orange clock, the ocean, the tree with the clock melting over it, the rocks, and the sleeping animal with the clock on it. The rocks that are in the background are brightly colored, which is meant to symbolize the innocence of the rocks, as they simply exist in the background, nothing more. These rocks aren’t corrupted by time being kept, as they were just formed over many years, and don’t worry about time. The meaning of connecting 3 clocks directly to nature in this picture is meant to portray the difference between nature and the capitalistic society that we live in. In the picture, the animal and the bugs are all going about life as normal with the clocks on them or under them, while the is also unbothered by the clock on top of it. This is a message that life can go on just as normal without the obsession of time, which is how we live today in society. Now, everyone is constantly checking the time and planning their life out according to time, and seeing how many things they can do in a certain amount of time. Nature, however, is unfazed by time, as the animals clearly have no interest in the clocks. The animal is sleeping just fine, even with the clock right on top of it. This is meant to signify how we have our alarm clocks when we sleep, because we determine how much sleep is enough by how long we have slept, instead of getting the amount of sleep we need, as the animal is doing. We are so dependent on time that we must wake up at a certain time, while the animal will just wake up whenever it wants to, because it is living life on its own, instead of living on time’s terms. Also, the bugs walking on a clock is meant to show us that time is so insignificant that it is a sufficient home for bugs to live in. The bugs see the clock only as an object that they can live on, instead of seeing it as an all-important thing that we see it as. The way we perceive clocks and time is as the most important thing in life. Many people value time more than they value other people, as they think that the only thing that matters is how much time they have to live, rather than truly enjoying living, which is what the animals in the painting are doing. Finally, the tree is another example of how life goes on with or without time being kept. The tree with the clock on it is existing exactly how it would if there wasn’t a clock draped over it, which is how we should live. We should be unbothered by time, which is a major point in Dali’s painting, and is illustrated by how the animals and the rocks are unbothered by time and the clocks.

For many people, time is something that controls your life. People live their lives with time being a leading factor which decides how they live. People will decide what they want to do based on how much time they have to do something else, or how much time is left in the day. In the painting, Dali shows us that we have to worry less about time, and more about living life. He wants for the viewers of the painting to live life without worrying about little things in life, such as time, and instead he wants us to enjoy living. Dali’s main message is that people don’t live their lives to the fullest due to the restrictions that time puts on them. When people are rushing to accomplish so many different things in a day, they aren’t given enough time to do everything they want to while still being able to enjoy life and just relax. Dali is telling us to take more time out of our days for ourselves, to do what we are passionate about, instead of what we have to do. The impact that time has on people is very evident in today’s society, with everyone rushing to complete all of their tasks in as little time as possible. The capitalistic economy that we have plays a large role in this, as people want to make as much money as possible, so they rush to get all of their daily chores done, and don’t get to sit back and enjoy life. Dali’s painting makes us aware of how time controls us, and also shows us how unimportant it is.