TIME TRAVEL AS A TRAGIC EXPERIENCE IN “BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD” BY TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI

Abstract

The present paper examines the motif of time travel in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold through Aristotle’s concept of the tragic. The analysis explores how the impossibility of changing the past transforms the return to previous events not into a means of altering reality, but into an experience leading the characters toward self-knowledge, catharsis, and reconciliation with what has already happened. Particular attention is given to the categories of muthos, ethos, peripeteia, and anagnorisis, through which the novel constructs its tragic characters and narrative structures.