Literature, Life And Change

Literature reflects life; life involves change. Innocence lost is the theme of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. Even characters able to travel into the past are unable to retrieve their lost innocence. At the end of a major sub-series in the Technic History, a trade pioneer crew member realizes that she cannot return to her home as she remembers it because she has changed even if it has not:

Chee: "We can't go home to what we left when we were young; it may still be, but we aren't, nor is the rest of the cosmos...We enjoyed the trader game as long as that lasted." (9)
-copied from here.

We need to read the Time Patrol and the Technic History (at least) once when young, then (at least) once more when we have had enough time to experience some life changes. Maybe Anderson's immortals, Hanno and Hugh Valland, achieve a mental equilibrium where they no longer regret loss?

Delirium, one of Neil Gaiman's seven Endless, has the same experience of change as mortals:

"Delirium stands in Dream's Gallery, waiting for his return. Remembering:
"The moment she realized what was happening, that the universe was changing, that she was growing up or at least growing older...
"She was no longer Delight, and the blossoms had already begun to fall in her domain, becoming smudged and formless colors, and she had no one to talk to..."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Brief Lives (New York, 1994), p. 20 (see image).

I have quoted the contents of the first three captions, which are illegible in the image. The concluding three captions read:

"Then he said, 'Del, things are changing.'
"She knew it was true.
"And there was nothing she could do about it."