Basic Trope: A physical or personal manifestation of a character's remaining lifespan.
- Straight: Alice is terminally ill, and her Soap Opera Disease is getting worse every day as summer turns to fall, and especially as the leaves begin to drop off the tree outside her window. She experiences A Death in the Limelight as the last dead leaf breaks off and floats away.
- Exaggerated: There actually is an hourglass right on Alice's bedside table.
- Downplayed:
- The tree outside Alice's window drops its leaves to indicate how long it'll be until Alice's disease worsens, but it doesn't kill her.
- The tree is barely ever shown, and even when it is, is obscured by a number of other things, making it unnoticed by all but the most observant viewers.
- Justified:
- There's an Anthropomorphic Personification of Death in the story and he literally has hourglasses for everyone.
- The tree has immense sentimental value to Alice, and it's health either gives her Determination or a Despair Event Horizon at her most vulnerable.
- Inverted:
- Alice is pregnant, and her pregnancy progresses throughout the winter months, until the baby is born when the tree outside her window begins to bud.
- Alice's Soap Opera Disease gets better when the tree buds in the spring.
- Alice is undergoing chemotherapy and is losing her hair. After Alice's last strand of hair falls off her head, the tree outside her window dies.
- Subverted:
- Alice makes it to spring, and it looks as if she is getting better as the tree begins to bud.
- An alarm goes off, and family members panic, but it turns out it's just a reminder for Alice to take her medications (or to expect a nurse or other caregiver to come in with them).
- Alice experiences a Disney Death when the last leaf blows off the tree.
- Double Subverted:
- But the tree outside is a flowering tree, and Alice's health takes a turn for the worse when the petals (or whole flowers) begin to fall, until she dies when the last one drops from the tree.
- But then she dies for real when the first snowfall happens.
- Parodied:
- Alice dies at the end of an Exploding Calendar montage, or Spinning Clock Hands gag.
- Alice dies just as the microwave for Bob's frozen burrito beeps in the kitchen.
- Alice's alarm clock goes off, but she doesn't wake up. Everyone is really worried...until they remember that Alice is Not a Morning Person.
- Everyone in the world has a tree that dictates how long their lifespan is, growing right outside their windows.
- The tree in question is a fake bonsai tree. (Why it is experiencing leaf drop is not explained.)
- Everything that occurs to the tree somehow fits into a metaphor regarding Alice's health. Bob glues a bunch of leaves to the tree and Alice goes on life support, then Bob and Charlie carve their names in a heart onto the tree and Alice suddenly becomes concerned about how they'll get along with their lives when she dies... and then Dana obliviously chops down the tree, causing Alice to explode into Ludicrous Gibs.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's health starts to improve in early spring, decline in late spring, improve in the summer, decline in the fall, improve in the winter, and finally she dies in early spring.
- Averted:
- Alice is in perfect health.
- Alice lives in a climate where the seasons change subtly at best.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: Alice's parents donated the tree to what the hospital calls their "Life Garden" or "Hope Garden" on the day of her birth, with dated and labeled plaques.
- Invoked: Alice's doctor gives her an estimate of how much time she has left, that just happens to coincide with the changing seasons.
- Exploited: Alice and the tree have Synchronization and use it to heal or harm her by healing or harming the tree.
- Defied: Alice doesn't watch the clock, or the tree outside her window. Instead, she just focuses on making the most of the time she has left and spending that time with her family and/or friends, as much as her health allows.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Death's Hourglass
