Book Cover Essay for Borderliners

Book Cover
The book cover that I have chosen to create is the best choice for Borderliners because it collectively displays all of the critical themes prevalent in the story. The title is neatly written across the top of the front cover and the author’s full name is legible on the bottom of the book cover. In the center of the cover is a big ball of energy that represents time. I have drawn it as a large mass of energy swirling around locked with a key. The school is at the top left hand corner of the mass of time. Below the title are two clocks showing that time is all around us. In the lower right hand of the cover there is a blade representing time cutting across the universe in its course towards infinity. And in the lower left corner of the cover there are the three main characters of the book, Peter Katarina, and August standing in the blackness surrounded by nothing. The blue of the background is representing the sky because of its infinite, endless look. The great of mass of time is appropriately situated in the center of the blue because it keeps on regardless of the human race.
I chose to draw the mass of time in the center of the book cover because time is a dominant theme in the story and I felt that it was very important. I wanted to answer the question that was asked in the very first sentence of the book, “What is time?” (3). I tried to create time in my head and what was drawn on the cover is the closest I could come to the picture imagined. There is energy swirling in the ball of time and it is bright, almost a beacon in the blue infiniteness. There is light shining from the mass of time and it is almost godlike because in the book, time controls the universe. Its control is used in the school to regulate the day and to split up the classes. The school bell tower is drawn above the ball of time to symbolize the school’s use of the entity. The “time at Biehl’s academy was absolutely linear,” (225). The school used time to regulate itself and that is why there is a lock across time. The lock is opened by the master key of the school that Peter made a copy of in the book in order to gain entry into headmaster Biehl’s office.
The children of the book are drawn on the cover because they were the main characters. I wanted to include the main characters in my cover; unlike the present cover which is solely a picture of a key and on an orange and black background. The children are looking up at the mass of time and marveling at its beauty. Time in the book controls life like a God. They are looking up at the mass of time as if they were worshipping a God.
Moving to the right of the children there is a blade that is cutting along a line that represents the borderline that the children are on in the school. It can also be interpreted as linear time which is infinite and goes on forever in both directions. “Linear time has to be envisaged as a huge, endless knife blade scraping its way across the universe, and drawing it along with it.” (221). This is where the idea of the blade comes from and why it is leaving a black trail behind it which represents the past while it cuts across the borderline.