At the very beginning of this section Poor Tony Krause is withdrawing from heroin and also the grain alcohol that was in the cough medicine he was drinking. Wallace ties Tony directly in with time, which I thought was kinda cool. The excruciating agony that he was going through was extended and Tony's perception of time was completed distorted.
"Time began to take on new aspects for him, now, as Withdrawl progressed. Time began to pass with sharp edges. Its passage in the dark or dimlit stall was like time was being carried by a procession of ants...Byt the second week in the stall time itself seemed the corridor, lightless at either end...after more time time then ceased to move or be moved" (302)
This reminds me slightly of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and how the Mad Hatter "wasted time" which makes Time unhappy.
Personifying time makes Tony's journey so much more painful- watching the minutes march by, one by one. The images Wallace uses are quite powerful, and we know this is more than a boring day in class. Time comes up in other parts of the book, too, to show how our minds can so easily manipulate our conception of the passing of time. The moments we love speed by, while when we're in pain time creeps past.
But the best is when Tony discovers that his waste is time- "Then at some point he realized: time had become the shit itself: Poor Tony had become an hourglass: time moved through him now; he ceased to exist apart from its jagged-edged flow" Which is a fairly complex thought for someone who is going insane and extremely sick.