Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Time Traveler’s Wife, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Here and Now
Love and Absence
Free Will vs. Determinism
Language and Art
Self-Love
Summary
Analysis
Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28). Clare and Henry lie in bed discussing their troubles conceiving and managing a healthy pregnancy. Henry suggests they adopt, but Clare insists that would be “pretending.” She argues that they spend all their time pretending their lives are normal and Henry isn’t in constant danger, and she has no interest in hiding her pain anymore. Henry tries to comfort her, but Clare pushes him away.
Clare’s desire to have a biological child with Henry is fair enough, but her insistence that they’d only be “pretending” to be parents if they were to adopt is rather insensitive and untrue. Still, when she elaborates, explaining that she feels they are constantly pretending that they their life together is normal and devoid of suffering, it indicates that her not wanting to adopt is more a consequence of her frustration with Henry’s condition than a rejection of adoption itself. Though Clare has learned to cope with Henry’s absences throughout all the years they’ve been together, it’s increasingly seeming that her love for him isn’t quite enough to make up for all the pain and uncertainty that Henry’s regular absences cause her.
Themes
Though driving is risky, Henry grabs the keys to their car and drives to the beach. He reflects on their situation as he walks along the pier. He is exhausted by their constant attempts to have a baby and all the death that has surrounded them. He wonders if the miscarriages are a sign that he shouldn’t reproduce. Even so, Henry knows Clare’s obsession with having a baby is not something she will give up. Seeing the specialist Gomez recommended, Amit Montague, has only increased Clare’s determination.
Henry’s doubts about having a baby are a form of self-care. If Clare’s repeat miscarriages are happening due to Henry’s genes, it’s ethically responsible to wonder whether having a baby is a good idea: Henry would be wracked with guilt if their child experienced health setbacks that negatively affected their quality of life because they inherited a genetic condition from him. Though Henry has no control over his condition (and therefore is blameless), he is capable of deciding whether or not he wants to risk passing along his condition to his offspring.
Themes
A time-traveling episode suddenly interrupts Henry’s contemplative walk. He finds himself suddenly in Kimy’s kitchen. Kimy, sensing he is upset, offers him food to comfort him. Henry insists he’s okay. Kimy asks him where he’s coming from and what is happening during that time. She is curious if he and Clare have a baby yet. To change the subject, Henry says he’s hungry after all. As Kimy heats up soup, Henry asks her why she and Mr. Kim never had a baby. She responds that the did have a daughter, Min, who died from leukemia as a child. Henry realizes he met Min while time traveling once. Kimy wonders if Min would have had children if she survived. Henry tells her that he and Clare are doing everything they can to get pregnant.
Learning about the death of Kimy and Mr. Kim’s child perhaps helps Henry feel less alone in his grief. Henry might not be able to change whatever biological or medical issue is making it so difficult for the couple to have a child, but he can control his outlook on the situation, and confiding in Kimy about his struggles might help him to cope with his frustration and sadness.
Themes
Clare has been called to the beach where police divers are looking for Henry after a witness saw him disappear from the pier in the middle of the night. The officers question Clare, who assures them Henry wasn’t trying to hurt himself. As they talk, Henry reappears in the water. When the police ask Henry what he was doing and why he didn’t respond to officers’ calls, Henry tells them he is an insomniac who went swimming with earplugs in. They let him go. On the way home, Clare and Henry exchange apologies.
This passage further underscores the stress and anxiety that Henry’s condition causes Clare. Though Clare remains physically cemented in time, her responsibility to Henry makes it difficult to let her guard down and be in the moment—she must constantly be prepared to drop whatever she’s doing if Henry’s time traveling puts him in a bad situation.
Themes
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Friday, January 14, 2000 (Clare is 28, Henry is 36). Clare and Henry visit Dr. Kendrick’s office. In a conference room, the doctor demonstrates how they have managed to produce time-traveling mice. Henry asks how they did it, and Kendrick explains that splicing Henry’s time-traveling genes was easy enough. They had more difficulty with getting female mice to carry their babies to term because the fetuses would time travel and cause the mothers to hemorrhage to death. Clare can tell Henry is more worried than ever. They tell Dr. Kendrick they’ve also struggled with this. He responds that they solved this issue by suppressing the mother mice’s immune response, which gives Clare renewed hope. Henry is skeptical, but he says nothing when they get home; Clare immediately calls Dr. Montague with the news.
Dr. Kendrick’s research helps explain why Clare has struggled to carry a baby to term. While it’s helpful to finally have at least a partial answer to this mystery, Dr. Kendrick’s findings aren’t entirely positive. While he proposes a possible solution of suppressing Clare’s immune response, his findings about time-traveling mice causing their mothers to hemorrhage to death raises the possibility that a future pregnancy could very well kill Clare. Once more, Henry contemplates the ethics of knowing the risks involved and yet continuing to try for a baby anyway. Increasingly he and Clare aren’t seeing eye to eye about having a baby: though Clare is still hopeful, Henry’s doubt only deepens.
Themes
