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
Saturday, June 3, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36). Clare watches Henry as he unpacks the groceries. He pulls a box of condoms from the bag and tells her he thinks they need to stop trying for a baby. He expresses his fear that the next time she has a miscarriage, she will die; he can’t keep doing something that might end in her death. Clare walks out to the garden. She looks toward the corner where roses are growing, knowing the bodies of their miscarried children are buried there. She knows they will successfully have a child, though Henry doesn’t. She hopes their baby will come soon.
Henry’s reasoning for why he and Clare should stop trying for a baby is sound and reflects his growing maturity—he’s seen how significantly his condition already affects Clare and doesn’t want to cause her even more pain. Clare knows that she and Henry will have a baby because of the information future-Henry gave her in the previous chapter.
Themes
Friday, June 9, 2000/November 19, 1986 (Henry is 36, Clare is 15). Without consulting Clare, Henry has decided to get a vasectomy. While he waits in the doctor’s office for his procedure, he tries to dampen his guilt for lying to Clare. His name is eventually called, but when he stands up, he is transported in time to the Meadow. He dresses in the clothes Clare left in the box. He can tell from the T-shirt that Clare is probably around 15. She arrives in the clearing shortly after, but Henry doesn’t feel like talking to her.
Here, readers learn how, exactly, Henry has complicated his and Clare’s ability to conceive: he plans to go behind her back and have a vasectomy, not wanting to harm Clare or to feel guilty about passing down his condition to their child. But his dishonesty toward Clare undercuts his attempt at self-care, and it seems as though the guilt he feels for going behind her back has triggered a time-traveling episode.
Themes
Clare presses Henry, and he admits that they are fighting in the present. He tells her that he was doing something behind her back and the stress caused him to time travel. Clare wants to know what they are arguing about, but Henry refuses to tell her. She slaps him in anger. Henry, feeling numb, asks her to hit him again. She begs him to tell her more, biting his hand hard when he doesn’t. In response, Henry kisses her “roughly,” which makes her cry because it was their first kiss. Henry apologizes and kisses her as sweetly as he can.
Clare, at 15, lacks the context to know what Henry is talking about when he claims that he is doing something behind her back in the future. Her anger her frustration at him intentionally withholding information from him. It is a regular feature of the couple’s relationship that each has—and strategically withholds—foreknowledge from the other. This is one more thing that prevents them from existing together in the here and now, and it creates distance between them. The kiss they share in this scene is also rather complicated, and it doesn’t reflect well on Henry. Though he's become a better man in the years since he and Clare have been together in the present, he still lets impulse and emotion dictate his behavior. Here, for instance, he lets his stress and anger guide him to engage in physical intimacy with Clare, who at this point is underage.
Themes
Friday, June 9, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36). Back in the present, Clare notices both Henry’s distraction and his bandaged hand. When she joins him in their bedroom, he asks her if she remembers the first time they kissed. Clare responds that she does, and Henry apologizes. She asks him what he was so upset about that day, but Henry still doesn’t want to tell her. Clare asks him if he went to get a vasectomy, having seen the note he made about the appointment. Henry tells her he tried to but disappeared before he could. Clare, knowing that she’ll eventually have a baby either way, tells him to go through with the procedure if he wants to. He does four weeks later—on the same day that Clare finds out she is pregnant.
Henry continues to withhold information from Clare, even though this is what caused their fight in the previous scene. Clare, meanwhile, withholds information about her eventual pregnancy from Henry. Even in moments where the couple is fortunate enough to be physically in the same place at the same time, the secrets they keep from each other prevent them from being in the here and now psychologically. Meanwhile, the story builds intrigue as readers are left to wonder how Clare manages to become pregnant despite Henry’s unceasing efforts to prevent the pregnancy from happening.
Themes
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