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
Clare expresses the difficulty of being the one who is left alone while her husband, Henry, time travels. To distract herself from worrying about his well-being, she tries to keep herself occupied. Mostly, she has become used to being on her own, though this only makes her love for her husband more intense. As she takes in the minutia around her, she longs for him. She imagines herself like a sea wife long ago, watching the water for her husband to return safely from a long voyage. She understands that Henry’s absences are involuntary, but each second he is away feels infinitely longer. As she waits, she considers the innumerable future moments of waiting she’ll have to endure.
This passage introduces protagonist Clare and provides her perspective on her husband Henry’s time-traveling condition. Clare expresses her frustration and worry by comparing herself to a wife waiting for her sailor to return home, setting up two of the book’s themes (love and absence, and the struggle to be in the present despite anxieties about the past and fears about the unknown future). It also establishes symbol of water in relation to her character. While Clare asserts that she doesn’t hold Henry responsible for his erratic departures, her feelings suggest that his time traveling is a main source of tension in their marriage.
Themes
Henry describes the feeling of time traveling as a moment of distraction from the present. Before he knows it, every material thing around him from the books he was holding to the clothes he was wearing are gone. Then he ends up alone and naked. He knows he could be taken back to his present at any moment, or he could be stuck in this new time for days. He has learned that stealing clothes and other items he needs is the easiest way to survive in the meantime. Lying is difficult and sometimes lands him in jail.
The narration shifts to Henry, who gives his thoughts on his condition. His description of being pulled randomly from his present existence brings up the topic of free will, a subject the novel explores in depth. While Henry doesn’t like having to break laws during his travels, he knows he must survive any way he can. He puts his own security before abstract morality, demonstrating his self-regard.
Themes
At other times, Henry feels as though he is dropping from a very great height—that his body is falling away from him faster than he can keep up with it until he loses the feeling in his limbs. Sometimes when he lands in the new time, he really does fall, injuring his naked body. Often witnesses calls the police, who Henry then has to evade. In the middle of these tense moments, he’ll suddenly turn up back in the present, still hurt, with Clare looking at him with a worried expression.
This passage highlights the primarily negative repercussions of Henry’s condition. Not only is it perilous, but it also robs him of his dignity and, at times, his freedom. Perhaps hardest of all, though, is seeing the negative effect his condition has on Clare. She is powerless to follow him and can only wait until he returns.
Themes
The moment of travel can also be “euphoric” and “sublime” before Henry is wracked with nausea, then he’s thrown into a different location in a different time. Time traveling feels to Henry like the kind of nightmare where you find yourself naked in front of the class or trapped taking a test on material you don’t know. It forces him to lie and steal and run and scare others with his presence; his behavior is the worst part of this bad dream, because it makes him feel like a different man than he truly is.
By comparing his episodes to the stuff of nightmares, Henry underscores the lack of agency that his condition leaves him with. All the worst aspects of time traveling and the ways that Henry is forced to respond in order to survive change his sense of identity—and not in a way he is proud of. This continues the novel’s thematic examination of the tension between free will and determinism.
Themes
Get the entire The Time Traveler’s Wife LitChart as a printable PDF.
Henry wonders if there is a way to fight against the pull of time. He wonders if he could stop it if he could hold tightly enough to the present. His “disease,” as he calls it, does have triggers. When Henry is tired, overwhelmed, intoxicated, or confronted with bright light, he is more likely to time travel. But he can also be content, at ease beside Clare in their home, when he is suddenly torn away from her and dropped into the past. He may end up somewhere conspicuous or dangerous or inescapable with nothing to wear and no way to explain himself.
Henry can take care of himself, practicing mindfulness and abstaining from intoxicating substances that seem to trigger his time-traveling episodes, but this only gives him the illusion of control. The fact that Henry can be at home with Clare and still time travel shows how little control he really has over his condition.
Themes
It is ironic to Henry that he is constantly leaving what he most treasures when he travels in time: his home, his wife, and his simple pleasures. Clear images of domestic peace—Clare’s freshly washed hair, an empty library, groceries sitting on the table—haunt him when he’s lost in another time. Mainly, it is Clare he longs for. He imagines her making art or reading or speaking softly to him. He is always forced to leave, and she can do nothing but stay and wait for him to return.
While most of Henry’s commentary on his condition speaks to the darker aspects of his life, this portion of the prologue reveals the things that are most important to Henry: peace, literature, the comforts of his home, and his love for his wife. These are the things he has chosen to devote his time to when he has the power to do so in the present. Being routinely torn from them increases his longing for them, just as Henry’s absence intensifies Clare’s love for him.
Themes
