11.22.63

“I was no longer in the pantry. I was no longer in Al’s Diner, either. Although there was no door from the pantry to the outside world, I was outside. I was in the courtyard. But it was no longer brick, and there were no outlet stores surrounding it. I was standing on crumbling, dirty cement. Several huge metal receptacles stood against the blank white wall where Your Maine Snuggery should have been. They were piled high with something and covered with sail-size sheets of rough brown burlap cloth. I turned around to look at the big silver trailer which housed Al’s Diner, but the diner was gone.”

Jake goes through the rabbit-hole for the first time and has a surreal moment. The experience is disorienting and confusing because Al did not tell him exactly what was going to happen. This wonder and disbelief will stick with him as he discusses time travel and the possibility of changing the past with Al.

“You can change history, Jake. Do you understand that? John Kennedy can live.”

When Al discusses with Jake the implications of the rabbit-hole, this is how he begins. It is clear Al is excited by this idea. He sees only the good in time travel and the benefits of what they might be able to do. He does not focus on the side effects that could potentially cause trouble. It is this enthusiasm and the idea of becoming a hero that inspire Jake to take on Al’s mission.

“‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked, his voice cracking through about five different registers. If I hadn’t heard the question on my last visit, I wouldn’t have had any idea what he was asking…and although the slur was the same, wasn’t the inflection a little different this time? I wasn’t sure, but I thought so. He’s harmless, but he’s not like anyone else, Al had said. It’s like he knows something. Al thought it was because he happened to be sunning himself near the rabbit-hole at 11:58 in the morning on September 9, 1958, and was susceptible to its influence. The way you can produce static on a TV screen if you run a mixer close to it. Maybe that was it. Or, hell, maybe it was just the booze.”

Upon running into the Yellow Card Man the second time, Jake suspects this man is connected to the rabbit-hole. He wants to believe the man is only a drunk, but instinctively he knows there is more to it than that. However, Jake dismisses his doubts to focus on the mission he has set out for himself. If Jake had listened to his doubts and tried to get more information from the Yellow Card Man, he might have avoided the trouble he gets into later.

“Bevvie-from-the-levee had said she thought the bad times in Derry were over, but the more of it I saw (and the more I felt—that especially), the more I came to believe that Derry wasn’t like other places. Derry wasn’t right. At first I tried to tell myself that it was me, not the town. I was a man out of joint, a temporal Bedouin, and any place would have felt a little strange to me, a little skewed—like the cities that seem so much like bad dreams in those strange Paul Bowles novels. This was persuasive at first, but as the days passed and I continued to explore my new environment, it became less so. I even began to question Beverly Marsh’s assertion that the bad times were over, and imagined (on nights when I couldn’t sleep, and there were quite a few of those) that she questioned it herself. Hadn’t I glimpsed a seed of doubt in her eyes? The look of someone who doesn’t quite believe but wants to? Maybe even needs to? Something wrong. Something bad.”

Once Jake has been in Derry for a while, he finds himself struggling with the atmosphere of the city. Derry feels like a dark, evil place to him. He could not possibly know of the events that took place in Derry in the months before he arrived there—events that Beverly Marsh was involved in—but he senses them suggesting there are more forces at work in this city than just the obstinate past. He will feel this evilness again when he arrives in Dallas, suggesting that places where evil things happen hold on to some of that evil before and after the event.

“Based on Harry’s theme, I had always assumed that I’d have to stop a man swinging the sort of hammer guys kept in their toolboxes. That wasn’t what he had. What he had was a sledgehammer with a twenty-pound head, and he was handling it as if it were a toy.”

Jake admits that he jumped into the rescue of Harry Dunning’s family without doing much research. That comes back to haunt him in several ways, including in this scene. Jake is outmatched and finds himself in a battle he might not win. But he manages to survive, and this gives him the courage and the determination to go back and do it again—and also to save President Kennedy.

“There was no stomach flu. This time I awoke at first light with the most paralyzing headache of my life. A migraine, I supposed. I didn’t know for sure, because I’d never had one. Looking into even dim light produced a sick, rolling thud from the nape of my neck to the base of my sinuses. My eyes gushed senseless tears.”

The past is obdurate. On the morning Jake intends to stop Frank Dunning the first time, he wakes to the stomach flu. The second time, he wakes to this debilitating headache. As a theme of the novel, time resisting change is illustrated when Jake experiences the only migraine headache of his life on the morning he intends to stop Frank Dunning for the second time. However, this won’t be the last time he will have a physical ailment relating to his head that will attempt to stop him from changing the past; this headache foreshadows the future.

“The following week I made a mistake. I should have known better; making another major wager should have been the last thing on my mind after all that had happened to me. You’ll say I should have been more on my guard.”

Jake talks directly to the reader in this passage, foreshadowing events that will happen later in the novel. He admits that, with 20/20 hindsight, he can see he made a mistake with his actions on this day, but he could not have known what would happen in the moment. This foreshadows trouble later in the novel, and it illustrates that Jake is writing this story after everything is done. This also tells readers that Jake clearly survived whatever obstacles will come up within the course of the story.

“Sadie had, in the argot of the day, a really good build. She knew it and was self-conscious of about it rather than proud. I could tell that from the way she walked. I know I’m a little too big to be considered normal, that walk said. The set of her shoulders said more: It’s not my fault, I just growed that way. Like Topsy. She was wearing a sleeveless dress printed over with roses. Her arms were tanned. She had dashed on a little pink lipstick, but no other makeup. Not love at first sight, I’m pretty sure of it, but I remember that first sight with surprising clarity.”

The moment Jake and Sadie meet is a significant one. Jake claims it wasn’t love at first sight, but there is clearly a connection between them that is undeniable. This moment foreshadows all that is to come, as Jake’s love for Sadie will eventually overshadow all his other thoughts, becoming his motivation and deepest desire.

“The past harmonizes with itself, that much I already understood. But what song was this? I didn’t know, and it worried me plenty. In the concrete runway leading to the refreshment stand, the chant was magnified, making me want to put my hands over my ears to block it out. ‘JIMLA, JIMLA, JIMLA.’”

By this point in the novel, Jake has already noticed the harmonies that happen between his past—which is the future—and his current situation. However, this is one of the biggest harmonies he has noticed so far, and it helps him understand a little better what the harmonies are. For Jake, this is a harmony because JIMLA is a word the Yellow Card Man used to refer to him as. The chant bothers Jake, and it will continue to haunt him, but he does not lose focus on his mission, effectively ignoring what could have been viewed as a warning.

“I think that’s when I decided I was never going back.”

The contrasts between 2011 and the early 1960s is never so clear to Jake as they are the moment he chaperones the Sadie Hawkins dance with Sadie. He has found a community in Jodie, friends he values, and students who respect him. His makes his contentment clear in this single statement, which comes before he and Sadie become intimate. This desire will make the decisions Jake must make at the end of the story more difficult.

“I remembered the day I had spoken to Frank Dunning’s wife, pretending to be a real estate speculator with an interest in the West Side Rec. She’d been twenty years older than Sadie Doris Clayton, nee Dunhill, but both women had blue eyes, exquisite skin, and fine, full-breasted figures. Both women were smokers. All of it could have been coincidental, but it wasn’t. And I knew it.”

Jake knows Sadie for more than a year before he learns her middle name is Doris. When he does, he makes the connection between her and Doris Dunning, the mother of Harry Dunning. This is another harmony and foreshadows the attack by Johnny Clayton on Sadie, just like the attack Frank Dunning would have committed against Doris, if Jake hadn’t killed him first.

“He didn’t look like a man who had just completed a journey halfway around the world; there wasn’t a wrinkle on him and not a trace of beard-shadow on his cheeks. He was just twenty-two years old, and looked younger—like one of the teenagers in my last American Lit class.”

When Jake sees Lee Harvey Oswald for the first time, this is his impression of him. Lee Harvey is a clean-cut guy who seems too young to be a father and husband. He also seems innocent in those first seconds. People are often perceived by first impressions, and this is the one Jake has of Lee Harvey, despite all he knows about him. This perception makes Lee Harvey human to Jake, not just a name in a history book.

“George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song.”

Jake has the opportunity to watch history unfold before him. During the Warren Commission’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination, George de Mohrenschildt was interviewed and was treated with suspicion for many years afterward. Some thought he was a CIA handler who talked Lee Harvey Oswald into committing his crimes; perhaps George was even Lee Harvey’s accomplice. This was never proven, but it is a concern for Jake as he tries to determine if Lee Harvey acted alone.

“What I saw on Kennedy’s face was fright and determination in equal measure. What I also saw was life—a total engagement with the job at hand. He was exactly thirteen months from his date with the assassin’s bullet.”

This is one of several places where Jake appreciates that President Kennedy is a human being and not just a figure in history. Just like his first impression of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jake sees the fear on President Kennedy’s face as he tells the American people about the Cuban Missile Crisis. This makes him more real to Jake, perhaps adding to his motivation to save his life. This is also an example of real history that appears in the novel.

“If I did have to run back to the rabbit-hole, and stepped into the past again after a return to the present, I’d still have it…although everything that had happened in the last four and a half years would reset. The manuscripts now in the safe deposit box would be lost in time. That was probably good news. The bad news was that Sadie would be, too.”

Jake acknowledges that he might have to return to the rabbit-hole and reset time once again if things go wrong. This reveals that he does know something could go wrong. It also expresses his knowledge that some things disappear, but others do not—a phenomenon he and Al both chose to disregard because of their lack of understanding. However, it is something that will prove to be important in the end. Finally, this quote foreshadows his struggle with the idea of leaving Sadie behind.

“You’re talking about her husband, aren’t you? This is my fault. I think I saw him, but that was weeks ago. And his hair was much longer than in the yearbook picture. Not the same color, either. It was almost orange.”

Deke describes Johnny Clayton to Jake. When he mentions the color of Johnny Clayton’s hair, it seems almost clownish at this point. However, at the end of the novel, the reader realizes that the color orange in regards to the Yellow Card Man’s card suggests insanity, which clearly reflects on Johnny. It could be possible the hair color was meant as a warning to Jake that he missed.

“It was a Japanese proverb. ‘If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples.’ I’ll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it’s yours.”

After Sadie is disfigured by Johnny, Jake visits her in the hospital and tells her this when she questions his presence. This quote shows Jake’s deep devotion to Sadie despite everything, a foreshadowing of his conflict at the end of the novel when he must choose between his love for Sadie and the destruction of the fabric of reality.

“Hunch-think: that again. I paid the May rent on the West Neely Street apartment even though I needed to start watching my dollars and had no concrete reason to do so. All I had was an unformed, but strong feeling that I should keep a base of operations in Dallas.”

Jake begins having these moments of instinct that tell him to do things. In this case, he decides to keep his apartment in Dallas even though he is essentially living with Sadie because he feels he will need it. He does, it turns out, need a place in Dallas before the assassination, but by then he has given up this apartment. But when he goes back to retrieve the last of his things, he is beaten up by Akiva Roth. Sometimes instincts are too vague to be truly helpful.

“I turned to see Sadie standing beside me in her red dress. She had put her hair up and secured it with a glittery clip. Her face—both sides of it—was completely visible. I was shocked to discover that, once fully revealed, the residual damage wasn’t as awful as I had feared. There might be some sort of universal truth there, but I was too stunned to suss it out.”

Sadie surprises everyone by attending the final moments of the Jodie Jamboree intended to raise money for her surgeries. When Jake looks at her, he sees that her face is not nearly as bad as he had imagined. His comment touches on the mysteries of nature—mysteries he has continuously refused to attempt to understand, and here he essentially admits to that. Perhaps if Jake tried to stop and figure things out, he might not be where he is, but then he might have missed out on the beauty of his relationship with Sadie.

“I thought of how Lee looked at his wife when he wasn’t mad at her. I thought about the conversation I’d overheard when he and his little girl were splashing in the bath. I thought about his tears outside the bus station, when he’d held Junie and nuzzled beneath her chin before rolling off to New Orleans.”

Jake reflects on Lee Harvey Oswald when Sadie questions his motivations for stopping him. She doesn’t want him to kill a man in cold blood or out of misplaced hatred. Jake thinks about Lee Harvey and sees the humanity in the man he’s been observing for months. King humanizes this historic figure in this moment through Jake’s observation, reminding both Jake and the reader that Lee Harvey Oswald did a terrible thing, but he was also a human being.

“It was Sadie. She had found me.”

Jake runs away from everything he knows in order to protect the people he loves from what he must do now. He worries that he could place them in danger—Sadie particularly—if he allows them to know too much or help him stop Lee Harvey. However, Sadie has found him just like Bill Turcotte found him in Derry. This is another harmony that Jake doesn’t see, and it foreshadows Sadie’s death, but Jake loves her so much that he cannot believe it and he relents, allowing her to go with him.

“I have never been a crying man, but almost any man who’s lost the woman he loves would, don’t you think? Yes. But I didn’t. Because I knew what had to be done.”

This circles back to the beginning of the novel when Jake introduces himself as a man who doesn’t cry. The reader knows by now that this isn’t true. However, Jake doesn’t take the time to grieve just now because he is in the unique position to know that Sadie does not have to stay dead. All he has to do is walk through the rabbit-hole and she will be alive again, and this quote foreshadows that.

“‘Go. Have a look. Spend a little time. But only a little. If this isn’t put right soon, there’s going to be a catastrophe.’ ‘How big?’ He spoke calmly. ‘It could destroy everything.’”

Jake meets another Yellow Card Man; this one has a green card and is named Zack. They have a discussion during which Jake learns more about time travel and the impact his presence in the past can cause. Zack warns him that he’s changed something too large and that if he doesn’t change it back, the results can be catastrophic. This has been foreshadowed throughout the book by all the harmonies and resistance the past presented to Jake.