63 pages • 2 hours read

11.22.63

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011

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Part 2, Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Janitor’s Father”

Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary

After going through the rabbit-hole, Jake repeats his initial actions from his first visit by speaking to the Yellow Card Man and giving him a half dollar. The Yellow Card Man, whose card is now orange, calls Jake JIMLA. Jake doesn’t understand the reference but finds the whole interaction unsettling.

Jake goes to Kennebec Fruit Company as before and is unnerved by small changes in the conversation. Jake visits several stores, first purchasing a suitcase and then buying clothes to fill it with. He stops at a payphone to call for a taxi. While digging in his pocket for change, he realizes that he forgot to leave his cellphone at the diner and that he has change from the future. That night, he puts the change in an envelope, then tosses both the envelope and the cellphone into a pond behind the Tamarak Motor Court.

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary

Jake buys a “1954 Ford convertible—a Sunliner” (146) for $315 cash. He drives north to Derry, Maine, the town where Harry Dunning grew up. From the moment he arrives, Jake feels as though there is something wrong with the town. He goes to a few places asking after Harry Dunning’s father. No one is helpful, and one group of mill workers outside a bar are downright hostile, especially one man Jake dubs “No Suspenders.” That night, Jake has a drink in the hotel bar and meets a bartender who fills him in on some of the history of Derry. He learns that there has been a rash of child disappearances and murders over the past year or so. The bartender expresses a feeling that there is something wrong with Derry.

Jake is walking through town when he runs into two kids: Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh. He’s been warned to be cautious when talking to children in Derry, but these two feel different to him, and they react to him a little differently, as well. They are practicing the lindy for a talent show, and Jake happened to have won several competitions with that dance when he was still married to Christy. He teaches them how to slow the music to make it easier to learn the moves to the beat of the song. In return, they tell him where Tugga Dunning, Harry’s brother, lives as well as where his father Frank works. After Jake leaves the kids, he is able to quickly find the house where Harry grew up.

Part 2, Chapters 5-6 Analysis

Al has told Jake that each time he steps through the rabbit-hole into that warm early afternoon in 1958, it is a complete reset. For this reason, Jake expects every interaction that he previously had to be exactly the same. However, they are not. His discussion with the Yellow Card Man is more hostile, and the man’s card has changed from yellow to orange. Jake does not know what this means, but it foreshadows the moment when he learns the truth at the end of the novel. Information that will explain why the Yellow Card Man insisted that Jake doesn’t belong and the fact that he calls him JIMLA will be touched on at a later time.

Jake feels uneasy in Derry, as though the town itself is bad. Readers familiar with King’s previous novels will understand this feeling as it is directly related to the plot of It, as well as several other King novels. In It, Derry is the site of numerous child murders which are later attributed to the novel’s titular shape-shifting creature—hence the feeling of unease Jake feels in the town. The reader will also see King having a little bit of fun in Chapter 6 when he introduces Jake to Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier. These kids are main characters from the It and a part of the story that creates the uneasy atmosphere Jake immediately recognizes. The reader will also notice that Jake is one of the only adults in the town who recognizes that something is wrong, as the other adults don’t seem to notice it. The only other adult who does is the bartender, and it is interesting to point out that he is also an outsider, someone just passing through. This, too, is part of a theme of the novel It.

Another important thing to note in Jake’s interaction with Beverly and Richie is the fact that the kids are learning the lindy to the song “In the Mood.” This is a significant part of Jake’s history that will come up multiple times in the novel as a motif King utilizes, along with the theme of harmonies as Jake’s past begins to harmonize with his life in Texas.

Once Jake arrives in Derry, he realizes he did not do sufficient research on Dunning and does not know anything about the case, including Frank’s first name. Jake asks around and runs into hostility when he speaks to a man he dubs No Suspenders. Al previously noted that the past does not like to be changed. This hostility foreshadows trouble for Jake as he tries to find and stop Frank from murdering his family.