63 pages • 2 hours read

11.22.63

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011

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Part 5, Chapters 26-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 5: “11/22/63”

Part 5, Chapter 26 Summary

Jake enters Parkland Memorial Hospital and is treated by Malcolm Perry, the same doctor who will treat both President Kennedy and Lee Harvey after each is shot. Jake's most significant wound is a brain injury that causes him significant memory loss. He is in recovery at an assisted living center. For more than a month, Jake struggles to remember important details. Sadie knows enough about Jake’s mission to save the President that she is aware the time to act is coming fast. She encourages Jake to remember the name of the would-be assassin.

The more Jake struggles with his memories, the more he worries that his amnesia is the past trying to stop him from changing things. A week before the President is due in Dallas, Sadie takes Jake for a ride around Dallas, hoping that the scenery will help. Unbeknownst to her, the trip helps Jake recall that Al left him a notebook after he sees a church sign with missing letters that reads: “THE WORD OF AL” (883).

Part 5, Chapter 27 Summary

Jake remembers that Al’s notebook is in a bank safe deposit box, and his keys help him identify the bank. Jake waits until Sadie returns to Jodie for work before going to the bank. One look at the notebook brings all of Jake’s memories back. He leaves the assisted living center in secret and rents the Mercedes Street house for a week. Jake wishes he could kill Lee Harvey before the day of the assassination but doesn’t have enough information to locate Lee Harvey in a safe place. His only choice is to wait until the morning of the assassination. Jake has trouble sleeping the night before the assassination, so he is in a deep sleep the next morning when Sadie finds him.

Part 5, Chapter 28 Summary

Sadie tells Jake he is too weak to stop the assassin alone, so she must go with him. They begin their trip in his car but run into multiple issues that nearly stop them before they can reach Dallas. Despite these obstacles, they reach the Texas School Book Depository and Jake enters the sixth floor ahead of Sadie. In Jake's attempt to stop Lee Harvey, Lee Harvey shoots Sadie, who dies in Jake’s arms. Hearing the commotion, authorities shoot and kill Lee Harvey through the window.

Part 5, Chapters 26-28 Analysis

Fate, the past, or some other unknown force exerts itself on Jake and takes his memories in the weeks before the assassination. However, Jake is stubborn and so is Sadie. The notebook Al left Jake, a symbol of their determination to complete this mission, allows Jake to recover his memories. However, now Sadie is involved. The theme of danger remains, and Jake attempts to cut her out, but the obstinate past resists his efforts and puts her firmly in his path. There is irony in the fact that it was Jake's own words that led Sadie to his location, or it could be viewed as a stroke of fate. However, the theme of harmony seems more appropriate as the reader might note at this point that everyone who shares Jake's secret of time travel is dead. That must be Sadie's fate as well.

Just like Jake's previous attempts to change the past, Jake runs into issues attempting to reach the Texas School Book Depository. These challenges are far greater and almost comical in their unlikelihood. However, this time he has Sadie by his side. As obdurate as the past is, Sadie seems to be just as obdurate. She pushes Jake forward when the odds seem stacked against them, even pulling a knife on a would-be thief. Sadie's character shines through in these chapters as she proves herself to be the driving force behind Jake.

The climactic moment the whole plot has led up to finally arrives. Jake has waited five years to stop Lee Harvey, but he has no plan other than to rush into the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and make Lee Harvey stop by any means necessary. Once again, however, the past harmonizes, and like the day they met, there is a fall. This time Jake falls forward, allowing Lee Harvey to shoot Sadie. It is the moment he has suspected would come and did everything to prevent. Jake wants to blame this on the obdurate past but knows the blame lies within himself. This is the moment Jake begins to take the blame of the consequences of his actions on himself, though it is too late for Sadie.