52 pages • 1 hour read
Jack FinneyTime and Again
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The first-person narrator, Simon “Si” Morley, works as an illustrator for an advertising company in 1970s New York City. He is bored with his work, which currently is illustrating soap bars. Si says, “It was an ordinary day, a Friday, twenty minutes till lunchtime, five hours till quitting time and the weekend, ten months till vacation, thirty-seven years till retirement” (2). Then, Si is informed that he has a visitor.
The visitor starts by demanding that Si recite his Army serial number. Si does so without thought, after which the visitor introduces himself as Major Ruben “Rube” Prien. The two go to lunch, during which Rube explains that he wants to recruit Si for a secret government project. It is so secret that he cannot tell him anything else about it until Si agrees to join, but he promises that it is “more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together” (5). During this conversation, Rube also proves that he (and by extension the government) knows a shocking amount about Si’s personal life.
Curious but unconvinced, Si asks why they are interested in him. Rube explains that the project has been looking through test records of anyone who once served in the military and says that based on those tests, Si is precisely the kind of person they need. Si says he wants to think about it, but Rube believes Si has already made up his mind to join, even if he cannot admit it to himself.
Chapter 2 Summary
Si spends the weekend with his girlfriend, Katherine “Kate” Mancuso, and reflects on first meeting her. Kate owns an antique store that she bought when her foster parents, the Carmodys, died two years ago. Si loves the antique store and enjoys sitting there while Kate is working, looking through an old stereoscope at antique photos of New York City. For him, the photos feel so real that “it seems that if you watch intently, the life caught here must continue” (16). Si claims that during the weekend, he had not consciously thought about Rube’s offer at all, and yet upon his return to work, he finds himself quitting. He then calls Rube and agrees to join the secret project on the understanding that he intends to tell Kate about it.
Three days later, Si goes to the address Rube has given him. It’s a large warehouse that supposedly houses a moving company but is a front for the government project. Rube explains that they even occasionally accept a real moving job to keep the cover believable. At the warehouse, Si is put through a strange test using optical illusions and sleight-of-hand to make him feel like he’s losing his mind. When he passes the test, he meets Dr. Oscar Rossoff, a psychologist who explains that the test is meant to see how he responds to the impossible. Some people cannot handle the mental strain, but he says Si is “guided from within, not from the outside” (30) and therefore was able to cope. Rossoff puts him through many more tests including one to see if he is susceptible to hypnosis. Finally, Si meets Dr. E. E. Danziger, a physicist and the founder of the project. Danziger agrees that Si is a good candidate for the program and orders Rube to show him what it is.
Chapter 3 Summary
Rube takes Si on a tour of the structure inside the warehouse where different walled-off sections have been built to replicate various times and places: Winfield, Vermont, in 1926; Notre Dame in 1451; Denver in 1901; etc. Si and Rube watch the Vermont section from a catwalk as a man on a porch is greeted by various people who walk on and off the set, each behaving as if they are residents of a small town in Vermont in 1926.
Rube explains that the man on the porch lives on the set and the various people who walk on and off are meant to make it as real and interactive as possible. Similar scenarios are playing out in every section that has been completed, with more on the way. The tour ends, and Rube says it is time for lunch.
Chapter 4 Summary
During lunch, Danziger explains the project. He explains Einstein’s theory of time using a “river” simile: “We’re like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can’t see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it’s there” (56).
Danziger then argues that by mentally detaching a person from the “threads” of their current time and meticulously recreating the details of the past, one can step out of the river and back along the bank to that past time. That is what they intend to do here.
Rube shows Si the Dakota, an apartment building in New York that has been virtually unchanged since it was built in the 1880s. He explains that they have bought one of the apartments and furnished it to look exactly as it would have in the 1880s to test Danziger’s theory. Si says if he is going to do this, he wants to go back to New York City in January 1882 to “watch a man mail a letter” (73).
Chapter 5 Summary
Content Warning: This section features discussion of suicide.
Si thinks back to a previous night with Kate when she told him about her adoptive parents, the Carmodys. Her adoptive father, Ira, once told her the story of his father, Andrew, a minor advisor to President Cleveland. He died by suicide, leaving behind a mysterious letter. The letter was “robin’s-egg blue,” partially burned, and addressed to Carmody in New York City, with a postmark dated “Jan. 23, 1882 at 6:00pm” (78). In black ink, in the same handwriting as the address, was written, “If a discussion of Court House Carrara should prove of interest to you, please appear in City Hall Park at half past twelve on Thursday next" (78). Further, a different hand had written at the bottom in blue ink,
That the sending of this should cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World (a word seemed to be missing here at the end of the top line where the paper was burned) seems well-nigh incredible. Yet it is so, and the Fault and Guilt (another word missing in the burned area) mine, and can never be denied or escaped. So, with this wretched souvenir of that Event before me, I now end the life which should have ended then (79).
Both Kate and Si are mystified and curious about this letter and Andrew Carmody’s suicide.
In addition, Carmody’s wife cleaned and dressed the body for burial without allowing a coroner or undertaker to touch it. This odd behavior was then compounded by Carmody’s gravestone, which bore no name or date but only a symbol of a star inside a circle, formed by dozens of small dots. Si wants to observe the mailing of this letter and solve the mystery of Carmody’s suicide. Danziger takes this request to a council that oversees the project, one member of which is Colonel Esterhazy, and the council agrees. Then, as a personal favor, Danziger requests that, if Si succeeds in this trip, he witness the first meeting between Danziger’s parents at a theater in February 1882 and sketch a portrait of that event.
Chapter 6 Summary
Si meets others in the project, including the historian Martin Lastvogel. Si goes through weeks of training and education in 1880s culture, clothing, and food to make the 19th century feel as real as possible. Martin says that historical documents and preserved clothing do not capture the reality of the past.
Si learns how to contemplate old sepia-toned photographs for so long and with such intense focus that he can picture them in color and motion. This is a large step in the self-hypnosis he will need to accomplish to shift himself out of his current time and into the past.
Kate helps him study and is allowed to visit the project. She becomes nearly as engrossed in the work as he is. Finally, to explain his upcoming disappearance, Si writes letters to friends saying that he is buying an old station wagon and heading west. On January 4, Rube and Rossoff take him to the Dakota where he will live in an apartment that exactly matches the 1880s period to begin his experiment.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Finney’s writing style is complex and dense, with long compound sentences, rich detail, and lengthy descriptions of the setting. However, the first-person narration by the main character, Si Morley, is intelligent and wryly humorous, keeping the overall tone entertaining. Si’s consistent hints and foreshadowing give the narrative tension and suspense it would otherwise lack.
There are many examples of Si’s humor in the first chapter, in both exposition and dialogue, such as in his description of an “ordinary” Friday, meant to highlight his boredom and dissatisfaction with his work and in his responses to Rube’s sales-pitch-style attempt to recruit him. Throughout his conversation with Rube, Si’s sarcasm and wit are on display, such as when Rube claims that this project is the most important and fascinating development in history and Si responds, “If I understand you, you’ve finally discovered something more interesting than sex” (5).
This early scene helps establish both Si’s and Rube’s characters. Si is intelligent and witty and has a disregard (even distrust) of authority. Rube, meanwhile, is the consummate salesman: friendly and disarming, but also intense. Hoping to allay Si’s concerns about being recruited into a government position, Rube claims that while he is still in the Army, the project itself is not and he takes most of his orders from a “historian on leave from Columbia University” (9). Rube succeeds in charming his way past Si’s initial distrust. He is also very perceptive; he feels early on that Si will be a perfect fit for the project (and is quickly proven right), and he also knows, even before Si realizes it, that Si will agree to join.
Si’s first experiences at the headquarters of the project offer insight into the scope, budget, and power of the project. While Rube and Danziger both describe the project as small, the scale of the warehouse belies this. The logistics, money, and manpower necessary to run such an operation would have to be enormous. The scale of the project is hinted at later by the council in charge, who makes no secret of the millions of dollars poured into it or the president’s interest in the outcomes.
These seemingly small details begin to develop the theme of The Dangers of Science in the Hands of the Government. Throughout these early chapters, readers see examples of the government’s overreach—for instance, when Rube shows how much he (and by extension the government) knows about Si’s life. There are also hints at the concerns of placing scientific discovery in the hands of that kind of power, such as when Danziger refers to the destruction of two cities in Japan. This brief allusion to the atomic bomb hints at the destructive results of handing scientific advancements to those in power and is a precursor to Danziger’s protests at the end of the novel.
These first chapters introduce the major 1970s “present-time” characters and hint at several of the important themes of the novel. There is a large cast of characters to keep track of, but the detailed descriptions of each—in both physical attributes and personality—help to differentiate them. Because the novel gives nearly equal weight to every character, however, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which ones will be major characters moving forward.
As the story continues, the major characters become more obvious, including Rube, Kate, Rossoff, and Danziger. Si’s coworkers at the ad agency, and his historian/trainer Martin Lastvogel, on the other hand, prove to be minor to the overall plot despite the rich detail given to them at the beginning. Ironically, one character who is introduced with almost no description, Colonel Esterhazy, eventually proves to be vital to the plot and the fate of the project.
This first section also introduces the letter—the object upon which the primary conflict and motivation of the novel will rest. The letter that Kate shows to Si is the reason that Si agrees to join the project and insists on being sent to 1882. It is the impetus for the actions that follow, and it is a symbol of the overarching mystery of the novel.
