The first-person point of view and epistolary writing style of “11/22/63” made it feel natural. The characters’ motivations, descriptions, and realism made it worthy of being called one of Stephen King’s best books. “11/22/63” not only gives a refreshing alternate history story, but it also portrays people who existed in real life uniquely.
Jake Epping
Role: Jake Epping is the main character of “11/22/63.”
Key Info: Jake learns of the existence of time travel, and embarks on a mission to alter the past.
Background: Jake is a high school English teacher who takes a GED class to make extra income.
Personality: He is emotionless and rarely sheds tears, even when his parents die.
Significance: He is the narrator as the novel is written in the first-person point of view. He notices every action like an omniscient observer and even breaks the fourth wall by talking to the reader.
Development: After his divorce, Jake learns that time travel exists and with the persuasion of AL Templeton, enters a portal back to the late 1950s, where he conceives a plan to kill Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s murderer.
Analysis: Though he always had no expression on his face, Jake still cared about people and this sympathy made him alter the past so that Harry’s father would not have killed his mother and siblings. However, he soon realizes that altering history created negative side effects that nullified the purpose of changing the past.
Al Templeton
Role: Al is the middle-aged owner of Al’s diner.
Key Info: He keeps the secret of time travel, one he eventually shares with Jake.
Background: After a failed attempt to stop President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Al decides to tell Jake about his time portal that makes one travel back in time and alter it.
Personality: Al is a strong-willed man who has compassion for people.
Development: He convinces Jake that if the President had not died in 1963 the world would be a much better place to live in.
Significance: Al makes Jake take up the mission of stopping Oswald from pulling the trigger on the President.
Analysis: After Jake enters the portal and prevents Frank Dunning from murdering his family, he returns to meet a world without Harry Dunning and discovers his actions directly caused Harry’s death. Al finally commits suicide to motivate Jake to go back in time and finish the mission.
Christy Epping
Role: Christy Epping is Jake’s ex-wife.
Key Info: Christy is an alcoholic who began attending group rehab therapy sessions.
Background: She leaves Jake to go to a rehabilitation center.
Personality: Christy is kind-hearted but mentally troubled by her addiction.
Development: She tells Jake she is leaving him because he is emotionally distant. However, he suspects she is leaving because of a man she met in the AA meetings she attends.
Analysis: Christy failed to be there for her husband in his trying times and she grew to despise him because he did not show emotion or cry at her father’s funeral.
William Epping
Role: William Epping is Jake’s father.
Key Info: William holds no particular role in the story as he died before Jake divorced Christy.
Personality: He is described as the strong silent type of man who would rather do anything than show sadness.
Analysis: William supports Jake and his mother for years and eventually dies of stomach cancer. At his funeral, Jake does not cry and this contributes to his wife, Christy, concluding that he has no emotions.
Harry Dunning
Role: Harry is a Lisbon Falls High School janitor and a student in Jake’s evening GED class.
Key Info: He earned a nickname and was called ‘hop toad Harry’ by the students of Lisbon Falls.
Background: After reading his essay on the day that changed his life, Jake decides to change Harry’s past after Al tells him about time travel.
Personality: Harry Dunning is a troubled old man whose family death and injury alter the course of his life.
Development: On Jake’s second attempt at time-traveling. He successfully kills Frank Dunning before he murders Harry’s mother and siblings.
Significance: On returning to the present, Jake learns that Harry died in the Vietnam War, which makes him re-enter the portal to save Harry the second time.
Analysis: Harry is the one character that influences Jake’s decisions on time alteration. His existence and later, the lack thereof, forces Jake to rethink altering the past.
After saving the President, Jake returns to see that Harry is alive but now a war veteran using a wheelchair in a destroyed Lisbon Falls. He gives Jake a disturbing history of how John F. Kennedy created laws that prevented many positive changes from happening. He also tells him that the president’s decisions led to the use of nuclear weapons that destroyed the world. Jake returns and resets everything.
Sadie Dunhill
Role: Sadie is a beautiful woman from Savannah, Georgia.
Key Info: She runs away from her abusive husband, Johnny Clayton.
Background: After running away, she finds herself in Jodie, Texas, where she works as a librarian at Denholm Consolidated High School, DCHS.
Personality: Sadie is a beautiful and kind-hearted woman abused by her ex-husband.
Development: Sadie eventually meets Jake, whose alias is George Amberson, and they fall in love.
Significance: She then travels to Reno to divorce Johnny, but he kidnaps her to lure Jake who eventually rescues her. She sustains an injury to the face though.
Analysis: Without Sadie, Jake would have been unable to live in the past as being out of his time weighed on his mind.
Jake eventually comes clean by telling Sadie he is from the future, and she helps him confront Oswald. Unfortunately, she dies from a gunshot by Oswald during his confrontation with her and Jake.
After watching her die in his arms, Jake erases his actions by re-entering the portal and leaving the past unchanged for good. He later travels to present-day Jodie, where he discovers Sadie survived the ordeal involving her husband, and she is now 80 years old. They share a dance.
Frank Dunning
Role: Frank Dunning is the murderous father of Harry Dunning
Key Info: He used a hammer to murder his wife and children and injured Harry, permanently making him limp.
Background: Though a raging alcoholic, Frank Dunning is a popular businessman.
Personality: Frank Dunning is an alcoholic and an abuser who hates his family to the point he commits cold-blooded serial murder.
Development: After reading Harry’s essay, Jake travels to the past, where he stalks Frank Dunning and kills him before he injures Harry and kills his mother and siblings.
Significance: Jake discovers his change killed Harry and re-enters the portal to try to save Harry’s family in a way Harry did not die. Eventually, he leaves everything unchanged.
Analysis: Frank Dunning is a part of the past that cannot be changed. Jake learned through him that though one may be eager to alter a terrible moment in life, that moment could be what leads to a positive change.
Deacon Simmons
Role: Deacon Simmons, also called Deke, is the principal of Denholm Consolidated High School in “11/22/63.”
Key Info: Deke learns about time travel from Jake who needs ro stop Oswald.
He hires Jake, who called himself George Amberson as an English teacher for a probationary year. Deke retires after marrying Mimi Corcoran, and he becomes Jake’s friend. He is one of only two who knew Jake’s mission to stop JFK’s assassination.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Role: Oswald is a historical figure.
Key Info: He killed the President of the United States on November 22, 1963.
Development: Jake stalks Oswald and finally confronts him on the day of the President’s arrival, and after shooting at him, Oswald returns fire, killing Sadie. The police and Secret Service shoot Oswald, killing him.
Analysis: Jake eventually realizes after killing Oswald that the President’s assassination was way better than what would have happened if he lived; this makes him reset time and leave his plan to save JFK behind.
George De Mohrenschildt
Role: George is a soviet emigrant.
Key Info: He becomes friends with Oswald and stirs him up with political propaganda.
Development: Jake suspected George to be behind Oswald’s resolve to kill the President but later found out George was just an eccentric man who found Oswald amusing. Jake eventually poses as a government agent and threatens George to cut off ties with Oswald.
James Patrick Hosty
Role: James is an FBI agent.
Key Info: He interviews Jake after he foils the attempt on the President’s life.
Development: James lets Jake free partly because he does not want to be held responsible for not properly investigating Oswald. Jake becomes a hero for saving the President but later changes his actions after realizing the terror it caused.
Carolyn Poulin
Role: Carolyn Poulin is a twelve-year-old girl Al Templeton tells Jake about.
Key Info: Al begs Jake to save her from an accident.
Background: Carolyn is a young girl in 1958 Al tried to save numerous times. He was unable to save her and complete the mission of killing Oswald.
Personality: Carolyn is kind-hearted and has beautiful hazel eyes, chestnut-brown hair, and a fair complexion.
Development: She went hunting with her father on November 15, 1958, but unknown to her, another man, Andrew Cullum, was looking for deer and an accident occurred. Andrew pulled out his gun after sighting his prey and shot at it. However, his bullet missed the animal and hit Carolyn instead.
Significance: After Al dies, Jake takes it upon himself to save Carolyn, and though he succeeds, he reverts time to its original state when he realizes how his actions led to destruction.
Analysis: Though she was barely talked about, Carolyn was a major driving force behind Al’s resolve to alter time. He could not bear to see her die and asked Jake to save her. However, Jake had to let her die because he knew saving her could create a terrible alternate timeline.
Yellow Card Man
Role: The Yellow Card Man is an alcoholic Al tells Jake about.
Key Info: He is a member of the Guardians of Time.
Background: Because of his prolonged stay in the past, he succumbs to terrible vices like drinking and gets depressed.
Development: The Yellow Card Man’s troubles were due to Al tampering with time. He kills himself by slashing his throat with a broken shard of a whiskey bottle, and Zack replaces him.
Analysis: The Yellow Card Man was a character Stephen King inculcated into the novel to show the brutality of altering the past.
Zack Lang
Role: Zack Lang is also a member of the Guardians of Time.
Key Info: He replaces the Yellow Card Man after his death.
Personality: Zack is well-dressed and comes from Seattle.
Development: He tells Jake that the guardians of time have a high suicide rate because the more someone tampers with time, the more their sanity erodes.
Significance: Zack explains that each guardian comes with a green card, and when someone tampers with the past, it results in future changes that alter the color of their card.
Analysis: Without Zack, Jake would not have realized the damage his actions caused. He learned that the guardians’ lives were wildly affected by his changes and this made him refuse to change time again.
