Themes and Analysis

“11/22/63” is a story that shows that altering history creates dilemmas that are almost impossible to fix. It is a time-traveling book that focuses on the characters and not the events of the past or the process of time-traveling and changing that past.

Themes

“11/22/63” uses themes like choice, love, and the rigidity of the past to tell an alternate history story about the past and time alteration.

Choice

Choice is a primary theme of “11/22/63.” In the novel, Jake makes choices that directly influence the present, even though he knows the repercussions of changing the past. He alters time by saving Harry Dunning’s family and soon realizes that his choices have terrible outcomes even though he has an almost unstoppable power.

Jake learns that when free will and time-traveling are combined, paradoxes form because time wants to reset itself to equilibrium; this eventually forces him to admit that free will is not without consequences and choice is an illusion. Eventually, he accepts that his actions are wrong and sets everything to the original way.

The Rigidity of The Past

The past has happened, and changing it risks creating an entirely different present and future. “11/22/63” showed that the past is rigid and tries to correct itself as much as possible. Though time travel is still just a concept, the book showed what should theoretically happen when a slight change occurs in the past. Jake tried to change the past, and his decision made him lose the love of his life and destroy the present world.

Love

Love is a theme in “11/22/63.” It defined Jake’s character and showed how his affection for Sadie made him make reset time even after he completed his mission. Jake learned that changing time takes away the memories of one’s love and the bond shared.

Regret

Regret is a recurring primary theme in “11/22/63.” Jake altered history to improve everything but realized that changing time was a bad choice. After creating more problems than solutions, he learned the past was not to be tampered with. He developed immense regret after watching Sadie die, and though he became an instant hero, he felt no satisfaction or accomplishment.

Jake also regretted altering his friend’s past because killing Frank Dunning ended Harry’s life.

The Desire to Do Good

The desire to do good is a primary theme of “11/22/63.” The entire novel focuses on Jake trying to change the past. Though he wanted to save the President, Jake also did other things, like saving Harry Dunning from his father and a little girl from being shot by a hunter.

However, the will to do good made Jake an unwilling antagonist because his actions, intended for the right cause, backfired and led to the world’s destruction.

Key Moments

1. Jake reads Harry’s essay on the night that changed his life; this later influences one of his worst actions.
2. Harry graduates with flying colors, and Jake takes him to Al’s restaurant, where they celebrate. He meets Al two years later, and they talk. Al tells him to visit the next day. Unknown to Jake, this would lead to the wildest adventure of his life.
3. Jake freaks out on seeing that Al has aged rapidly in just 24 hours. Al says he has cancer and asks Jake to travel down some steps to understand what is going on.
4. Jake goes down the steps and lands in 1958. He meets the yellow card man as Al told him. Jake stays for an hour to ensure he is not hallucinating; this is where he discovers time-traveling is possible, and he just teleported to a completely different era.
5. Al tells Jake his deductions from time-traveling using the portal. The deductions show that traveling back in time caused one to age. However, when they return to the present, only two minutes elapse.
6. Al tells Jake about a plan to stop Oswald from killing John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, in 1963.
7. Jake agrees to take on Al’s mission for him and enters the portal. He saves Harry’s mother and sibling from their father, Frank Dunning. Unknown to him, it would be one of his worst decisions.
8. Jake realizes the past prevents itself from changing and that the greater the change, the more the challenge. On returning to the present, he realizes Harry died in the Vietnam War. The first repercussion of time-traveling occurs here.
9. Al later commits suicide, making Jake hastily enter the portal to correct his mistakes. He moves to Jodie, Texas, where he establishes his identity in a bid to stop Oswald.
10. Jake meets Sadie, and they fall in love. He rescues her from an abusive husband, Johnny Clayton, and tells her he is from the future.
11. Jake confronts Oswald on the day of the President’s arrival and successfully stops him, but Sadie dies from a gunshot by Oswald; this is when he realizes that time hates change as it forces one to lose what they desire when they change it.
12. Jake becomes an instant hero, with the President and his wife personally thanking him. He returns to the portal, where he meets Zack Lang, who tells him that changing and erasing the past did not change reality.
13. Jake goes back to the present to meet the world in ruins. Jake meets Harry, who is now a war veteran. Harry tells Jake the disturbing history of what happened between 1963 and 2011.
14. Jake re-enters the portal to save the President and Sadie after seeing the world in ruins. However, he changes his mind and returns to the present, free of his changes. He travels to Jodie, where he discovers that Sadie survived the assault from her husband.
15. Jake and an 80-year-old Sadie share a dance.
    
    

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

With a descriptive style, a horror, romantic, and calm tone, and multiple figures of speech, “11/22/63” passes the message that time is an entity no one understands.

Style

“11/22/63” is one of Stephen King’s best books because of its exceptional, descriptive, and evocative language. It uses epistolary writing and the first-person point of view narration to maintain consistent thrill and captivation.

Stephen King uses a remarkably descriptive and evocative style to paint a realistic picture of the late 1950s throughout the plot; this adds an extra layer of authenticity to the story and gives the character more humanity.

One can feel the suspense with the evocative writing as Stephen King uses his horror style to evoke tension in the atmosphere. It leaves the reader in the dark, unable to discern what will unfold.

Tone

“11/22/63” portrays its characters’ evolution subtly. It combines multiple literary genres like science fiction, romance, thrill, and action into a historical fiction shell. The tone switches throughout the novel.

First, it is romantic and calm as Stephen ushers the reader into a world of numerous possibilities. He shows the budding romance between Jake and Sadie and introduces solid concepts like time alteration.

Then, everything changes to dread when Jake sees how his actions destroy the world. With each sentence that follows, Stephen King builds up the dread, until Jake resets everything. Then calmness returns. The story’s remarkable separation of its tones made it more realistic.

Figurative Language

Stephen King’s adoption of rich figurative language made his book resonate with pop culture and society. “11/22/63” uses multiple metaphors, like comparing time to a fabric that resists change.

Irony also appears throughout the book. Jake tries to change the past for good, but time shows him that his actions would also lead to negativity as the more he tries to make things right, the worse they get. Another figure of speech in the story is personification. Throughout the novel, the past is an entity aware and resisting change.

Key Symbols

Every symbol used throughout “11/22/63” shows the horrors of time travel and the past. Stephen King showed how time should not be changed, and portrayed a world where the possibility of alteration was real.

The Yellow Card Man

Referred to as the obdurate personification of the past, the yellow card man represents a warning. Throughout the novel, the past always tries to rid itself of any foreign observer, and with Jake being a man out of his time, it throws hurdles at him; this is where the yellow card man’s importance is supposed to show.

Because he guarded the portal, he was to be the gauge, the guide, the direction shower. However, he could not explain what it meant to travel and change time; this led to the world’s destruction.

Harry’s Picture

Harry’s picture in Al’s diner represents the effects of changing the past. Before he traveled back in time to make a change, a picture of Harry hung in Al’s restaurant after celebrating his graduation. After Jake altered the past, Harry’s picture vanished, which meant Jake erased one of the happy times in Harry’s life.

Cell Phone

Jake had to dump his cell phone into a pond because he was scared of being questioned about how he had a future technology in his possession. The cell phone represents a piece of the future embedded in the past.

Sadie’s Scar

Sadie’s scar represents the toxic past one can never get rid of, no matter what they do or how they try to be better. Sadie faced torture from her husband, and though it pushed her to become a cornerstone of society, she had to live with the pain of tribulation.