43 pages • 1 hour read
Audrey NiffeneggerThe Time Traveler's Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 22-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “A Drop in a Bowl of Milk”
Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary: “Three”
The narrative regresses in time from the previous chapter, returning to March of 1999. Charisse and Gomez have had a baby girl, their third child. When Clare holds the baby, Henry is reminded of her most recent miscarriage, her third, as the chapter title suggests.
Part 2, Chapter 23 Summary: “Four”
It is now July of 1999. Henry and Clare are lying in bed chatting when Henry suggests they consider adoption. Clare does not agree and insists they keep trying to have a biological child. Henry becomes exasperated, leaves the house, and goes for a drive, something he almost never does. He drives along Lake Michigan before stopping. He time travels, this time to Kimy’s kitchen. Henry and Kimy talk about Kimy’s daughter who died of leukemia as a child before Henry was born.
The narrative shifts to Clare’s perspective as she stands at the location where, according to police, Henry jumped off a pier into the lake. Henry reappears and tells the police a fabricated story, that he was out swimming.
The narrative moves ahead to January of 2000. Henry visits Kendrick and learns that Kendrick has created mice that are capable of time travel. This is encouraging news for Henry.
Part 2, Chapter 24 Summary: “Five”
It is May of 2000. Future Henry from 2002 visits Clare while she looks at baby clothes in a shop window. Henry reveals to the reader in his monologue that Clare has had her fifth miscarriage, but he tells Clare to keep trying. Since this is Henry of 2002, he knows that at some point, Clare will give birth to a child.
Part 2, Chapter 25 Summary: “Six”
It is now June of 2000. Clare watches as present day Henry puts away the groceries, and discovers that he bought condoms. He says that they have to stop trying to have a baby, that at some point, Clare’s life is going to be in real danger.
The narrative shifts and Henry is at Planned Parenthood, pursuing whether or not he should get a vasectomy. The anxiety of the situation makes Henry time travel back to 1986 when Clare is 15. Henry and Clare have an intense conversation, driven in large part by the conflict they are having in the present time. Henry kisses her for the first time.
The narrative returns to the present once again. Clare has discovered that Henry was looking into getting a vasectomy. She confronts him and an argument ensues. Henry eventually gets the vasectomy; then Clare learns that she has become pregnant for the 6th time.
Part 2, Chapter 26 Summary: “Baby Dreams”
Clare describes a series of dreams that she has had, which include appearances from her mom and the dead fetuses from her miscarriages. The miscarriages have created tension between Clare and Henry. The chapter closes with the revelation that Clare is suffering her 7th miscarriage.
Part 2, Chapter 27 Summary: “Seven”
It is September of 2000. In the present, Henry is 37. The 33-year-old version of him appears while present day Henry sleeps next to Clare. The past version Henry impregnates Clare. The narrative moves forward to February of the following year. Clare tells Henry that she is pregnant and he infers how it happened. This time, Clare is able to carry the baby to term. The chapter ends two weeks prior to the child’s expected due date.
Part 2, Chapter 28 Summary: “Alba, An Introduction”
Henry is 38 and has traveled to 2011. He visits his daughter as her 5th grade class tours the Art Institute of Chicago. Much to the surprise of her teacher, Henry hugs Alba, who is ten years old. When the teacher asks who Henry is, Alba says he is her father. She reveals that Henry’s condition has been given an official name of CDP (Chrono Displaced Person). Alba and Henry separate from the group and talk. Alba has not seen Henry in a long time, suggesting that something has happened to him.
The narrative reverts to the present of 2001. Henry tells Clare that he has traveled to the future and about his encounter with Alba. He reveals that Alba, like him, can time travel.
Part 2, Chapter 29 Summary: “Birthday”
The narrative returns to where it left off in Chapter 27. It is Clare’s approximate due date and she is suffering contractions. Gomez rushes Clare to the hospital where her pain becomes increasingly worse. The delivery takes place, and we learn that Henry time travels to his old elementary school. Clare describes Alba’s first moments and what she looks like. The next day, Richard visits Henry and Clare. A week later, it is September 11, 2001. Henry has told Clare what will transpire later that morning, and that it will be on television.
Chapters 22-29 Analysis
Much of this section is centered on the ongoing difficulties Clare has with pregnancy and miscarriages. Her biological urge to become a mother prevails over Henry’s warnings that with each miscarriage, Clare is risking her health. The tension between them mounts. As Henry say of Clare: She has been “risking death and despair, turning lovemaking into a battlefield strewn with the corpses of children” (370). In these lines, Henry uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without the use of “like” or “as,” like with a simile. For Henry and Clare, lovemaking has become not only a battle, but a child’s cemetery.
The novel illustrates how new scientific advances are often seen as mythic, unbelievable events. Clare sees Dr. Kendrick’s time-traveling mice as “magic” and is hopeful for Henry’s future. In contrast, Henry recognizes the process of trial and error. He warns Clare that there were “lots of dead mouse moms before they figured it out” (361), but Clare remains hopeful. Here, the two act as foils for one another, highlighting each other’s character traits through contrasting ones.
This section explores the nature of time, existence, and being. When Clare finally brings a baby to full term, it is because time-traveling Henry impregnates her, not the present Henry. An act outside of our traditional understanding of time solves Henry and Clare’s struggle. Time traveling is at the root of the novel’s conflict, but it is also a remedy.
Henry’s time travels disrupt the present-day trajectory. As Clare nears her due date, the reader might expect that the next chapter will describe her child’s birth. Instead, Niffenegger takes us into the future before returning to the present. The disjointed chronology mimics what life is like for Henry. As Henry always has to check where he is in time, so does the reader.
