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 7-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
From January 4 to January 21, Si lives in the Dakota apartment as if it is 1882. He receives period-appropriate groceries from a delivery boy, reads the 1882 newspaper, and avoids looking out the windows where he might see modern-day cars and streetlights. At one point, Rube visits him, and they chat for a while.
Though Si is grateful for the company, Rube’s departure triggers a moment of frustration. Si is tired of the isolation. He is frustrated that the experiment does not seem to be working and feels ridiculous in his play-acting. For a long moment, the narrator says, he “just [stands] in what ha[s] become not clothes but a tiresome costume, fiercely aware of the real New York City all around” (106). The feeling passes quickly, however, and he continues as he was.
Then, on January 21, it snows, shutting off the streetlights and thus perfecting the illusion of being in the past. Si feels this is his best chance. Rossoff visits to hypnotize Si. He tells him that it is January 1882, he has no knowledge of the present, and he should take a 20-minute walk before returning home and going to sleep. Si does so, enjoying a short walk alone in the dark and the snow.
Chapter 8 Summary
Si awakes the next morning. Danziger, Rube, and Rossoff interrogate him about his walk. Because the snow might simply have knocked out the power lines and streetlights, they are uncertain if he traveled in time. Si might have been walking in the present, rather than the past.
Then, Si remembers a detail: From the window of his apartment, he could see a light on in the natural history museum in the distance. In the present, newer construction has blocked the view of the museum. He would only have been able to see the museum in the past. This proves that Si did make it to the past, and they all celebrate their success.
Si is then debriefed about details of his life in the present to see if he inadvertently altered the past. After double-checking some details, they conclude that he has not changed anything, and so they agree to try the experiment again.
Si returns to the Dakota and prepares for a second trip. Kate appears at the apartment, dressed appropriately for the time, and insists on joining him. They argue briefly, before Si relents. Then, using self-hypnosis, they walk out onto the streets of NYC in 1882.
Chapter 9 Summary
Si and Kate walk and are overcome by the changes around them. Everything they see dazzles them, and Si states,
It took a moment of actual struggle for my mind to take hold of what it knew to be the truth: that we were here, standing on a corner of upper Fifth Avenue on a gray January afternoon of 1882; and I shivered and for a moment felt shot through with fear. Then elation and curiosity roared through me (131).
Eventually, they catch a bus and observe the city as they ride. Si notes many details about the city and the people. A man gets on and sits across the aisle from them, and Si is overcome by the man’s face: the fact of the man as a living, breathing person. Kate states that the experience is overwhelming, and so they retreat to the solitary quiet of a hansom cab for the last stretch of their trip to the post office where they intend to witness the letter being mailed.
Chapter 10 Summary
Si and Kate enter the post office and are momentarily awed by the beauty of the building and the bustling of the people around them. Si is worried they will miss the person mailing the letter, but then they spot a man carrying the blue letter that exactly matches the one Kate showed him.
They watch the man mail the letter and then follow him into the street where he laughs triumphantly, obviously proud of himself. He says out loud, “Why should I ever wait for a bus again!” and decides that he should go home “in style” (150). He gets into a cab, and they lose him, though Si hears him state his address as 19 Gramercy Park. This man, Si will eventually learn, is Jake Pickering, who just sent a blackmail letter to Andrew Carmody.
As they stand on the street, Kate sees a small impression in the snow: a heelprint showing a tombstone with a star and circle made of small dots, an exact miniature of Carmody’s gravestone as seen from a photo Ira Carmody showed Kate. Confused and tired, they return to Si’s apartment and the Dakota, and thus to their own time.
Chapter 11 Summary
After returning from the past, Si is debriefed by Rube, Danziger, and a host of government officials including Colonel Esterhazy and a senator. He repeats his story many times, with the senator being particularly antagonistic. Eventually, Esterhazy announces that they believe his story, and it does not appear that he altered anything in the past. They want to continue with the experiment.
Though Danziger is excited about the success of the trip, he is also concerned about any accidental changes to the timeline. He tells Si to be cautious but charges him with observing the man he saw mail the letter in 1882 and find out more about him.
Si does not mention that Kate came with him on his second trip, but Rube reveals that he already knows and hints that they are keeping a closer eye on Si than previously indicated. Still, Rube says no harm was done so long as Kate does not go with him again.
Chapters 7-11 Analysis
This section covers Si’s first time travel excursions. Chapter 7 signals the start of the main action, with the earlier chapters being an introduction to and setup for the major conflicts of the plot. While the first trip is short and uninformative, except insofar as it proves the experiment works, the second trip is vital to the plot.
Si’s initial frustration with the experiment is palpable in Chapter 7, as he lives in the Dakota apartment for two weeks without success and gives in to a moment of feeling ridiculous, like he’s wasting his time. The snowfall is significant because it perfects the illusion of being in the past, which finally allows Si (with the help of Rossoff’s hypnosis) to cross into 1882, and because that same snowfall makes it difficult to confirm that he succeeded. It is also the snowfall, both here and later, that allows Si to notice the clues left behind by Pickering in the form of the star and circle design in his heelprint. The knowledge that the first trip works gives Si and Kate the confidence needed to make the second trip on their own, using self-hypnosis rather than relying on Rossoff’s help.
The second trip marks the success of Si’s initial goal: to witness the person who mails the letter to Andrew Carmody. This is the first step to solving the central mystery of the plot, which is not only who mailed the letter but also why and what the content of the letter means. Now they at least have a face, if not a name, to go with the event. In a stroke of luck, Si hears the man’s address (19 Gramercy Park).
This is also the moment when Si and Kate first see the symbol in the snow, a star inside a circle made of dozens of small dots, that matches Carmody’s (really Pickering’s) gravestone in the future. Though neither Si nor the reader will understand its significance until much later, this first sighting of Pickering’s heel print is a central clue to finally solving the mystery. Furthermore, Si and Kate’s shock and confusion upon seeing the symbol in the snow heightens the sense of mystery and suspense that pervades the novel and leads to a satisfying moment of revelation in Chapter 19 when Si finally understands its meaning.
These first two trips into 1882 also highlight the project’s concerns about the Implications of Changing the Past. Upon his return from each trip, Si is extensively questioned about both his actions in the past and his memories of the present, which they use to decide if anything has changed due to his involvement in the past. Rube and Esterhazy seem only mildly concerned about this. Yet, even once they determine that Si has not inadvertently changed anything, Danziger is anxious about the possibility and begs everyone to be cautious as they proceed.
This is the first time that Danziger voices his objections to the direction the council takes. He wishes to stop after the two successful trips and study the results and consider the implications carefully. But the rest of the council votes to send Si back again. While Si understands Danziger’s concerns, he is just as curious as the council is about the man who sent the letter, whom he will soon know as Jake Pickering. Si’s willingness to go along with the council here furthers the overall theme of the ways curiosity motivates action.
Furthermore, the second trip introduces a motif that runs throughout the novel, which is Si’s focus on faces and the way he experiences reality through those faces. In Chapter 9, Si has such an experience when he and Kate are riding the bus. The passage describes Si’s experience and reaction in minute detail, in which he states that the sight of this man is “the most intensely felt experience of [his] life” and then comments to Kate that this man “can remember a United States that was—Jesus!—still mostly unexplored wilderness” (138). It may be Si’s ability to imagine the reality of a person or place based on a single image that made him the perfect candidate for the project to begin with.
