Love

There are many types of love and relationships that are complicated and unbelievable in the book TheTime Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Niffenegger's book is through the eyes of two main characters Henry and Clare. Henry and Clare are what most romantic's consider "soul mates". They are not the only love that has been shown through out The Time Traveler's Wife. Here are some relationships.


Henry&Clare:

Henry and Clare are the main characters in The Time Traveler's Wife. Henry and Clare meet when Clare is six years old and Henry is forty. Henry is a time traveler and he travels to places in the future and the past of his life that are meaningful to him. He travel's to Clare when she is six years old and they become good friends, Henry becomes her childhood crush, which leads into her boyfriend, fiancé and her husband through out her life. They struggle with his time traveling because sometimes it puts a strain on their relationship as he is leaving and away for weeks at a time sometimes. Clare deals with seeing Henry in different phases of his life. Until she is able to have him in the present where they are both around the same age to be able to date. Clare is the strongest of the two main characters when it comes to love because through out everything, of him leaving and coming back at random times, random ages.. she stands by him and walks through life with him with barley any complaints. She is hopelessly in love with him and you can see that she will love him for eternity. Henry is strong also.. he tries to pull himself from where he traveled back to Clare as fast as possible but with him not being able to control it, thats is not the case. Henry knows how to wow her every time they are together and things are never dull when they get to spend periods of time together. 


Gomez&Charisse:
Gomez and Charisse are Clare's roommates. Clare and Charisse are best friends and live together in 1991. Charisse and Gomez date, and end up getting married although Gomez has a really huge crush on Clare which sometimes gets the best of him Charisse stands by Gomez and does not leave him. She acts as if she does not see the way that Gomez looks at her best friend. Gomez and Charisse have three children tougher and remain married until their death. 


Sharon&Mark:
Mark is Clare's older brother. He is dating Sharon his girlfriend whom he has been with for two years. Sharon had become pregnant and Mark had asked her to marry him due to pure pressure of their Christian faith,Which did not impress his parents. They did not approve of the engagement due to the fact that Sharon was pregnant. 


Philip&Lucille Abshire: 

Philip and Lucille are Clare's parents. They were married very young and have three children together. Mark, Clare and Alicia. They are not in love nor do they even show it. Lucille suffers from depression and anxiety which gets the best of her and has for as long as Clare could remember. You can tell that they are only still remaining married due to their Christian faith. They got married young because Lucille had become pregnant at a young age and it became a repeat in the family with Mark and Sharon and Lucille and Philip did not like that. 


There are many other love relationships in the book but not many of them are as focused as these relationships here. one of the main theme's in The Time Traveler's Wife  is love and it is shown differently in all of the relationships. Love concurs all and it is also shown differently in al of the relationships. You live through the love and the sacrifice of Henry and Clare and see the people around them that they care about struggle on different level's of love with one another. 

Critical Article Summaries

Summary 1: 
Michelle Lee
Literary Newsmakers for Students Volume 1

Michelle Lee's Criticism on The Time Traveler's Wife is discussing the different kinds of Literature that the book uses inside itself. Henry who is one of the two main characters works in the Newberry Library where he reads a lot of books and recites quotes of them through out the entire book. "Audrey Niffenegger successfully grounds the fantastic premise of the Time Traveler's Wife. From quotations, excerpts and poetry that structure the novel to passing remarks about Henry's and Clare's preferred reading material"(Lee,348). She goes through the critical article bringing out the literature that is shown in The Time Traveler's Wife. In the first line of the book it is a quote from J.B Priestly's Man In Time. This quote shows the firm understanding of how Henry's time traveling works before it is even shown in the book. "Without reading the story, readers will know that time will be a major issue"(Lee,348). She is explaining how the different types of literature that has been used through out the novel has been a key theme in showing the understanding of the struggle between the two characters. Through out this article Lee is showing examples of the different kinds of Literature that is being used to create The Time Traveler's Wife and helping it reach its full understanding. 


Summary 2:
Stephanie Merritt
Literary Newsmakers for Students Volume 2



Stephanie Merritt gives comparisons with The Time Traveler's Wife and The Lovely Bones she also critiques the idea of a "Time Traveler" and the entire concept of the book all together. The Time Traveler's Wife and The Lovely Bones she says have unforeseeable commercial success."Henry and Clare, and the fantasy element that Henry suffers from "chronic-dispalcement disorder," a genetic flaw similar to epilepsy, which means that at moments of stress he disappears from the present and patches up naked in his own past or future.This doesn't displace the present self of whatever year he is thrown into, so frequently he finds himself face to face with a younger or older double with whom he can communicate"(Merritt,351). She explains the plot summary of the Time Traveler's Wife  and makes her readers gain an understanding before she goes into detail about her opinion relating to the book. Merritt then goes on explaining how a lot of the paragraphs are "padded" out with details of what they are wearing or eating. " As if the author is over-anxious about rooting her fantasy idea in a convincing recognizable way"(Merritt, 351). She explains here how the author uses random extra details on what the character in the chapter is wearing or what they are eating to fill in voids of the book. "But while the yoking together of scientific principle and fantasy is as science, there seems something distasteful about transferring the experiences of infertile couples afflicted with genetic disorders to the realm of time travel"(Merritt,351). This quote from Merritt's article shows her full opinion on how she things the "time traveling" aspect is in the book that Niffenegger has written. 


Article 3: 
Mark Flanagan
Literary Newsmakers for Students Volume 2
Interview with Audrey Niffenegger 

Through out this interview Mark Flanagan sits and talks with Audrey Niffenegger about her first novel Time Traveler's Wife. He starts talking to her about her passion and how she is an artist in many different forms. Niffenegger is a painter, graphic novel writer, novelist and many more types of an artist. She shows stories through many different eyes and ways. Flanagan asks Niffenegger if she has always know that she wanted to be an artist.  She proceeds to make a joke and they continue their interview. "The premise for The Time Traveler's Wife is fascinating! How did you arrive at it? How did you then transform it into a novel? did you outline the plot, do character sketches, etc?"(Flanagan,352). He asks her all of these questions which many of the readers out there would have wanted to know and benefit from. she proceeded with her answer as followed. "I got the title first, and played around with it for quite  long time, slowly evolving the characters in my head. I wrote the end before anything else, then began to write scenes as the occurred to me.. TTW was written in a complete different order than the one it finally took. I understood early on that it would be organizers in three sections, and that the basic unit was the scene, not the chapter. It has a rather chaotic feel to it, especially at the beginning, and that is deliberate there is a slow piecing together, a gradual accumulation of store, that mimics the experience of the characters. I made a lot of notes about the characters. I hate two timeliness to help me stay organized, but no outline of the plot(Flanagan,352). Through out this interview the readers and Flanagan learn the inside scoop on how the book truly came together and her thoughts while she was writing The Time Traveler's Wife. 

About The Author

The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger


I chose to read Audrey Niffenegger's book The Time Traveler's Wife because I had seenthemovie and I really wanted to see how the book was because books are much more descriptive. I have not read any of her olther graphic novels or novels, but once I saw it on the list, I knew that was the book I really wanted to read.

Audrey Niffenegger was born on June 13th 1963. As a child she was always writing. Niffenegger went to school in Chicago and got her master's in fine arts from Northwestern University. While she was writing TheTime Traveler's Wife she was teaching a writing class in Chicago. In Writing The Time Traveler's Wife she had recieved many fellowships including a Ragdale Foundation Fellowship. Niffeneger lives in Chicago and continues to write and create visual art (Literary Newsmakers For Students Volume 2 pg. 334).

Audrey Niffenegger has a whole bunch of different genres that she works with. She had a gallery of art work on top of being a novel writer and a graphic novel writer too. She is very artistic and can tell stories in many different forms whether it is a painting, graphic novel, or an actual novel. The Time Traveler's Wife was actually suppose to be a graphic novel until there was too much information to be shared so Niffenegger decided that she would take the route of a novel instead.

Niffenegger's book was based in Chicago. Which is also where she spent her life. She uses live historical or random things in Chicago to build the lives of Clare, Henry, Gomez and many more of the characters that surround the Chicago streets. (Literary Newsmakers For Students Volume 2 pg. 347).

Themes that Niffenegger has demonstrated in The Time Traveler's Wife are made very clear. Love conqures all, and the definition between right and wrong are a few of the main big themes that Niffenegger has showed in this book. Love conqures is shown through the lives of the two main characters Clare and Henry. They're always in one another's hearts because the majority of the time gravity pulls them away. It shows through many obstacles that their love grows stronger and they are able to bond together to be stronger than ever. Defining right and wrong is very diffrerent in this book because some things that normal people would think are wrong in reality in the book were reasonable. For instance when Henry is showing his daughter Alba survival skills for when she has time traveled, for her to be able to pick a lock to survive. That is something that we would consider wrong, but in the book in the situation it was right.  (Literary Newsmakers For Students Volume 2 pg. 345)

Kissed By An Angel by Elizabeth Chandler is a great comparrison with Audrey Niffengger's Time Traveler's Wife. Although they are both very different books they show a romance that has been through so much to still carry on. In Kissed By An Angel Ivy who is a "typical" highschool girl tries not to fall for the "typical" jock Tristian. What she comes to realize is that he is far from typical. He is  sweet and kind. After a few months of them dating they fall in love, they go to celebrate their anniversary and on the way they end up getting into a car accident and Tristian does not make it. He becomes her guardian angel who follows her and guides her to help her find out who killed him. They were seperated by something uncontrolable and battled it out by one anothers side. Very similar in The Time Traveler's Wife when Henry has no control over when he leaves Clare and when he comes home, or which version of him comes home for that matter. Both books show a great deal of obstacles that both the female and the male characters have to go through on their own and together.

Critical Article's
* Flanagan, Mark. Literary Newsmakers For Students. Vol. 02. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning,  2006. Print.
* Lee, Michelle. Literary Newsmakers For Students. Vol. 02. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2006. Print.

* Merritt, Stephanie. Literary Newsmakers For Students. Vol. 02. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2006. Print.

Bibliography:

* Hacht, Anne Marie. Literary Newsmakers for Students. Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Newsmaking Novels, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. Print.

Book Submission 1

Title: The Time Traveller's Wife

Author: Audrey Niffenegger

Year Published: 2003

Number of pages: 525

I chose this book because when I was going through the list this was the book that I thought was going to be the most interesting. I am a big fan of romance and I had seen the movie when it came out. Rachel McAdam’s was the lead female in the movie; she is an amazing actor and I thought this book would be great because of how the two main characters in the movie brought the story to life on screen.

I really enjoy this book so far because of how it is laid out. The book is laid out in basic dialogue between the two characters and sometimes more characters get thrown it. It flips from the past and the present of where Clare is. 

I have only read the first 3 chapters but already I am really enjoying the story line and how the characters all tell the story in different perspectives.

In the beginning of the book it goes to where Clare is in her present and she sees Henry again. This is the first time that she has seen him other than when she was 18 and younger so she is over excited and shocked. He on the other hand does not remember her nor does he have any idea that she knows about his condition and that they have met over 100 times before this time. I can already in just the few chapters I have read I can tell that there is a lot of love and chemistry between these two lead characters.

There are a few themes that I see that are forming already and that is love, change and loneliness. The love theme that I can see already is between Clare and Henry I can really see them being a true love that can face anything and as their characters start to get to know each other and face things together it really shows. Change is a big theme in the book so far because they both need to deal with change. Henry needs to deal with having someone to come back to and to think about their feelings and Clare has to work on being okay with waiting around for him when he goes, because they both can not control when he does go but he needs to try and understand how hard it is going to be on her. Lastly loneliness, Clare is going to have to deal with being alone when Henry is gone and that is for long periods of time the majority of the time. I think the author is trying to show these themes because she wants the reader to really be able to relate to the characters and what they are going through. 

A secondary resource that I have currently looked into is the movie Time Traveller's Wife. The movie was amazing. It really showed the love and pain between the two main characters. The book is conversations between the two main characters; or even between the main characters and other loved ones or people they cross paths with in their time. The movie did an outstanding job on showing the time line and the conversations between all of the characters in the book. It is interesting to see how great of a job they did with bringing the story and situations to life.

“It’s hard to be the one left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, if he’s okay. Its hard to be the one who stays"(Niffenegger 1).

This line from the novel really speaks to me, not just because it is the first sentence, it’s because it takes my mind away to be put in her perspective and how she is feeling at that point in time. This sentence is not overly emotional but you can put your own emotions to how she is feeling as she is saying this. “ it’s hard to be the one who stays” is the thing that impacted the most, no one likes being left behind so I can really feel her emotions when she says that. 

My goal is to finish reading my book by the middle of October.

September 16-23;Page 1-159

September 23-30;Page 159- part 2

October 1-9;Part 2 - page 398

October 9-16; 398-End