Richard DeTamble

Richard DeTamble is Henry's father. Mr. DeTamble is an amazing violinist who played for a huge orchestra. His wife whom passed away was a beautiful singer who Mr. DeTamble loved very much. Mr.Detamble resents Henry for his wife's death because he lived and she did not. When his wife died he turned to alcohol and it ended up hurting him in the long run by him not being able to play violin anymore. Mr.DeTamble was very depressed until a special surprise came along and stole his heart again. Alba who is his granddaughter was brought into this world and he was mesmerized by her. He wanted to pass on everything he knew about music and she became a great violist too. He finally had meaning in his life again and got to have the bond with Alba that he did not have with Henry.

Alba DeTamble

Henry and Alba 

Alba is Henry and Clare's daughter. Alba is a loving child who is always the life of the party no matter what she is doing she is always making people smile. She has the same genetic disorder and Henry but she has much more control over when she wants to go or where she wants to go. Alba is a very strong young girl and also like Clare had to mature at a young age. When Alba is five years old Henry is shot while he is time travelling and passes away. It puts a lot of strain on Clare and she becomes depressed until Alba pulls her out of it. Alba is very intelligent and loves to learn about the past and history which is why she loves time traveling so much. She spends a lot of one on one time with Henry's father as he teaches her all she needs to know to be a phenomenal violinist.

[Clare:] My body wanted a baby. […] I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always. (Niffenegger, 233)


This quote is from Clare talking about how badly she wanted a child. After six miscarriages she finally got the daughter that she wanted, Alba. 

Henry DeTamble

Henry DeTamble is the first protagonist in The Time Traveler's Wife.  Henry has a genetic disorder where he is able to time travel at any point in time.  During his time traveling he travels to a meadow and meet six year old Clare Abshire. When he meets Clare he is forty and she is six years old. Henry goes back and visit's young Clare when he gets drawn back to the meadow which is the back yard of her house. Henry does not tell young Clare but when he time travel's back home he is spending time with her older self and their daughter Alba. Audrey Niffenegger uses foreshadowing through out this entire book to show what is going to happen in the future for Henry and Clare.



[Henry:] This is why I love to be drawn by Clare: when she looks at me with that kind of attention, I feel that I am everything to her. (Niffenegger,280)


This quote is in Henry's perspective and it shows how connected he feels to Clare even after being together for so long. He feels as if she can just give him 100 percent attention and it makes him feel very loved when they are together. 

Clare Abshire

• Clare Abshire is the second protagonist in the book The Time Traveler's Wife. Clare meets Henry DeTamble who is the first protagonist in the field of her house when she was six years old. Clare falls in love with Henry right away and becomes attached to him even though he is a time traveler and she does not get to see him as often as she would like. Clare goes on living her life when Henry is not around but when he time travel's to her, her whole world stops. She tries to live her life normally when he is gone but the more that she sees him and the more that they spend time together she has a hard time living without him. She's loved Henry since she was six years old and he is the only man that she has ever loved. She waited for him and was very patient with his condition. Henry and Clare end up getting married in Clare's future, and having a beautiful daughter named Alba after 6 miscarriages. Henry's dad takes part in Alba's life along with their close friends Charisse and Gomez and their three children. Henry and Clare are a perfect example of a couple that can fight time with enough love. 

[Clare:] "Do you love her?" [Henry:] "Very much" […] I'm astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face […] [Clare:] "It's just that I thought maybe you were married to me." (Niffenegger,214-215)

This quote was shared between Clare and Henry when Clare was six and getting to know Henry. She was asking about his wife that he always talks about which she later finds out is her. She is upset because she is in love with him and he does not have any idea, so she thinks. 

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.