JOIN USChanging history
Through this insightful read, King reminds his readers that the past does not want to be changed, notes Payel Dutta Chowdhury
Stephen King’s latest magnum opus, 11/22/63, promises to be a rare juxtaposition of facts, fiction and much more. A master of the science-fiction genre, King’s recent novel blends historical fiction and real life events. The book deals with a time traveller who attempts to revisit and even revise the events surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy, which had occurred on November 22, 1963. The front and back covers of this volume set the tone and tempo of the 850 pages that make up this book, by depicting a newspaper
account of the president’s death as well as a contrary outcome, where the president and the first lady are seen looking happy and unscathed.
Jake Epping, the protagonist, is a recently divorced high school English teacher who is convinced by a dying friend to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating Kennedy. Al Templeton, Jake’s friend, shows him a portal at the back of his diner’s pantry, through which one can go back in time. Jake is familiarised with the portal and learns that if any event in the past is changed, that event will reset and change back the next time one uses the portal. Al himself had spent four years in the past trying to confirm that Oswald was the killer.
Changing the past, however, is not child’s play; the more important the event that one wants to change, the more obstacles there would be to prevent that change — exactly the reason why Al had developed cancer, an ailment that led him to give up his mission.
A reluctant Jake undertakes experiments by trying to save the family of one of his students. He completes his mission, only to learn that his actions have indirectly led to his student dying in Vietnam. Jake re-enters the portal and settles in a small town called Jodie, and waits for Oswald’s arrival. In the meanwhile, Jake occupies himself as a full-time English teacher, falls in love and gradually establishes his identity in the late 1950s.
Several tragic and unexpected events delay Jake’s confrontation with Oswald. With everything going wrong so as to prevent him from changing destiny, he is finally able to reach Oswald and kill him only seconds before the fatal moment. However, he does pay his price in trying to change destiny — Oswald kills Sadie, Jake’s fiancée, who had come to help him.
Jake learns his lesson when he gets to know of a massive earthquake in California, a direct result of his actions. When he comes back through the portal to the present, he is shocked to discover a landscape scarred by a nuclear winter. He gets an update of the world’s happenings between 1963 and 2011, including that of nuclear war, domestic terrorism, general lawlessness and earthquakes, all of which have contributed to the slow destruction of the world as a whole.
Wisdom dawns on him at last and he quickly returns to 1958 to restore things back to normal.
A complete departure from the earlier works of King, 11/22/63 showcases the huge amount of research and preparation that the writer has undertaken to complete the project. Even though King conceived the idea behind this novel way back in 1971, even before the publication of his first book Carrie, it materialised only in 2011, as he felt that the project required “greater literary talent than he possessed”.
The novel contains detailed minutia such as the price of a pint of root beer (10 cents) or a haircut (40 cents) in 1958, details which required thorough research of historical documents and newspaper archives. Similarly, King had to study various conspiracy theories to conclude that Oswald indeed had acted alone. A much appreciated fact of this book is King’s analysis of Oswald’s character and personal life. However, the 100 pages dedicated to this might get a little too tiresome for some readers.
Kudos to the writer for the authentic and interesting representation of the 1950s as a real time and place and not merely as “a nostalgic fairy tale.” His depiction of interesting characters like Epping and Dunhill are also very well drawn out. King presents to his readers what a worst case scenario would look like, if history had changed. The man guarding the portal explains to Jake that travelling through the portal does not change the past. It merely creates new strings of the past, stretching the bonds of reality. King wants to remind his readers that the past does not want to be changed and in order to reaffirm his views, he examines the “butterfly effect” — a phenomenon whereby a small change at one place in a
complex system can have large effects elsewhere.
As is usually the case with his other books, 11/22/63 does contain sections which could have been trimmed. Nevertheless, interesting plot, well-sketched characters, unexpected humour and cultural musings are bound to hold the readers enthralled till the end. Definitely, an interesting and insightful read.