The Time Traveler's Wife Essay

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the most unusual love story I’ve read so far. It tells the romance between Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. What makes it unusual is Henry suffers from a genetic disorder that would cause him to travel in time randomly. His disorder makes their relationship challenging. There are times when Henry is absent from Clare’s life because he’s travelling some when. Moreover, his disorder also affects the way Clare sees her life.
Before I delve more into it, I will confess that I don’t consume many time travelling stories. Time travelling confuses me. There’s the whole time paradox that would make me keep questioning the integrity of the plot and take the enjoyment out of the story. One time travelling story that I remember enjoying is Arrival. In a way, the time travelling aspect in this book is similar to Arrival.
Henry sees time as a circular. Everything happens at the same time. This concept is similar to how the heptapods in Arrival see time. This creates a causal loop though, the origin of an event can’t be determined because all of them are happening at the same time. It gets tricky to the development of Henry and Claire’s relationship because they handle their past, present, and future simultaneously. Dealing with normal relationship problem is difficult enough; reading about their

But then again, it leads to a question whether or not free will exists in this book? Since Clare and Henry can’t change things that have happened so everything is predetermined for them. If that’s so, do they really have a choice in their life? If they do, their choices would affect the events afterwards and change the outcome. This idea is talked about in the book frequently. In fact, Clare once teased the idea of changing her choice. But in the end she chickened out and didn’t change anything because she’s afraid that there’s a chance of losing