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 12-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
Si returns to 1882 and goes to a boarding house at 19 Gramercy Park (the address Pickering gave to his cab driver). He approaches pretending to be a boarder looking to rent a room and meets Julia Charbonneau. Julia’s Aunt Ada is the proprietor of the boarding house. Julia shows Si to a room, and Si thinks she is beautiful. For a moment, he remembers that she is dead in his time, but then she smiles and brings him back to 1882.
Si meets the other residents, including Aunt Ada, whom Si describes one by one, including photographs. He enjoys an evening meal, songs, and parlor games with the household and seems to feel instantly at home.
He makes several historical mistakes, and Julia seems suspicious of him. Then, he draws her a sketch, and she is both distracted and enchanted. He is highly attracted to her, and when she lets down her hair, he calls her “beautiful, beautiful” out loud as he draws her (189).
Finally, Jake Pickering, whom Si recognizes as the man who mailed the letter, returns home. He is threatened by Si’s presence and obvious attraction to Julia. He claims Julia is his fiancée (though Julia does not confirm this) and starts a battle of wills and male posturing with Si.
That night in bed, Si realizes that no matter how careful he is, he will likely have some impact on the future. He considers leaving but remembers that tomorrow (Thursday) is the day mentioned in the letter, demanding that Andrew Carmody meet Pickering at City Hall Park. Si decides he must see what happens.
Chapter 13 Summary
The next morning, Si waits until the other boarders, particularly Pickering, have left before coming down for breakfast. To make conversation, he tells Julia that he wants to buy new clothes, and she offers to walk him to the store since he is new in town. While walking, Julia shows him “the Ladies’ Mile”—a stretch of the city where ladies promenade in their best clothes. Si is delighted by everything he sees.
On Madison Avenue, they see the arm of the Statue of Liberty, where it has been left on display while awaiting the construction of the rest of the statue. Julia is doubtful that the rest of the statue will ever be erected, but Si insists it will be. He is amazed by the sight and nearly gives himself away. Finally, the two part ways on their separate errands. Si continues walking while he waits for the time mentioned in Pickering’s letter.
He takes a tour of the steeple of Trinity Church, where he reflects on some of the changes between his time and this one and wonders if the view from the steeple might be better than even the one from the Empire State Building. He heads toward City Hall Park to witness the meeting between Pickering and Carmody.
Chapter 14 Summary
Si hides in the post office, across the street from the park, and sees Pickering leave a building nearby before walking into the park. Then, a man carrying the blue envelope, who must be Andrew Carmody, arrives. Si sneaks in closer to hear the conversation. He learns that Pickering is blackmailing Carmody: As part of a corrupt political organization called the Tweed Ring, Carmody was paid thousands of dollars to install Carrara marble in the city courthouse, which he did not do. Pickering demands $1 million to keep quiet.
Carmody agrees but insists that his finances are tied up in risky ventures and he is stretched too thin. He won’t be able to pay Pickering until the spring. Pickering does not believe him and gives him until Monday to deliver the cash or he will go to the newspapers. The two walk away, and Si stays in hiding.
Chapter 15 Summary
After Pickering and Carmody leave, Si goes to the building he saw Pickering exit earlier and determines it must be where Pickering’s office is and where the proof of Carmody’s crime is hidden. He meets a janitor who shows him the office and explains that an elevator shaft is being constructed next to Pickering’s office. The janitor is old and easily confused, and he mistakes Si for Pickering.
Si makes note of several other offices in the building, including that for the New York Observer, which he comments he still sees in his nightmares. Finally, he returns to the boarding house and lies to Julia and Aunt Ada in saying that he must return home to his family farm. Before he leaves, Julia insists he draw her portrait, which he does.
Pickering leaves in a fit of jealousy and returns having had Julia’s name tattooed on his chest. Pickering declares that this tattoo means that Julia will always be with him and always belong to him. Si returns to his apartment at the Dakota.
Chapter 16 Summary
After returning to his time, Si goes to the warehouse to check in. During his debriefing, he feels that Rossoff and the others are distracted and not interested in his experiences, admitting to himself that he feels like a neglected child. Rossoff explains that the staff is in an emergency meeting because of a major development: Several other experimenters succeeded in time traveling, and one of them accidentally changed the past. A man that the time traveler knew in the present now no longer exists and was never even born.
Colonel Esterhazy says they have determined that Si’s trip had no effect on the timeline and the risk is therefore minimal. However, Danziger is horrified by both the loss and the larger implications of what they could accidentally do to the timeline. He objects to the council’s ruling and wants to stop the experiment. But Esterhazy, Rube, and a presidential representative overrule Danziger and decide the experiment will continue. In protest, Danziger quits.
Si is morally conflicted but agrees to return to 1882. When he tells Kate about his experiences and his decision, she recognizes his motive: His curiosity to know what happens between Jake and Andrew Carmody, and the meaning of the second half of the letter, is too powerful to ignore.
Chapters 12-16 Analysis
Si’s third trip starts a shift in the action and focus of the novel. Up to this point, the focus remained on the project in the present and the success of the experiment. Now, the focus shifts to the events and people in 1882. Nearly half the book has gone by before the antagonist and main love interest are introduced.
Julia becomes the main love interest despite Kate waiting back in the present. Si is instantly attracted to Julia. As in the case of the man he saw on the bus in Chapter 9, Si is struck by the way Julia’s face makes 1882 feel more real and alive to him. Though Si will at first deny having feelings for Julia, he is lying to himself, just as he did in the first chapter when Rube knew he would join the project long before he could admit it to himself.
The suspense of the evening with the residents of the boarding house comes to a head when Jake Pickering, whom Si knows to be the man who mailed the letter, arrives home. This introduction, in combination with what Si knows of him from the scene outside the post office, paints a stark picture of Pickering as intimidating, egotistical, and not above resorting to violence. Pickering may have good reason to feel immediately threatened by Si’s presence—Si does not, after all, hide his attraction to Julia—but Pickering’s level of jealousy and subsequent violence is intense and ruthless.
Chapter 14 gives Si the next big piece of the puzzle in his attempt to solve the mystery of the letter. In seeing the meeting between Pickering and Carmody, he comes to understand that the first section of the letter is a blackmail scheme centered on Carmody’s embezzlement of public money. Si’s curiosity about this mystery, even when worried about interfering with the past, is a motif that drives the action forward.
Meanwhile, Si’s encounter with the arm of the Statue of Liberty foreshadows the method by which Si and Julia will evade the police and symbolizes the progress of modern America. The first time Si sees the arm, he is amazed. However, just as Si’s view from the top of Trinity Church sours his opinion of the Empire State Building, so too does the arm of the Statue of Liberty lose some of its glamor. This hints at the pervading motif of nostalgia that is threaded through the second half of the novel. This sense of nostalgia, paired with the joy and comfort Si feels among the residents of the Gramercy Park boarding house, points toward the theme of Finding One’s Place. Si increasingly feels that he is more at home in 1882 than in his own time.
When Si goes home to his own time to check in with Danziger and the others, everyone’s fears about changing the past have been realized. Si realizes that no matter how careful he is, “simply being with people is to be involved with them” and could possibly influence events (192). However, his desire to know what happened between Pickering and Carmody overrides this concern. When the council votes to disregard the danger and send Si back again, they instigate a series of decisions that will lead to Si’s choice at the end of the novel.
