CW: dissociation, violent death

One of my beliefs about literature is that it's complex—maybe more complex than one person can process. That's because, when we read, our minds are temporarily jacked in to another person's stream of consciousness. A prepared, orchestrated consciousness, but nonetheless a set of thoughts that came from another mind, which are now being "broadcast" into our minds. But, of course, our minds wander; certain words may trigger different associations for different readers; certain events may trigger different memories. So a text is never just the words on paper, and trying to claim that a text means just one thing is, by definition, a doomed enterprise.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about literature and, to my mind, the highest study of literature comes in the form of conversations between readers that share the details and interpretations of the different readings of a text so that everybody can gain a deeper knowledge and appreciation of how rich and complex the literature we love actually is.

So, bearing that in mind, here is an interpretation:

>>!"We hit the truck practically in slow motion, or so it seemed to me. In actuality, we were going about forty. The truck was an open pickup truck full of scrap metal. When we hit it, a large sheet of steel flew off the back of the truck, came through our windshield, and decapitated my mother."!<
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>....
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>>!Meanwhile, I was completely absent from the scene for ten minutes and forty-seven seconds. I don't remember where I went; maybe it was only a second or two for me.!<
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>....
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>>!"My mother dying . . . it's the pivotal thing . . . everything else goes around and around it . . . I dream about it, and I also—time travel to it. Over and over. If you could be there, and could hover over the scene of the accident, and you could see every detail of it, all the people, cars, trees, snowdrifts—if you had enough time to really look at everything, you would see me. I am in cars, behind bushes, on the bridge, in a tree. I have seen it from every angle, I am even a participant in the aftermath[.]!<

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, pages 111-12

The Mayo Clinic defines three different types of dissociative disorders: dissociative amnesia, dissociative identity disorder (or DID), and depersonalization-derealization disorder. All three disorders are considered to be responses to post-traumatic stress, especially resulting from trauma experienced as a child.

The Mayo Clinic defines dissociative amnesia as: "memory loss that's more severe than normal forgetfulness and that can't be explained by a medical condition," an inability to "recall information about yourself or events and people in your life, especially from a traumatic time." Henry>!loses ten minutes and forty-seven seconds of his memory, immediately after witnessing his mother's decapitation and nearly losing his own life. During this time, he is physically transported from the site of the accident to an unknown location (though I suspect the subject will be treated later in the novel, I just haven't gotten to it yet). That is, his time-traveling, or chrono-impairment, acts as a post-traumatic response similar to dissociative amnesia. It is a physical manifestation of a mental disorder.!<

The Mayo Clinic defines depersonalization as: "an ongoing or episodic sense of detachment or being outside yourself — observing your actions, feelings, thoughts and self from a distance as though watching a movie." We can see one example of depersonalization when >!Henry encounters his younger self in the Field Museum after his younger self time travels for the first time (which must surely have been traumatic). In the case of the accident that kills his mother, Henry undergoes a kind of "hyper-depersonalization," where he not only "observ[es] [his] actions ... and self from a distance," but actually observes himself from many different vantage points and distances. !<

But Henry doesn't only depersonalize; he experiences>! his return to the scene of the accident as a kind of post-traumatic flashback. He time travels to the accident "[o]ver and over" He is "in cars, behind bushes, on the bridge, in a tree." He has "seen it from every angle." And like many sufferers of post-traumatic stress, his mother's death becomes for him "the pivotal thing." !<

>!Of course, the difference between Henry and the ordinary sufferers of depersonalization is that he can actually interact with his younger self in the moment of his trauma. He calls his father with a message to go to the hospital, puts a blanket around his younger self's shoulders.!< This is the fantasy of trauma: that, given the chance, we would go back and change things for our younger self. But the cost of doing so is that Henry>!must experience the moment of his mother's death over and over again. His time-travel becomes a vehicle for the expression of a mental illness that centripetally compels him to the same point in time over and over again. And there are real limits to what he can do to help himself in the past, as the book illustrates time and time again when emphasizing the theme of determinism. He cannot actually do anything to keep his mother from dying. !<

Mental illnesses are often complex and difficult to understand, even (or especially) for the people who suffer from them, but Niffenegger seems to have dramatized two such illnesses in the form of Henry's time-traveling >!repeatedly back to the site of his mother's death.!< She imagines a world where the operations of our mind can be externalized and seen, written into space-time as a form of >!eternal return to our trauma,!< but also a world where we are equipped >!to provide small comforts to our traumatized selves. A phone call here, a blanket there.!< And who knows what small kindness might make a difference?