...And right a wrong, would you? Or even more so, SHOULD you? This blog is part book review, part moral query. I just finished reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King and found it to be a really interesting, well written novel that has a fascinating moral dilemma. If you could go back into the past and "fix" a wrong, would it be morally right to do so - particularly if you cannot guarantee that the outcome would make the world a better place as a result of your meddling? What about the butterfly effect?
Synopsis: Tasked by his friend Al, Jake Epping, a recently divorced high school English teacher, travels to the past to try to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. [hence the title of the novel]. He can only travel to the past through a portal located in the pantry of Al's diner which takes him to the year 1958, where he then has to live out the next 5 years until he can stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating the President. [In King's book, Oswald is the lone assassin. None of Oliver Stone's conspiracy theories here - although they're discussed and discounted.] Along the way, Jake prevents a few other tragedies from occurring - the annihilation of a family at the hands of the father and an accidental shooing of a young girl who would have ended up paralyzed without his intervention. Jake also gets involved emotionally with several people, thereby making his task harder to complete because of the emotional toll on his personal life. Does Jake succeed in stopping JFK's assassination? Well, obviously I won't give away the ending on whether or not he succeeds in his task - you'll have to find that out for yourself.
I have never been an avid Stephen King reader. Unlike one of my brothers who has read everything that Mr. King has written - including his childhood "What I Did Last Summer" essays, I have only read a handful of Mr. King's books (It, Misery, Thinner, The Green Mile and a few of others). But upon reading the synopsis, I found the premise of this novel fascinating enough that I was compelled to take this book home from the library. At 850 pages, it's a serious undertaking and worth every second of my time. Mr. King takes us back to a simpler time where people live without the distractions of cell phones, the internet and computers. But it's also interesting to see how a 21st-century man can adjust to this simpler time. Of course, Jake tends to make a lot of verbal slips by using modern colloquialisms which gets him into minor trouble. I will say it's not a perfect book - but other than Pride and Prejudice, no book is perfect. There are a couple of annoying aspects to this novel. Written in the first person, Jake Epping has a tendency to use SAT test words in his narration which come across as a little pompous. And I would like to never hear the words "obdurate" or "harmonic" ever again. (Both words were used excessively and became a distraction in my reading enjoyment.) Otherwise, I highly recommend this novel.
But what about the moral issue of time travel? If scientists ever discover how to travel through time, is it something that we should actually do? I know most of us have things in our past we'd like to fix (personally, that one failing grade in high school still bugs me), but if we fix them, then how will we ever learn from our mistakes if we never have them. People often desire to go back in time to kill Hitler, which might prevent the annihilation of millions, but would it really? I've watched my fair share of time traveling movies and television (Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, Back to the Future, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, etc.) and read the occasional time traveling book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Slaughterhouse-Five, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, etc.). According to many of these science fiction resources, history often will try to restore the balance when it is meddled with. Therefore, if someone travels back in time to kill a young Hitler, is it possible that someone just as bad (or worse, if that's possible) might come into power? One could argue that you might need to wipe out all Nazi leaders: Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, etc. Would that be enough to stop World War II and the attempted genocide of an entire race of people? Would stopping JFK's assassination stop the subsequent horrors of the '60s - MLK's assassination, RFK's assassination, the race riots, the escalation in Vietnam?? Maybe. But just maybe something worse might happen. For now, we'll never actually know but it makes for an interesting debating topic.
If you could travel to the past and right a wrong, would you? And would you be willing to live with the consequences of your actions? Of course, in Mr. King's world of 11/22/63, there's a solution to that. Every time someone goes through that portal from 2011 to 1958, it resets history. Therefore, if you're willing to put in the time, you could go back time and time again until you get the final result that you are looking for. Kind of a cheat, wouldn't you say?
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
But what about the moral issue of time travel? If scientists ever discover how to travel through time, is it something that we should actually do? I know most of us have things in our past we'd like to fix (personally, that one failing grade in high school still bugs me), but if we fix them, then how will we ever learn from our mistakes if we never have them. People often desire to go back in time to kill Hitler, which might prevent the annihilation of millions, but would it really? I've watched my fair share of time traveling movies and television (Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, Back to the Future, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, etc.) and read the occasional time traveling book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Slaughterhouse-Five, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, etc.). According to many of these science fiction resources, history often will try to restore the balance when it is meddled with. Therefore, if someone travels back in time to kill a young Hitler, is it possible that someone just as bad (or worse, if that's possible) might come into power? One could argue that you might need to wipe out all Nazi leaders: Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, etc. Would that be enough to stop World War II and the attempted genocide of an entire race of people? Would stopping JFK's assassination stop the subsequent horrors of the '60s - MLK's assassination, RFK's assassination, the race riots, the escalation in Vietnam?? Maybe. But just maybe something worse might happen. For now, we'll never actually know but it makes for an interesting debating topic.
If you could travel to the past and right a wrong, would you? And would you be willing to live with the consequences of your actions? Of course, in Mr. King's world of 11/22/63, there's a solution to that. Every time someone goes through that portal from 2011 to 1958, it resets history. Therefore, if you're willing to put in the time, you could go back time and time again until you get the final result that you are looking for. Kind of a cheat, wouldn't you say?
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
