63 pages • 2 hours read

11.22.63

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011

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Part 3, Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Living in the Past”

Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary

Jake rents a house south of Tampa. He begins work on two books: one that chronicles the real story of his experiences with the rabbit-hole, and one that is a fictional work he can show outsiders who might ask about his writing. He sees an ad for a school out of Oklahoma offering bachelor’s degrees. He signs up and gets a degree after completing a simple test. Jake uses his new degree to become a substitute teacher at West Sarasota High.

In July of 1960, Jake makes several bets with a local book maker whom he later hears has ties to the mob in New Orleans. Jake grows nervous after winning a large bet and decides to leave Florida, only to learn later his former home was firebombed that same night.

Jake continues on to Dallas. He gets the same strange feeling there that he got while he was in Derry. While searching for an apartment, Jake witnesses a murder-suicide. Jake decides he doesn’t have to live in Dallas and stumbles on a small town south of Dallas called Jodie. He quickly arranges for a house and a job as a substitute teacher.

Jake makes a bet with a bookie and wins big, but he is left feeling uneasy. He catches a look at Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, and brother, Robert. Marguerite Oswald is an unpleasant woman who scolds her grown son on the sidewalk. The episode makes Jake feel sympathy for Robert and Lee Harvey.

Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary

Jake is settled in Jodie and directing the junior-senior play “Of Mice and Men,” with football player Mike Coslaw in the role of Lenny. Three weeks later, Mimi convinces Jake to become a full-time English teacher for the following year, even though she admits that she knows some of his references are bogus. Mimi then announces that she is dying of cancer and has decided to marry Deke. She invites Jake to her wedding reception where she wants him to welcome the new librarian, a woman named Sadie Clayton, nee Dunhill. When Jake meets Sadie, she trips and falls into his arms, “an intimate introduction” (437), causing him great amusement and instant attraction.

Just before school begins, Jake gets word of Mimi’s death in Mexico. Jake asks Sadie to help him prepare a memorial assembly for the students on the first day of classes. Jake and Sadie fall into an easy friendship. They attend a high school football game together. However, the moment is ruined for Jake when the crowd, cheering on the quarterback Jim LaDue, begin chanting, “JIMLA.”

Part 3, Chapters 12-13 Analysis

As Al advised, Jake makes a few bets to increase his savings, but he raises eyebrows when he bets too much and has several large paydays. Jake’s mentality is still set in 2011. He forgets that an average working man in the late 1950s and early 1960s does not have large sums of money to place on sports bets. Jake makes the mistake of betting hundreds of dollars, money that it would take another man in his class months or years to save up. It is suspicious to those around him and foreshadows trouble down the road.

Jake arrives in Dallas and gets a bad feeling from this. This touches once again on the setting and the idea that a place can be evil. Jake is also discovering things about the past that he does not like, such as racism, poverty, and desperation. These phenomena still exist today, but they were easier for him to ignore in his emotionally cut-off state of mind in 2011. He witnesses a murder-suicide that becomes a last straw and allows him to make the fateful decision to live outside of the Dallas metroplex while he waits for the day Lee Harvey will move his family back to Texas from Russia. This is important because it will introduce him to the town of Jodie and the community he will quickly build around himself.

Jodie is a small town South of Dallas where Jake finds similarities to Lisbon Falls, such as a diner called Al’s which is another harmony with Jake's past. Unlike Dallas, Jodie represents the nostalgic view many have for 1950s America. However, Jake must be careful not to be duped by a false sense of comfort in Jodie. Particularly when Sadie’s murderous husband arrives, King shows that the myth of small-town 1950s America, with its picket fences and prosperity, was never insulated from violence, abuse, and despair.

Jake did not have much of a community in 2011. He does not talk about friends or family that he misses. He and Al weren’t even that close before Al showed him the rabbit-hole. However, in Jodie, Jake quickly creates a community around himself. Jake mentors a student and becomes romantically involved with a librarian. He does not consider the potential consequences of these interactions, but every interaction changes a little bit of the future, something he will learn later.

Jake attends a football game and experiences another harmony, one he finds deeply disturbing. The crowd chants the name by which the Yellow Card Man referred to Jake, JIMLA. This incident once again brings into question what the Yellow Card Man represents.