The Time Traveler's Wife

Factual error: When Henry travels back to when his mother is still alive and is riding the el train with her, when he gets off the train downtown there are color coded signs on the platform. Specifically, a brown and purple sign indicating that those color trains stop on that side of the platform. This scene took place sometime in the 1970s since his mother was still alive, but el trains were not color coded until 1993.

Continuity mistake: Claire sits on a blanket and empties a bag of stuff on it. Then it seems empty when she takes it from the ground to hand it over to Henry. The stuff would have sounded and the blanket is to light when she takes it from the ground to hand it over to Henry.

MiKeMaN_SE

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Clare Abshire: I wouldn't change one second of our life together.

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Question: Why can't Henry save his mother from being in the car crash? Couldn't he have warned her when they met on the subway?

Answer: He could have had Claire distract her long enough to delay her car ride and miss the accident.

Answer: Of course not. Why would she listen to him? He's a total stranger. And if he tells her he's her time-travelling son, she'll think he's a nutjob to boot. It's well-established in the book that he tried everything to save her but could never do so, which made him recognise a well-accepted convention of time-travelling lore: big past events can never be changed. Diana Gabaldon wrote an excellent and extensive essay on time-travelling laws, which is probably still available somewhere on the Internet.

Sereenie

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