Living in the Past
Jane is stuck in the past, but living in the present. She can’t get back to the past, but she also can’t escape rom the confines of her particular present to plan for a future. That is literally part of the plotting in the text, but it is also more symbolically hidden within the subtext. Jane’s unique situation of being stuck with only the knowledge of the world outside the subway train that happened the moment she got stuck is remarkably similar to those people who can’t get past a breakup, or the death of a loved one, or a major life disappointment. They become stuck in the past while living in the present, but only barely and as such cannot prepare for any future. You know the type of person; maybe you are or were one of them yourself.
Gay Rights
Jane is a punk rocker lesbian from the late 1970’s. She could just as easily have been a hippie from the 60’s or a beatnik from the 50’s or even just a nice totally closeted Rosie the Riveter from the 40’s. That Jane springs from the era in which gay rights were really beginning to take hold and made significant changes—Harvey Milk was taking office in the municipal government of San Francisco not long after Jane gets stuck out of time—is significant as her status provides a stark counterpoint to what is going on when Augusta meets her.
The Disappeared
There is another aspect of the Gay Rights movement that plays such a significant role in the novel that it actually rises to the status of independent theme by itself. In addition to the time-travel story of Jane, there is another major narrative thread going on. August was also kind of stuck in time in a different way courtesy of being forced to join her mother’s compulsive private investigation into the disappearance of her brother, Augie, after whom she named her daughter, obviously. Funnily enough, these twin threads will wind up being seamlessly knotted together in ways completely unexpected by August. The story of her uncle becomes, coincidentally enough, kind of the anti-Harvey Milk story about homosexuals living in the era and it is the path that diverges from Harvey that was most well-traveled. Rather than rising to become famous, most of those homosexuals compelled to leave disapproving family behind in order to deal a bit more easily with being gay in the 1970’s became the Disappeared. Alas, most of them did not leave behind such sisters as August’s obsessive mother.
