46 pages • 1 hour read
Alan LightmanEinstein's Dreams
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Interlude 1-Chapter 16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Interlude 1 Summary
This Interlude takes place at an unspecified time during Einstein’s 1905 dream phase as he walks with his friend Besso. This isn’t a dreamworld but rather a reminder that the story began with a character named Einstein who spent months in mind-exhausting dreams before arriving at the theory of special relativity.
The narration is omnipotent and reveals Besso’s internal thoughts. Einstein is 26 years old and has already completed his PhD and published several papers. He holds a job at the patent office, but his primary fixation is on the nature of time, which he wanted to understand “to get close to The Old One” (39), by which he means God. Besso’s brother is visiting, and he won’t see Einstein much as a result. He worries about his friend.
Chapter 9 Summary: “8 May 1905”
In this dream, the world is about to end. The fixed date for the world’s destruction is universally known, and consequences are thus separated from actions as the end draws closer. People live without fear of consequence, freely having affairs, stripping naked, traveling with abandon, rekindling relationships, and abandoning relationships. As a result, they feel liberated, are kind and generous, and live harmoniously. As the world ends, everyone holds hands in peaceful silence. As in several prior dreams, this one explores the concept of free will. Once detached from consequence, people make different decisions than they would if they had to suffer consequences; thus, only knowledge of the future limits human will.
Chapter 10 Summary: “10 May 1905”
In a single city, neighborhoods exist in different times, each section in a different era, because “in this world, the texture of time happens to be sticky” (46). Just as some parts of the town are stuck in a certain era, people are stuck in certain moments. The dream hones in on several characters in this sticky world who have become fixed in time. A man tries to talk to a friend who is stuck in the past. In another scene, a man sits at a table, stuck in the moment when he was unable to tell his father he loved him. In a third scene, a mother who loves and misses her son writes to him every day; meanwhile, her son calls to her, but she’s stuck in the moment of his departure and can’t see him, though he has returned:
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone (48).
This world literally embodies sticky time: The characters are literally stuck in certain moments. In other dreams, time’s impact on characters’ relationships is secondary or tertiary, in this dream, time’s impact on relationships is total.
Chapter 11 Summary: “11 May 1905”
In this dreamworld, people wreck the world around them every spring, tossing leaves, throwing items around their houses, smashing furniture, breaking glass, “for in springtime the populace become sick of the order in their lives” (52). By summer, people stop destroying things, and the world repairs everything, rearranges items, rakes up the leaves, remolds the glass, and restores order. They live in order, with nothing out of place, until the following spring, when they tire of the order of things and smash it all again. This cycle of order and chaos highlights the illusion of free will in a world where order is the rule. People act out, imposing their will, only to have their will erased and order restored. This dream explores the futility and pointlessness of fighting against the nature of the world.
Chapter 12 Summary: “14 May 1905”
In this world, a certain place is frozen in time. This place is inhabited by parents and lovers, both of whom wish to freeze time. Lovers want to stay locked in a decades-long embrace, while mothers wish to see their children in a moment of pure, childish joy. This is the center of time. Those who move around time’s center do so slowly. Some return to the part of the world where time moves normally but find their family and friends long gone: “Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case” (55).
It has been roughly one month since Einstein began dreaming about time. He’ll dream for another month and a half, his dreams making him weak and exhausted, until finally he’s able to synthesize his theory of special relativity.
Chapter 13 Summary: “15 May 1905”
In this imagined world, time doesn’t exist. The dream is a long series of unconnected images that are neither fixed in any specific time nor related to one another in context or meaning. Without time, the dream suggests, nothing connects people, things, or events. Unlike other dreams, this one offers no explanation except that “there is no time. Only images” (57).
Chapter 14 Summary: “20 May 1905”
In this dreamworld, memories don’t exist. This further explores worlds in which integral elements are removed. The previous chapter explored the removal of time; this one explores the removal of memory. Because the world is always new, it’s exciting and sensory-rich: “A world without memory is a world of the present” (61). Each person has a Book of Life, which offers them aids such as their home address, the name of their spouse, their occupation, where they work, and details about their education and other aspects of their lives. Some characters attempt to fill their Book of Life with achievements. Others live in shame, having read their Book of Life to discover that they’re failures, murderers, or cheats. The only truly happy people in this world are those who live in the present because they “have learned how to live in a world without memory” (63).
Chapter 15 Summary: “22 May 1905”
In this world, people can briefly see the future. Those who haven’t yet seen their future wait to make decisions until they know what the outcome will be. Those who have seen their future rush toward it in bursts. This world inverts the concept of consequence such that the future determines actions taken in the past. People either know their future and understand that they have no free will, or don’t yet know their future and are mired in doubt. A select few know their futures and attempt to change them, only to end up in their predicted futures but with at least a life having been lived: “Who would fare better in the world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?” (67).
Chapter 16 Summary: “29 May 1905”
In this world, time moves slower for people in motion. As a result, everything is in a state of constant motion. Businesses move fast to get ahead of competitors, and house value is determined by speed rather than size. As with the world where people live on stilts on mountaintops in order to live longer, this world is hyper-fixated on extending one’s time, and all actions taken to extend one’s time result in little gain but much disruption to the quality of life.
This world presents a theory similar to relativity, as each moving object observes other moving objects as moving at high speed. A man on a train passing trees sees the trees as moving: “The faster one travels past a neighbor, the faster the neighbor appears to be traveling” (71). This is the closest theory to Einstein’s 1905 special theory of relativity, which linked space, time, mass, and speed.
Interlude 1-Chapter 16 Analysis
This section begins with the first of the novel’s three Interludes. These Interludes (interspersed occasionally between dreams) reveal glimpses of Einstein’s mid-dream reality. Einstein says to his friend Besso, “I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One” (39). Besso points out that perhaps knowledge won’t result in closeness with God. Nevertheless, the Interlude depicts Einstein as focused on merging a scientific and philosophical understanding of time, which he believes is linked to God. This introduces the third of the novel’s main themes: The Search for God, the Theory of Everything.
As in the previous section, the dreams in this one build off one another: Some dream vignettes expand on previous theories of time, while others contradict or explore opposing concepts as a means of rebuttal. In this way, Einstein the dreamer works through theories of time, concepts that encompass worlds, and the complex paradoxes that accompany each new theory. Each survives in the dreamer’s mind. Although previous worlds impact subsequent worlds, the dreamer doesn’t acknowledge this. This paradox mirrors the paradox presented in some worlds in which the knowledge of time’s impact on the world tortures characters who are aware of it. Einstein, whom the novel’s Prologue presents as a tired, tortured soul, suffers because he’s aware of the many worlds and paradoxes. More importantly, he’s now the only person in his real world who understands how time works. Like the tortured characters in his dreams, he exists separate from the rest of humanity, who remain oblivious to the true nature of time.
Many vignettes explore a human connection to the divine. In some, time is divine. Time itself is the thing of worship in others. In yet other vignettes, time is a curse, a plague on the people of that world. In all worlds, time is the primary element that dictates how society is organized and is the most important aspect of that world. The characters’ understanding of time brings tears of pain and joy, laughter, smiles, loss, and cheer. It’s the thing that most drives how the characters interact with one another and their environment. It drives decisions, thus making free will central to how humanity, in this world of imagined worlds, understands itself relative to its future. The question of free will versus predeterminism appears in several vignettes. In the first mention of predeterminism, the unfortunate characters aware of time’s cyclicality are tormented by their lack of free will since they can’t change the future. In the world where time moves slowly, characters bend their understanding of free will in service to time. In the world that will end at a preset time, people have free will without consequence and thus live with happy abandon.
In some vignettes, people become stuck in time to various degrees. In the world where each person is stuck alone in a specific moment, the feeling of being stuck is literal. In previous dreams where people felt stuck in time, it was a feeling of being stuck, not an actual stickiness in the fabric of time. Through this literal interpretation of the concept of being influenced and ensnared by time, the novel highlights the extent to which time impacts human lives, thematically supporting Humanity as an Absolute.
In the Interlude, Besso ponders Einstein’s goal, thinking, “for such a recluse and an introvert, this passion for closeness seems odd” (41). Einstein suffers for science, and is tortured by the vastness of his imagination. He’s depicted in the Prologue and the Interlude as tired, troubled and weak. His friend Besso worries about Einstein’s health, both physical and mental are at risk.
This section concludes with a preposterous dreamworld in which everything is in constant motion because time passes more slowly for bodies in motion. For Einstein’s 1905 special theory of relativity, which he holds in his hands in the Prologue, this world offers a tangential glimpse at how space and speed might be connected in a way that influences how people experience time. The second postulate in Einstein’s 1905 theory offers time dilation at near relativistic speeds as a possible explanation for the consistency of lightspeed observations in a vacuum. Although the final dream in this sequence is silly, the concept of time dilation emerges from within the confusing dreamworld, offering Einstein a glimpse at the science through imagination. This, again, shows the vital link between head and heart, science and art, thematically foregrounding Discovery at the Intersection of Art and Science.
