The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

by

Kim Edwards

Dr. David Henry Character Analysis

The novel’s protagonist and its most inscrutable, complex character, David Henry is haunted by a past full of poverty, grief, and loss when he makes the painful decision to send away his newborn daughter Phoebe—who has been born with Down syndrome. David lost a sister, June, to heart failure in childhood and, knowing the medical risks associated with Down syndrome, he fears having to watch Phoebe die too. Accordingly, David sends Phoebe away with nurse Caroline Gill and constructs a terrible lie, telling everyone that Phoebe died at birth. The lie, though meant to spare his family pain and grief, ultimately becomes the source of its slow, painful dissolution over the decades that follow. David is desperate to outrun the secret he’s allowed to flourish, but he’s unable to escape the weight of what he’s done to his family. He believes until the day of his death—ironically, from a heart attack—that he’ll one day tell the truth and set things right. Rather than owning up to his mistakes, though, David retreats into an obsession with photography, which stems from a desire to find one perfect moment that will carry the same weight as the moment he chose to give Phoebe away. He alienates himself from his wife Norah and son Paul, and when he tries to find redemption by sheltering a sixteen-year-old pregnant runaway, Rosemary, he estranges himself from his family even more deeply. David is both protagonist and antagonist in many ways—he is his own worst enemy, and his hubris affects everything around him. Stubborn yet sensitive, with a debilitating need to try and fix the past and master the future, David’s individual arc ties in with all of the novel’s major themes.

Dr. David Henry Quotes in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

The The Memory Keeper’s Daughter quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. David Henry or refer to Dr. David Henry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Secrets and Lies Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1: March 1964 Quotes

When they reached the car she touched his arm and gestured to the house, veiled with snow and glowing like a lantern in the darkness of the street.

“When we come back we’ll have our baby with us,’’ she said. “Our world will never be the same.”

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Related Symbols: Snow
Page Number: 10-11
Explanation and Analysis:

He cut the cord and checked her heart, her lungs. All the time he was thinking of the snow, the silver car floating into a ditch, the deep quiet of this empty clinic. Later, when he considered this night—and he would think of it often, in the months and years to come: the turning point of his life, the moments around which everything else would always gather—what he remembered was the silence in the room and the snow falling steadily outside.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Snow
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: March 1964 Quotes

It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be.

Related Characters: Caroline Gill Simpson (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5: February 1965 Quotes

“Please don’t be sad. I didn’t forget, Norah. Not our anniversary. Not our daughter. Not anything.”

“Oh, David,” she said. “I left your present in the car.” She thought of the camera, its precise dials and levers. The Memory Keeper, it said on the box, in white italic letters; this, she realized, was why she’d bought it—so he’d capture every moment, so he’d never forget.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry (speaker)
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7: May 1965 Quotes

He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of vertigo, afraid even to glance at Norah. He had wanted to spare her, to protect her from loss and pain; he had not understood that loss would follow her regardless, as persistent and life-shaping as a stream of water. Nor had he anticipated his own grief, woven with the dark threads of his past. When he imagined the daughter he’d given away, it was his sister’s face he saw, her pale hair, her serious smile.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson, June
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9: May 1970 Quotes

“Put the camera away,” she said. “Please. It’s a party, David.”

“These tulips are so beautiful,” he began, but he was unable to explain himself, unable to put into words why these images compelled him so.

“It’s a party,” she repeated. “You can either miss it and take pictures of it, or you can get a drink and join it.”

“I have a drink,” he pointed out. “No one cares that I’m taking a few pictures, Norah.”

“I care. It’s rude.”

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry (speaker)
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11: July 1977 Quotes

The photographs they were discussing were all of her: her hips, her skin, her hands, her hair. And yet she was excluded from the conversation: object, not subject. […] She had tried, by posing for David, to ease some of the distance that had grown between them. His fault, hers—it didn’t really matter. But watching David now, absorbed in his explanation, she understood that he did not really see her and hadn’t for years.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Howard
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12: August 1977 Quotes

He had given their daughter away. This secret stood in the middle of their family; it shaped their lives together. He knew it, he saw it, visible to him as a rock wall grown up between them. And he saw Norah and Paul reaching out and striking rock and not understanding what was happening, only that something stood between them that could not be seen or broken.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 193-194
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15: April 1982 Quotes

“She was lucky, I guess; she never had a problem with her heart. She loves to sing. She has a cat named Rain. She’s learning how to weave. […] She goes to school. Public school, with all the other kids. I had to fight like hell for them to take her. And now she’s nearly grown I don’t know what will happen. […] What else can I say? You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.”

Related Characters: Caroline Gill Simpson (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16: April 1982 Quotes

His life turned around that single action: a newborn child in his arms—and then he reached out to give her away. It was as if he’d taken pictures all these years since to try and give another moment similar substance, equal weight. He’d wanted to try to still the rushing world, the flow of events, but of course that had been impossible.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:

Her silence made him free. He talked like a river, like a storm, words rushing through the old house with a force and life he could not stop. […] He talked until the words slowed, ebbed, finally ceased. Silence welled.

She did not speak. […]

He closed his eyes, fear rising, because he had seen anger in her eyes, because everything that happened had been his fault.

Her footsteps and then the metal, cold and bright as ice, slid against his skin. The tension in his wrists released. […]

“All right,” she said. “You’re free.”

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Rosemary (speaker)
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22: July 1, 1989 Quotes

For a long time Norah sat very still, agitated, on the edge of knowing. And then suddenly the knowledge was hers, irrevocable, searing: all those years of silence, when he would not speak of their lost daughter, David had been keeping this record of her absence. Paul, and a thousand other girls, all growing.

Paul, but not Phoebe.

Norah might have wept. She longed suddenly to talk with David. All these years, he’d missed her too. All these photographs, all this silent, secret longing.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 364
Explanation and Analysis:

Caroline said it again: Phoebe, not dead but taken away. All these years. Phoebe, growing up in another city. Safe, Caroline kept saying. Safe, well cared for, loved. Phoebe, her daughter, Paul’s twin. Born with Down syndrome, sent away.

David had sent her away.

“You must be crazy,” Norah said, though even as she spoke so many jagged pieces of her life were falling into place that she knew what Caroline was saying must be true.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Caroline Gill Simpson, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 369
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23: July 2-4, 1989 Quotes

Paul reached out into the hot, humid air, feeling as if he were standing in one of his father’s photographs, where trees bloomed up in the pulse of a heart, where the world was suddenly not what it seemed. He caught a flake in one palm; when he closed his hand into a fist and opened it again, his flesh was smeared with black. Ashes were drifting down like snow in the dense July heat.

Related Characters: Paul Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Related Symbols: Photography, Snow
Page Number: 379
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24: September 1, 1989 Quotes

“How?” he asked softly. “How could he never tell us?”

She turned to him, serious. “I don’t know. I’ll never understand it. But think how his life must have been, Paul. Carrying this secret with him all those years.”

He looked across the table. Phoebe was standing next to a poplar tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn, scraping whipped cream off her cake with her fork. “Our lives could have been so much different.”

“Yes. That’s true. But they weren’t different, Paul. They happened just like this.”

“You’re defending him,” he said slowly.

“No. I’m forgiving him. I’m trying to, anyway. There’s a difference.”

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Paul Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 396
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Memory Keeper’s Daughter PDF

Dr. David Henry Quotes in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

The The Memory Keeper’s Daughter quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. David Henry or refer to Dr. David Henry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Secrets and Lies Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1: March 1964 Quotes

When they reached the car she touched his arm and gestured to the house, veiled with snow and glowing like a lantern in the darkness of the street.

“When we come back we’ll have our baby with us,’’ she said. “Our world will never be the same.”

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Related Symbols: Snow
Page Number: 10-11
Explanation and Analysis:

He cut the cord and checked her heart, her lungs. All the time he was thinking of the snow, the silver car floating into a ditch, the deep quiet of this empty clinic. Later, when he considered this night—and he would think of it often, in the months and years to come: the turning point of his life, the moments around which everything else would always gather—what he remembered was the silence in the room and the snow falling steadily outside.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Snow
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: March 1964 Quotes

It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be.

Related Characters: Caroline Gill Simpson (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5: February 1965 Quotes

“Please don’t be sad. I didn’t forget, Norah. Not our anniversary. Not our daughter. Not anything.”

“Oh, David,” she said. “I left your present in the car.” She thought of the camera, its precise dials and levers. The Memory Keeper, it said on the box, in white italic letters; this, she realized, was why she’d bought it—so he’d capture every moment, so he’d never forget.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry (speaker)
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7: May 1965 Quotes

He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of vertigo, afraid even to glance at Norah. He had wanted to spare her, to protect her from loss and pain; he had not understood that loss would follow her regardless, as persistent and life-shaping as a stream of water. Nor had he anticipated his own grief, woven with the dark threads of his past. When he imagined the daughter he’d given away, it was his sister’s face he saw, her pale hair, her serious smile.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson, June
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9: May 1970 Quotes

“Put the camera away,” she said. “Please. It’s a party, David.”

“These tulips are so beautiful,” he began, but he was unable to explain himself, unable to put into words why these images compelled him so.

“It’s a party,” she repeated. “You can either miss it and take pictures of it, or you can get a drink and join it.”

“I have a drink,” he pointed out. “No one cares that I’m taking a few pictures, Norah.”

“I care. It’s rude.”

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry (speaker)
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11: July 1977 Quotes

The photographs they were discussing were all of her: her hips, her skin, her hands, her hair. And yet she was excluded from the conversation: object, not subject. […] She had tried, by posing for David, to ease some of the distance that had grown between them. His fault, hers—it didn’t really matter. But watching David now, absorbed in his explanation, she understood that he did not really see her and hadn’t for years.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Howard
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12: August 1977 Quotes

He had given their daughter away. This secret stood in the middle of their family; it shaped their lives together. He knew it, he saw it, visible to him as a rock wall grown up between them. And he saw Norah and Paul reaching out and striking rock and not understanding what was happening, only that something stood between them that could not be seen or broken.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Norah Henry, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 193-194
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15: April 1982 Quotes

“She was lucky, I guess; she never had a problem with her heart. She loves to sing. She has a cat named Rain. She’s learning how to weave. […] She goes to school. Public school, with all the other kids. I had to fight like hell for them to take her. And now she’s nearly grown I don’t know what will happen. […] What else can I say? You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.”

Related Characters: Caroline Gill Simpson (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16: April 1982 Quotes

His life turned around that single action: a newborn child in his arms—and then he reached out to give her away. It was as if he’d taken pictures all these years since to try and give another moment similar substance, equal weight. He’d wanted to try to still the rushing world, the flow of events, but of course that had been impossible.

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:

Her silence made him free. He talked like a river, like a storm, words rushing through the old house with a force and life he could not stop. […] He talked until the words slowed, ebbed, finally ceased. Silence welled.

She did not speak. […]

He closed his eyes, fear rising, because he had seen anger in her eyes, because everything that happened had been his fault.

Her footsteps and then the metal, cold and bright as ice, slid against his skin. The tension in his wrists released. […]

“All right,” she said. “You’re free.”

Related Characters: Dr. David Henry (speaker), Rosemary (speaker)
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22: July 1, 1989 Quotes

For a long time Norah sat very still, agitated, on the edge of knowing. And then suddenly the knowledge was hers, irrevocable, searing: all those years of silence, when he would not speak of their lost daughter, David had been keeping this record of her absence. Paul, and a thousand other girls, all growing.

Paul, but not Phoebe.

Norah might have wept. She longed suddenly to talk with David. All these years, he’d missed her too. All these photographs, all this silent, secret longing.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Related Symbols: Photography
Page Number: 364
Explanation and Analysis:

Caroline said it again: Phoebe, not dead but taken away. All these years. Phoebe, growing up in another city. Safe, Caroline kept saying. Safe, well cared for, loved. Phoebe, her daughter, Paul’s twin. Born with Down syndrome, sent away.

David had sent her away.

“You must be crazy,” Norah said, though even as she spoke so many jagged pieces of her life were falling into place that she knew what Caroline was saying must be true.

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Caroline Gill Simpson, Paul Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 369
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23: July 2-4, 1989 Quotes

Paul reached out into the hot, humid air, feeling as if he were standing in one of his father’s photographs, where trees bloomed up in the pulse of a heart, where the world was suddenly not what it seemed. He caught a flake in one palm; when he closed his hand into a fist and opened it again, his flesh was smeared with black. Ashes were drifting down like snow in the dense July heat.

Related Characters: Paul Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry
Related Symbols: Photography, Snow
Page Number: 379
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24: September 1, 1989 Quotes

“How?” he asked softly. “How could he never tell us?”

She turned to him, serious. “I don’t know. I’ll never understand it. But think how his life must have been, Paul. Carrying this secret with him all those years.”

He looked across the table. Phoebe was standing next to a poplar tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn, scraping whipped cream off her cake with her fork. “Our lives could have been so much different.”

“Yes. That’s true. But they weren’t different, Paul. They happened just like this.”

“You’re defending him,” he said slowly.

“No. I’m forgiving him. I’m trying to, anyway. There’s a difference.”

Related Characters: Norah Henry (speaker), Paul Henry (speaker), Dr. David Henry, Phoebe Gill Simpson
Page Number: 396
Explanation and Analysis: