As Jack’s story continues, various pieces of new information are revealed, some of which connect existing ideas, others of which present new thoughts and revelations. Immediately after the death of Judge Irwin, who is revealed to be Jack’s father, Jack develops some very intriguing ideas and thoughts about goodness and the truth; the shocking event of the Judge’s death seemed to generate a lot of new thoughts for Jack. Some of these thoughts relate to the idea of categorizing the characters by goodness or badness, as we did in our last blog posts. After the Judge dies, Jack reflects on his two “fathers”, the scholarly attorney, who he had grown up believing was his father, and Judge Irwin, who was only just revealed to be his biological father. Jacks says that the Scholarly Attorney “had been good. But his goodness had told me nothing except that I could not live by it” (493). This further reveals a fundamental difference between Jack and the Scholarly Attorney, which is possibly more understandable now, as they are not really father and son. Jack’s new understanding of goodness seems completely honest, which has not always been the main characteristic that Jack has exuded throughout the story. Jack continues on to discover that his “new father, however, had not been good… but he had done good…he had carried his head high” (493). Now that Jack knows his relationship to Judge Irwin, a side of Jack’s character more similar to this may begin to show. In addition to reflecting on these ideas of goodness, Jack also begins to ponder the truth, as he has just discovered that a large and significant part of his life had not been the truth. Jack says that he “had dug up the truth and the truth always kills the father, the good and weak one or the bad and strong one, and you are left alone with yourself and the truth…” (493). The truth is an interesting topic for Jack to come too, as it is the central idea of his work; his main jobs for the Boss are in search of the truth. Whenever Jack finds some element of truth, he seems to be “left alone with [it]”, as he was in California. It is very interesting that Jack claims that the truth “always kills the father”, showing that this has happened before or will happen again. Jack’s ideas provide new understanding of the characters around him, specifically showing perspective on Judge Irwin and the Scholarly Attorney.
I agree about how interesting Jack's interpretation of the truth is as regards his fathers, as well as his interpretation of goodness. On the similar topic of Jack's two fathers, now that Judge Irwin is dead, Jack will inherit his money, and along with it all the goodness and badness that the Judge had will be passed along to Jack. "I was going to be genteel rich, for I had inherited the fruit of the Judge's crime..." (p 501), just as he will inherit the same from the Scholarly Attorney "just as someday I would inherit from my mother the fruit of the Scholarly Attorney's weakness..." (p 501). It's interesting the way Jack is able to mold good and bad into inheritance and money, creating an ever-circular web which winds tighter and tighter around him.
ReplyDeleteI also thought this section was very interesting, and your analysis of Jack' old father and new father, and their different ways of being good, is spot on. Kate, that part about inheriting from both of his fathers reminded me about the Cass story and how Cass couldn't escape doing harm to people. In this case, Jack cannot escape the thing that reminds him of the sides he didn't like in his fathers. So its almost the opposite from the Cass story. Everything is starting to wind up and connect and its very interesting to witness!
ReplyDelete