Analysis of Jacob Have I Loved

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Louise, the protagonist of Katherine Patterson’s Jacob Have I Loved, infuriates me. She fights against ghosts of what she wishes to be and against what she really is, kicking and screaming all the way. I don’t debate that she struggles with good reason -- certainly the neglect from her family, whether perceived or real, and the expectations her culture (I really want to say environment here) has placed on her gender role have contributed to her plight -- but her great inner strength and insight belies her inability to overcome or at least circumvent those obstacles. To me, she is a rebel with the sole cause of declaring her independence from her expected gender role. And, in that, I find myself, a young man with no common ground with my same gender parent, knowing that I am strong in not being so, and yet flailing loudly but vacuously against that fact as if it were not good enough. I do not like Louise because she is a female reflection of me whose wounds are mine.

Early in the novel, the roots of Louise’s issues are easy to trace to her resentment of her sister and the attention she commanded, resulting in my initial disregard for her as, to use a colloquialism, a whiner. Indeed, I did not at all identify with this other than my experience with younger siblings (I am the oldest.) whining in much the same way about me. This certainly made it easy for me to create an objective distance from Louise and in fact, made it possible for me to tolerate listening to her since I could see nothing in her like me -- she was no threat and even though I didn‘t like her, it was more a matter of taste than sensibility.

This changed dramatically when she suggested that the school’s Christmas show be reconsidered in light of the war and was met with indifference by her teacher, Mr. Rice. Her reaction to his rejection (to her at least) cut me to the bone:

...but the hot shame and indignation inside me made me forget the wind as I walked. I was right. I knew I was right, so why had they all laughed? And why had Mr. Rice let them? He hadn’t even tried to explain what I had meant to the others... (31)

First, the power of this quotation overwhelms me with the exact same hurt I always felt when rejected by peers and/or abandoned by a trusted adult (whose gender and role also hold significance, as I will show shortly) in the face of that rejection.

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