Lee's Blog

In the comments to the previous post, macaroni observes

Maybe Jack is a little afraid of his ability to defeat the “Black Wind” and believes he could win many smaller battles against evil in the future and that it would better serve “mankind” in that way. He just needed something to prod him off his logical thinking. Smile. He who runs away lives to fight another day….. No “Charge of The Light Brigade” for Jack.

That makes sense, but there are three points that argue against it.

First, Glaeken has survived for 15,000 years battling against the Adversary. He isn’t into the “Charge of The Light Brigade”. Granted, he’s telling Jack to act instead of doing it himself, but Jack is his Heir — the one who will take over the defense of the world when he is gone. Glaeken would never tell Jack to charge to his death. He told Jack to perform a physically demanding task that he himself is no longer up to, that’s all. And in fact, as it turns out, there really isn’t any physical danger; the important thing is to keep moving as fast as possible so as to kill the focus of the Black Wind before the mental effect (feelings of depression and futility) is able to stop you.

Second, even if this were a situation where Jack had to leave tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — to die because he had to live to fight another day (which is a situation that Glaeken might really have found himself in), he should have felt regret. Indeed, if he were not a narcissistic sociopath, he would reasonably have been calling Glaeken names because Glaeken ordered him to leave those people to die. This actually happens sometimes with firefighters and the like, I am told — they know that they cannot save people, but it tears them up not to try.

There is no possibility that Jack would react like the firefighters, however. He made that absolutely clear in a previous book, Harbingers, where he stated that, if Vicky and Gia died, he would leave everyone else in the world, including his supposed friends Abe and Julio, and his beloved sister’s children, to die horribly, and that he would not lift a finger to save any of them. Instead, in that book, he sadistically trapped and killed four of the firefighters who were carrying on the fight that he explicitly refused to join.

Third, there is still the fact that Jack called Glaeken a name because Glaeken pointed out that the people that Jack “loves” — in his stunted, narcissistic fashion — will also die if he does nothing.

Think of this in purely realistic terms. Imagine that Glaeken and Jack are in an apartment building late at night, and they observe a man pouring liquid all around the building. Glaeken says that the man is a known arsonist and that the liquid smells like gasoline, so he must be planning to burn the building with everyone sleeping inside. Glaeken tells Jack to stop the man from lighting the gas, because Glaeken is not able to limp down there and stop him in time. Jack says no, trying to save all those people would endanger his own valuable hide. Glaeken says, “Vicky is at a sleepover in this building.”

Is the natural reaction to call Glaeken a bastard for pointing out to him that Vicky is in danger too? Or to thank him for preventing Jack from making a horrible mistake — leaving Vicky to die with all those others?

I would understand Jack’s reaction (not sympathize or agree, but understand) if Glaeken had said, “Some of those who will die are nine-year-old girls just like your Vicky, just as cute, just as well-loved, with just as much potential that will be wiped away through your refusal to save them.” That really would be emotional manipulation, trying to reach whatever fragment of conscience Jack may possess, trying to show him that there is something going on that he “cannot abide in his sight”.

But Glaeken’s statement simply brought to his attention that Vicky and Gia really were in danger. How could that warrant calling him names? Unless, of course, in Jack’s mind, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because it forces him to actually live up to his claim that he loves Vicky and Gia more than life itself. To him, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because he would rather walk away and let all those people die including Vicky and Gia, and after they were dead he would just shrug and say, “Well, that’s not my fault because Glaeken didn’t explicitly warn me that they were in danger, but now that they’re dead, I don’t ever have to lift a finger against the Adversary.”

So, with all due respect to macaroni, no, I don’t think Jack’s actions are explicable by his thinking this is a “Charge of The Light Brigade” situation.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at 9:31 am and is filed under Books and Movies, Repairman Jack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.