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Jack learns that his mother had an affair with Judge Irwin, and that he is his father after Judge Irwin kills himself. Jack discovers that Judge Irwin killed himslef by his mother freaking out on him. She tells Jack how he is his father, and that he is the only man she had ever truly loved. On page 526 it states, “My mother was talking between her moans and laughing. She was saying how she had loved him and how he was the only person she had ever loved and how I had killed him and had killed my own father and a lot of stuff like that.” As Jack's mother tells us how important Judge Irwin was to her it connects to how she treats her other relationships. Judge Irwin was the only person she had loved, and she didn’t love any other man she had a relationship with.

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Jack’s Relationship with his Mother's Husbands

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Jack’s Relationship with his Mother's Husbands

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“The furniture changed, but the people in it changed, too.” (170)

“Well, I’d sat in that room with all of them, the Scholarly Attorney and the Tycoon and the Count and the Young Executive, and had watched the furniture change.” (172)

This string of events influenced Jack’s behavior for much of the novel. From leaving Lois to caring for Ellis Burden in his old age, Jack’s behavior swung from negative to more positive as he learned more about the world and himself.

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Jack and Anne Break Up, but he Never Stops Loving Her

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Jack and Anne Break Up, but he Never Stops Loving Her

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“So Anne went her way and I went mine…I was taking courses at the University again….I didn’t finish the Ph.D. So I went back to the Chronicle…”(Page 455)

Jack holds a special love for Anne throughout his whole life. Even after they break up, he still loves her. After breaking up with her, he loses motivation for learning and drops out of the Ph.D program. As a result, Jack also ends up marrying Lois. The love he holds for Anne is also what creates a lot of the tension when he realizes she and Willie are in a relationship, which causes and sets off a lot of the tension throughout the novel due to those events.

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Jack Drops Out of the PhD Program & Ignores Cass Mastern’s Warnings

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Jack Drops Out of the PhD Program & Ignores Cass Mastern’s Warnings

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Jack drops out of the Ph.D. Program after breaking up with Anne and reading Cass Mastern’s story. Cass is an allusion to the mythical figure, Cassandra, a woman cursed by Apollo to see the future but never have her prophecies believed. Cass’ story served as a warning against engaging in evil, for it will all just lead to more evil. Jack does not heed this warning, and instead tells Anne about her father’s corruption. This act of evil, the act of destroying Anne’s innocence, led to her role in her affair with Willie, leaving her caught up in the spider-web of sin and Jack heartbroken.

“So Anne went her way and I went mine…I was taking courses at the University again….I didn’t finish the Ph.D. So I went back to the Chronicle…”(Page 455)

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Witnessing behaviors such as his father and his mother’s subsequent husbands walking out on her as a child affected Jacks treatment of Lois. Marriage became a meaningless act to Jack, and so he married Lois just because of her physical qualities. On page 457, he said, “I had loved Lois the machine, the way you love the filet mignon or the Georgia peach, but I definitely was not in love with Lois the person.” Jack eventually walked out on Lois like the Scholarly Attorney, the Young Executive, and many others had walked out before.

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Jack’s decision to quit his job at the Chronicle is because he is not able to freely write about who he really supports. In the conversation he has with Madison before he leaves, Madison says, “Now just because that Stark happens to be a friend of yours, you—“ (145) to which Jack responds strongly, subsequently walking out the door. The support Jack has for Willie in this moment makes it logical that he later begin to work for him.

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“Want a job?”

“I’d consider a proposition.”

“Three hundred a month, and traveling expenses. When you travel.”

“Who do I work for? The state?”

“Hell, no. Me.” (163)

After quitting his job at the chronicle, Jack falls into Willie’s employment. This signifies Jack’s walk into the corruption of politics and evils of life. When he had shadowed Willie before, Jack was employed by the Chronicle, but now he is Willie’s assistant, his henchman. With a background in history, Jack’s first job is to investigate Judge Irwin’s (a mentor figure) past.

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Connects to Jack tells Anne about her Father:

“...that man Irwin was bribed to let up on the suit against the Southern Bell Fuel people and how he has my place at a salary they never paid me…I am going to join our sainted Mother and our dear Father…” (342)

“There is always the clue…all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life…this is what all of us historical researches believe. And we love the truth”. (343)

The investigation of Irwin leads Jack to discovering that Iriwn took a bribe that helped him become successful. He took the job and salary of Mortimor, who ended up committing suicide because of all of this. After finding out this information, Jack decides to tell Anne, because she believed her father could do no wrong. This information completely broke the level of respect she held for her father, and broke the ideals she and Adam had built for themselves based on what their dad had taught them.

This event also connects to Jack seeking out Ellis Burden and meeting George. As a way to find more information, Jack sought out who he believed was his father, one of the judge’s friends. On page 302, he asked Ellis, “Listen, was Irwin ever broke, did he ever need money? Bad?” As a result of talking to Ellis, Jack also had the opportunity to meet George the aerialist, the man whose wife took the role of a fallen angel in the circus and died. Following this event, George had had an accident when performing that left him paralyzed. Ellis Burden took George in and took care of him. Jack resented George for taking up his father’s attention when he had been walked out on by Ellis.

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Jack tells Anne about her the bribe her father took in order to explain how he was going to convince Adam to take the hospital job. Anne’s vision of her father was immediately shattered, for she soon took up and affair with Willie due to her lost innocence. On page 404, Jack said,  “Then I looked into her face. She met my gaze quite steadily. I did not say anything. And I did not need to.For looking in my face, she slowly nodded.” The unintended result of revealing the truth to Anne ended up hurting Jack and causing Anne to fall into the hands of corruption. Because he feared this happening again with his mother, Jack lied to her about the dirt he found on Irwin, in order to protect her from succumbing to corruption.

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Jack Lies to his Mother about Irwin’s Checkered Past

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Jack Lies to his Mother about Irwin’s Checkered Past

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“I looked at the dwindling train that was carrying my mother away until it was nothing but the smudge of smoke to the west, and I thought how I had lied to her. Well, I had given that lie to her as a going-away present…Then I thought how maybe I had lied to cover up myself…’it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t.’”(651-652).

His mother decides to go West, which represents a theme in this novel, of going West to escape troubles. She's happy and content, and Jack knows telling her about Irwin's past will only upset her. He decides it's best to leave her in happiness, or ignorance, (theme of idealism), which means he lies to her.

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Jack Decides not to Tell Sugar Boy about Tiny’s involvement in the Assassination of Willie

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Jack Decides not to Tell Sugar Boy about Tiny’s involvement in the Assassination of Willie

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“And as the name of Duffy flashed across my mind I saw Duffy’s face, larger and lunar and sebaceous, nodding at me as at the covert and brotherly appreciation of a joke, and even as I opened my lips to speak the syllables of his name, he winked. He winked right at me like a brother.”(Page 634)

"So perhaps I hadn't done Sugar-Boy any favor after all in not telling him about Duffy and the Boss and allowing him to whang straight to his mark and be finished like a bullet when it strikes in. Perhaps I had robbed Sugar-Boy of the one thing which he had earned out of the years he had lived and which was truly himself..."

Jack doesn't tell Sugar-Boy who actually killed Willie because he's worried Sugar-Boy will actually kill Duffy. Jack knows he will because he keeps saying over and over he'll kill who actually did it. In the end, he decides not to tell Sugar-Boy but can't decide if that was right, feeling he robbed Sugar-Boy of a truth he may have deserved. It connects back to the Spider Web because if he had told Sugar-Boy, Sugar-Boy would have killed Duffy, and Jack would have felt partially responsible for that death.

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“So by the summer of this year, 1939, we shall have left Burden’s Landing…But that will be a long time from now, and soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history and into history and the awful responsibility of Time.” (661)

As a full circle moment at the end of the novel, Jack marries Anne and accepts his father back into his household. Jack had lost the opportunity to marry Anne. On page 447, he said, “…I suddenly had the feeling of great wisdom: I had acted rightly and wisely. Therefore we had been saved.” This old way of thinking shows the innocence of both Jack and Anne, before they were puppets of corruption in the later parts of their lives. However, the fact that Jack waited to marry Anne shows the goodness and respect he still had regarding Anne’s honor.

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Jack Takes Care of Ellis Burden in his Old Age

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Jack Takes Care of Ellis Burden in his Old Age

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The knowledge that Jack carries that Ellis is not really his father because his biological father is Irwin affects his perspective on their relationship. Regardless, Jack continues to take care of Ellis in his old age. He wonders, “Does he think that I am his son? I cannot be sure. Nor can I feel that it matters, for each of us is the son of a million fathers,” (658). Though knowing that Irwin is his actual father, it makes him feel odd about his relationship with Ellis, although he ultimately decides that it does not matter, because Ellis is the one with who he shares more with.

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“…I had come to this room where Jack Burden leaned against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth. Nobody was leaning over to give him chocolate.” (301)

Jack started taking care of Ellis because he was the man he had thought was his biological father for much of his life, and found him sick and living alone near the end of the book. This care that Jack held for this man that he didn’t really have any relation to, this man who walked out on him and his mother, parallels how Ellis cared for George the aerialist. Even though he initially resented George for taking up Ellis’ attention, Jack eventually learned from this situation that resentment, or ‘sinning’ would do him no good, so it was better to have compassion for those whose who had done wrong rather than reserve it just for those who had done right.

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“But I still had the money, and so I am spending it live on while I write the book I began years ago, the life of Cass Mastern, whom once I could not understand but whom, perhaps, I now may come to understand.” (660)

As the story wraps up, Jack faces many harsh truths, like his mother’s affair, Iriwn’s bribe, and others. However, through his experiences of working for Willie, his experience of evil and sin and corruption, he learns from his mistakes and those made by other people. Jack had ignored Cass Mastern’s warning when he first tried to understand his story, and this ignorance led to the pain he had to endure throughout his story. Jack’s decision to restart his story signifies his character’s new knowledge and decision to live a good life, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. This is also shown in his decision to care for Ellis Burden and marry Anne Stanton.