“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.

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.

“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)

“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.

“...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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.