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Cy Maitland
In the red notebook, Jack is a historian of the Soviet communist movement and Anna’s closest confidant at the British Communist Party, who often helps mediate her meetings with Comrade John Butte. Anna and Jack agree that their organization has lost sight of its purpose and become a Stalinist propaganda machine, and they also have fascinating conversations about their problems with the Party and the Soviet Union. Unlike Anna, Jack has spent so much of his life intertwined in the Party that he feels he cannot leave, and after she quits, they appear to drift apart. Torn between his beliefs and his organizational commitment, Jack represents the tragedy of dedicated political activism that is also the tragedy of politics: the conflict of individual values with the collective interest (the values of a party versus the interests of society, but also the values of an individual versus the values of a party). A version of Jack also appears in Anna’s novel The Shadow of the Third in the yellow notebook, as an editor at Ella’s magazine who collaborates on a series of articles with her, and later sleeps with her before pontificating about his conflicting feelings for his wife.
Jack Quotes in The Golden Notebook
The The Golden Notebook quotes below are all either spoken by Jack or refer to Jack. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Notebooks: 2
Quotes
15th September, 1954
A normal day. During the course of a discussion with John Butte and Jack I decided to leave the Party. I must now be careful not to start hating the Party in the way we do hate stages of our life we have outgrown. Noted signs of it already: moments of disliking Jack which were quite irrational. Janet as usual, no problems. Molly worried, I think with reason, over Tommy. She has a hunch he will marry his new girl. Well, her hunches usually come off. I realized that Michael had finally decided to break it off. I must pull myself together.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Jack Quotes in The Golden Notebook
The The Golden Notebook quotes below are all either spoken by Jack or refer to Jack. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Notebooks: 2
Quotes
15th September, 1954
A normal day. During the course of a discussion with John Butte and Jack I decided to leave the Party. I must now be careful not to start hating the Party in the way we do hate stages of our life we have outgrown. Noted signs of it already: moments of disliking Jack which were quite irrational. Janet as usual, no problems. Molly worried, I think with reason, over Tommy. She has a hunch he will marry his new girl. Well, her hunches usually come off. I realized that Michael had finally decided to break it off. I must pull myself together.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
