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Jacob was Harold’s son with his first wife, Liesl. In a long first-person account spread throughout multiple chapters, Harold describes the swift decline Jacob underwent between the age of four, when he had his first seizure, and Jacob’s death at age five. Jacob suffered greatly that year, and Harold and Liesl were powerless to do anything about it. Harold remembers that he was initially upset with Liesl for handling Jacob’s illness so pragmatically—he felt her pragmatism meant she’d given up on Jacob and his ability to recover—but in retrospect, Harold realizes how disillusioned he was to assume that Jacob would recover and live a normal, long life. In many ways, Harold seems to view adopting and caring for Jude later in life as a way for him to fix his second son in all the ways he failed to fix his first son.
Jacob Quotes in A Little Life
The A Little Life quotes below are all either spoken by Jacob or refer to Jacob . 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:
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Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 1 Quotes
“If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
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Part 7: Lispenard Street Quotes
When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it[…]. It was a preposterous notion, of course, and it was proven wrong in the most horrible way. But I couldn’t stop thinking this: that life tethered life. And yet at some point in his life—after Caleb, if I had to date it—I had the sense that he was in a hot-air balloon, one that was staked to the earth with a long twisted rope, but each year the balloon strained and strained against its cords, […]. And down below, there was a knot of us trying to pull the balloon back to the ground, back to safety. And so I was always frightened for him, and I was always frightened of him, as well.
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Get the entire A Little Life LitChart as a printable PDF.
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Jacob Character Timeline in A Little Life
The timeline below shows where the character Jacob appears in A Little Life. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 1
...force of it thrusts Jude back into the bookcase, breaking a ceramic mug Harold’s son, Jacob, had made for him.
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Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 2
...summer “the group of you” visited his vacation home. Harold saw in the group what Jacob might have become, and this was hard for him.
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...was pregnant. They decided to go through with the pregnancy and eventually had a boy, Jacob. They loved Jacob dearly. But love for one’s child is unlike any other kind of...
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Having Jacob taught Harold that when your child dies, you feel all the things people say you’ll...
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Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 2
This section is told from Harold’s first-person perspective. He describes the onset of Jacob’s illness. When Jacob is four, Harold and Liesl notice that something is wrong. It’s October,...
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They return home once Jacob is stable, and Liesl contacts Jacob’s pediatrician—a friend from med school—to set up appointments with...
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...how self-absorbed and petty they are. By September, the doctor tells Harold and Liesl that Jacob will die soon. Jacob’s limbs have grown floppy from disuse. Harold thinks he’s being punished...
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Jacob’s illness makes Harold think about parenthood. Everyone thinks it’s enough for their kids to be...
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Harold was 32 when Jacob was born, and he’s 37 when he dies—less than a year after that first seizure....
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...and Harold feels proud. It’s the same pride he felt, so many years ago, when Jacob’s preschool teachers praised his abilities with clay. By the time it’s time for Harold to...
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