Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Boy Jack, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bravery, Duty, and Honor
Parental Expectations
Patriotism and the British Empire
Loss and Resilience
Summary
Analysis
It’s now September 1915. Three Irish soldiers endure heavy rain in a trench on the Western Front. The sound of rain is interrupted by a huge nearby explosion, unsettling McHugh, who cautiously peers over the ledge of the trench to see what’s happening. When he sees nothing, he climbs back down, at which point his fellow soldiers, Doyle and Bowe, come back from digging a latrine. McHugh eagerly asks if the latrine is ready, but they chastise him for not helping them. McHugh claims he has terrible stomach cramps, which is why he needs to use the latrine so badly, but Bowe tells him that the shell that just exploded landed in the latrine, killing a Colonel. It has thus become the largest latrine in all of France.
Most of Act One has addressed war in the abstract; in this scene, the audience sees an actual battlefield for the first time. The action is mundane, even showing a touch of humor, but it also reinforces the theme of duty and honor in war. By refusing to dig the latrine, McHugh fails to live up to certain responsibilities. Instead of prioritizing his country and its military above all else, he thinks only about himself. This is the kind of selfish attitude that Rudyard wants to make sure Jack never adopts. And yet, McHugh has already joined the military, indicating that he actually has honored his duty to serve his country—it’s just that behaving honorably during wartime, even in mundane moments like this one, is harder than it seems in the abstract.
Themes
Jack comes around with grease and talcum powder, ordering the men to show him their feet so he can check for trench foot. Bowe and Doyle follow his orders, but McHugh ignores him. Jack keeps making his rounds through the trench, giving other men grease and powder. Meanwhile, Doyle rubs powder onto Bowe’s feet, which is very pleasant for Bowe until Doyle parts his toes and finds a crack filled with colored pus. Bowe yelps in pain. McHugh, for his part, grumbles about having to look at Bowe’s disgusting feet. When Jack comes back around, Bowe asks if it’s trench foot, but Jack doesn’t think so. All the same, he tasks Doyle with the responsibility of caring for Bowe, making sure he powders his feet twice a day.
In this scene, Jack appears to be a very conscientious and responsible soldier. Even though walking through the trenches and handing out foot powder isn’t necessarily all that glorious, he seems to genuinely care about keeping his men from getting trench foot (a condition that soldiers often developed during World War I because their feet were wet for long periods of time). When Jack tells Doyle to take care of Bowe’s feet, he stresses the idea that soldiers ought to be responsible for one another. The implication is that each person in the trenches has a duty to help his fellow soldiers—an idea Rudyard would certainly approve of.
Themes
Jack goes to get Bowe a pair of dry socks, but before he leaves, he tells McHugh that his boots better be off when he comes back. Once he’s gone, McHugh starts unlacing, but complains about having to take orders from Jack. McHugh hates Rudyard Kipling, whom he calls a “protestant bastard.” This is why he doesn’t want to listen to Jack, finding it ridiculous that a Protestant from England is commanding a platoon of Irish Catholic soldiers. To mess with Jack, then, he smears horse poop on his feet. Jack comes back and takes McHugh’s foot in his hands. This infuriates Jack, but he keeps his temper, simply wiping his dirty hands on McHugh’s jacket.
McHugh’s attitude is in direct opposition to the kind of responsible, honorable attitude that Rudyard wants Jack to embody. Instead of obeying Jack (his commander), he shows him defiance, clearly unwilling to suppress his animosity for the greater good of the United Kingdom. This is because he’s bitter about the tension between Irish Catholics and British Protestants—a tension that was very much alive at that time in Ireland (and for years to come). And though this resentment is somewhat understandable (at least considering the time period and the complex dynamics at play in Ireland), his hostility is clearly unproductive in this context—a situation in which everyone should work together.
Themes
