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 five minutes before Jack and the others will climb out of the trench and run toward enemy lines. They’re standing together with their equipment, which includes a heavy backpack, a rifle, and—among other things—pigeon cages. Bowe can’t get his pack onto his shoulders, complaining that it’s too heavy. He begs McHugh for help, but McHugh ignores him. Meanwhile, Doyle realizes there’s mud in his rifle and frantically starts trying to clear it by peeing into the barrel—except he can’t get himself to pee. He blubbers in fear while trying to pee, but nothing comes.
In the moments before an attack, the tension in the trench nears a breaking point. Even though McHugh forced Bowe to uphold his soldierly duty, he still doesn’t seem to care very much about him. He won’t even help Bowe lift the backpack onto his shoulders, showing he’s still preoccupied with his own concerns. Meanwhile, Doyle’s frantic struggle to clear mud out of his gun subtly criticizes the idea that going to war is an honorable thing. Although Rudyard romanticizes the life of a soldier by seeing it as a deeply noble and respectable form of service, here Doyle is in the trenches, hysterically trying to pee into his gun—not such a pretty picture!
Themes
As this plays out, Jack tells his men that when they rush onto the battlefield, they’ll see a stretch of woods called “Chalk Pit Wood,” which they should run toward. When they get into the enemy’s trenches, they should open their birdcages and let the pigeons fly back, alerting the higher-ups that they’ve made it to the other side. Bowe’s pigeon, however, is already dead, so Jack tells him he doesn’t have to carry it across the battlefield—a fact that makes McHugh jealous.
Considering that the men haven’t even left the trench yet, the death of Bowe’s pigeon is an ominous sign. The pigeon is supposed to signal that the men have safely reached the German trenches, so the fact that Bowe’s pigeon has already died hints that this attack’s outcome won’t be unambiguously good news for anyone, including the Kipling family.
Themes
The bombardment ahead of the attack suddenly stops, and the battlefield goes eerily quiet. Jack tells his men to attach their bayonets to their rifles, but Bowe’s hands aren’t steady enough to do this, so he loses the bayonet in the mud. Jack, for his part, thinks to himself about how scared he is, saying, “Please God I mustn’t let them down.” He then thinks longingly about home, but his thoughts are interrupted by the sound of whistles blaring through the trenches. He and the rest of the men charge onto the battlefield, McHugh and Doyle screaming in unison as they go.
Attaching bayonets is a particularly ominous step because it implies that the soldiers will be entering hand-to-hand combat at any moment. Although Jack originally wanted to join the army just to escape his domineering father, it now seems that he has adopted some of Rudyard’s ideas about duty and responsibility. Right before rushing into battle, he doesn’t think exclusively about his own safety, but about courageously leading his men. Another interpretation is that he’s referring to his family when he says, “Please God I mustn’t let them down.” This would suggest that he still feels pressure to behave honorably in battle, always trying to live up to his father’s high expectations.
Themes
