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
In a flashback to 1904, Rudyard lies in the drawing room under a camping tarp with Jack and Elsie, who are both young children. Using a flashlight, they pretend to look at the stars, and Rudyard quizzes the children about the constellations. He then tells them a story featuring “Captain Jack Kipling,” the “finest cavalry officer of his generation.” The story he tells is about Jack coming across a dangerous thief stealing from a fruit vendor on the Grand Trunk Road in India. Captain Jack Kipling catches the thief, fights him off, and is rewarded by the fruit vendor.
Even when Jack was a small child, Rudyard filled him with ideas about honor and bravery. Of course, this is a somewhat touching scene, since Rudyard entertains his children by telling an affectionate and exciting story about Jack’s future. However, this story also sets a certain expectation—namely, that Rudyard wants Jack to grow up to be a fearless, respected military official.
Themes
By the time the story ends, Jack is peacefully asleep, but Elsie is still awake. She asks what she’ll be when she’s older, and Rudyard says she’ll get married to Captain Jack Kipling’s best friend, have five children, and live in a house near the Kipling family estate.
Rudyard has high expectations for Jack but doesn’t expect much of Elsie. There’s some inherent sexism at play here, since Rudyard seems to think that the best possible thing Elsie could do in life is marry and have children, failing to even consider the possibility that she could ever do something as honorable and important as her brother. To that end, he ties Elsie’s future to the idea of Jack’s success by saying that she’ll marry his best friend. Whereas Jack has to live up to Rudyard’s exceedingly high standards, then, Elsie has to deal with his depressingly low expectations of her.
Themes
