The Golden Notebook
Introduction + Context
Plot Summary
Detailed Summary & Analysis
Free Women: 1 The Notebooks: 1 Free Women: 2 The Notebooks: 2 Free Women: 3 The Notebooks: 3 Free Women: 4 The Notebooks: 4 The Golden Notebook Free Women: 5
Themes
All Themes Fragmentation, Breakdown, and Unity Gender, Labor, and Power Love and Sex Communism and Disillusionment Action, Freedom, and Moral Courage Fact, Fiction, and Authorship
Quotes
Characters
All Characters Anna Wulf Janet Wulf Molly Jacobs Tommy Richard Portmain Marion Mrs Marks / Mother Sugar Willi Rodde Paul Blackenhurst Jimmy McGrath Ted Brown Maryrose George Hounslow Michael Saul Green Nelson Ella Julia Max Wulf George Dr West Patricia Brent Paul Tanner Ella’s Father Robert Brun Cy Maitland Jack Ivor Ronnie James Schafter De Silva Tom Mathlong Charlie Themba Mrs Boothby Jackson / The Cook Marie Comrade John Butte Stanley Lett
Terms
All Terms Ceylon Nyasaland Veld Kopje McCarthyism The Rosenbergs Joseph Stalin National Service Conscientious Objector Quemoy The Kremlin Leucotomy Trotskyism Chekhov’s “The Darling” Soho F.L.N.
Symbols
All Symbols Anna’s Notebooks Anna’s Dreams
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The Golden Notebook

by

Doris Lessing
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Jack Character Analysis

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:
Fragmentation, Breakdown, and Unity Theme Icon
).
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: Anna Wulf (speaker), Janet Wulf, Molly Jacobs, Tommy, Michael, Jack, Comrade John Butte
Fragmentation, Breakdown, and Unity Theme Icon
Love and Sex Theme Icon
Communism and Disillusionment Theme Icon
Fact, Fiction, and Authorship Theme Icon
Page Number: 352
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:
Fragmentation, Breakdown, and Unity Theme Icon
).
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: Anna Wulf (speaker), Janet Wulf, Molly Jacobs, Tommy, Michael, Jack, Comrade John Butte
Fragmentation, Breakdown, and Unity Theme Icon
Love and Sex Theme Icon
Communism and Disillusionment Theme Icon
Fact, Fiction, and Authorship Theme Icon
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis:
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