Jacquie Red Feather Character Analysis in There There

When readers first meet Jacquie, she is an eighteen-year-old girl going wild on Alcatraz during the Native occupation of the island in the early 1970s. She drags her younger half-sister, Opal, along on her adventures, but the girls drift apart as Jacquie flirts with an older boy named Harvey. After Harvey turns a “no into a yes” and assaults Jacquie, she becomes pregnant with his child, and later gives the baby up for adoption. When readers next meet Jacquie she is in her late sixties, and is eleven days sober. She is struggling to keep a hold on that sobriety as she attends a painful professional conference on substance abuse and suicide in Native communities. Jacquie has given her three grandsons to her sister Opal to raise, unable to do a good enough job herself in the painful wake of her second daughter Jamie’s suicide. At the conference, Jacquie successfully abstains from drinking, reconnects with Harvey in a chance encounter, and meditates on the ways in which alcohol is like a spider’s web—both a trap and a home. Jacquie ultimately decides to accompany Harvey to the Big Oakland Powwow, sheepish and nervous but hoping to reconnect with her sister and her grandsons. Jacquie is strong, resilient, and complicated, but she considers her own faults, admits to her mistakes, and ultimately allows herself the privilege of being around her family after years of walling herself off out of fear and doubt.

Jacquie Red Feather Quotes in There There

The There There quotes below are all either spoken by Jacquie Red Feather or refer to Jacquie Red Feather. 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:

Cultural Identity vs. Personal Identity Theme Icon

“One of the last things Mom said to me when we were over there, she said we shouldn’t ever not tell our stories,” I said.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” “I mean having the baby.”

“It’s not a story, Opal, this is real.”

“It could be both.”

“Life doesn't work out the way stories do. Mom’s dead, she’s not coming back, and we’re alone, living with a guy we don’t even know who we’re supposed to call uncle. What kind of a fucked-up story is that?”

Related Characters: (speaker), (speaker), ,

Page Number and Citation: 60

Explanation and Analysis:

Jacquie kneeled in front of the minifridge. In her head she heard her mom say, “The spider's web is a home and a trap.” And even though she never really knew what her mom meant by it, she’d been making it make sense over the years, giving it more meaning than her mom probably ever intended. In this case Jacquie was the spider, and the minifridge was the web. Home was to drink. To drink was the trap. Or something like that. The point was Do not open the fridge. And she didn’t.

Related Characters: ,

Related Symbols:

Page Number and Citation: 101

Explanation and Analysis:

“There’s gotta be some reason for all this. That we would meet like this,” Harvey said, holding the elevator by putting his arm across the threshold.

“The reason is we’re both fuckups and the Indian world is small.”

Related Characters: (speaker), (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 115

Explanation and Analysis:

Opal pulled three spider legs out of her leg the Sunday afternoon before she and Jacquie left the home, the house, the man they’d been left with after their mom left this world. There’d recently been blood from her first moon. Both the menstrual blood and the spider legs had made her feel the same kind of shame. Something was in her that came out, that seemed so creaturely, so grotesque yet magical, that the only readily available emotion she had for both occasions was shame, which led to secrecy in both cases.

Related Characters: , ,

Related Symbols:

Page Number and Citation: 165

Explanation and Analysis:

Jacquie Red Feather Character Timeline in There There

The timeline below shows where the character Jacquie Red Feather appears in There There. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Opal and her older half-sister, Jacquie Red Feather, are doing homework at the kitchen table one afternoon in January of 1970... (full context)

...two outfits and her teddy bear, whose name is Two Shoes. Vicky instructs Opal and Jacquie to say goodbye to their house as they walk out the door—the front of it... (full context)

That night, on the island, Opal and Jacquie eat watery beef stew in front of a large bonfire while their mother smokes and... (full context)

Interconnectedness, Coincidence, and Chance Theme Icon

Jacquie, who is eighteen, makes more friends more quickly than the twelve-year-old Opal does, and starts... (full context)

One afternoon, Opal leaves Two Shoes behind some rocks and goes looking for Jacquie. She finds her with the group of teens—Jacquie is drunk, and introduces Opal excitedly to... (full context)

Opal and Rocky go joyriding with Jacquie and some of the other older kids on a transport boat stolen from docks on... (full context)

Back on the mainland, Opal, Jacquie, and Vicky go to stay with Vicky’s “adopted brother” Ronald, whom the girls have never... (full context)

Jacquie Red Feather lands in Albuquerque the night before the start of a Substance Abuse and... (full context)

Jacquie reflects on the itinerant existence that she, her mother Vicky, and her younger half-sister Opal... (full context)

Jacquie goes up to her room and lies down on the bed, thinking about Opal, who... (full context)

Jacquie goes down to the hotel pool where she swims and then smokes a cigarette. She... (full context)

The next morning, Jacquie finds a seat in the back of the main ballroom of the conference and looks... (full context)

Crouching in the doorway of her hotel room trying to steady her breath, Jacquie thinks about her own daughter’s suicide, and the painful day thirteen years ago when she... (full context)

Jacquie looks through pictures of her grandsons on her phone, feeling her mental state deteriorating every... (full context)

That evening, Jacquie walks into the AA meeting to find a bunch of “older Native guys with long... (full context)

When it is Jacquie’s turn to introduce herself to the group after the start of the meeting, she takes... (full context)

Jacquie sits quietly while the other attendees speak, getting lost in thought about the day she,... (full context)

After the meeting, only Jacquie and Harvey stay behind. Harvey tries to make conversation with Jacquie, telling her he’s going... (full context)

Back in her hotel room, Jacquie opens the minifridge and considers drinking. Instead, she unplugs the fridge, moves it out to... (full context)

...the unwanted children of a heroin-addict mother, given over to Opal after their true grandmother, Jacquie, was unable to care for them. The boys often beg Opal for details about their... (full context)

Jacquie and Harvey are in Harvey’s Ford pickup, riding through the Arizona desert on their way... (full context)

Jacquie’s phone buzzes in her pocket—it is a text from Opal. She opens it and reads... (full context)

...her—spiders figure largely in her family’s lore. Her mother, Vicky, had never let Opal or Jacquie kill spiders when they were young, stating that “spiders carry miles of web in their... (full context)

...of a bump in her own leg—the legs emerged the Sunday afternoon before she and Jacquie left the home of Ronald, the man their mother had left them with after dying.... (full context)

...when Ronald came into the room while he thought Opal was sleeping and began grabbing Jacquie’s legs, trying to drag her from the room, Opal cracked him over the head with... (full context)

...Ronald and would be in trouble. But as days and months passed and nothing happened, Jacquie and Opal grew estranged, and soon Jacquie disappeared. Opal began growing close with Lucas, and... (full context)

...she goes by Blue. She knows very little about her birth mother other than her name—Jacquie Red Feather—which her adoptive mother told her on her eighteenth birthday. Despite learning of her... (full context)

Jacquie and Harvey get to Oakland the night before the powwow and stay in separate rooms... (full context)

At the powwow, Jacquie sits next to Harvey in the sound system booth. She wonders aloud if their daughter... (full context)

...his hat, and stands to wrap Edwin in a big hug. Harvey introduces Edwin to Jacquie Red Feather, and Edwin calls Blue over to meet the both of them. As Edwin... (full context)

...a liability in the weeks leading up to the event—but after getting nervous because of Jacquie’s presence, she has noticed a group of “thuggish-looking guys” standing nearby, and is growing bothered.... (full context)

Harvey tries to push Jacquie down onto the ground to take cover, but she insists on walking out of the... (full context)

Jacquie sees the shooters, and then quickly scans the bodies all around her, looking for the... (full context)

...aide, she sees a car full of people pull up. The doors open, and Harvey, Jacquie, and several other people—one of them a wounded, unconscious teenager—pour out of the car. Jacquie... (full context)

Blue sits next to Jacquie in the waiting area. She wishes she could say something to her, but has no... (full context)

...is going to pull through and make it. As Opal looks over at her sister, Jacquie, she knows that if Orvil doesn’t make it, none of them will. Opal closes her... (full context)

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Jacquie Red Feather Character Analysis

Jacquie Red Feather Quotes in There There

Jacquie Red Feather Character Timeline in There There

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