Jack Strong: A Stand By Tommy Greenwald

The short story “Don’t Ask Jack” was written in 2009 by Neil Gaiman who is an English author of inter alia short stories. Neil Gaiman’s short story “Don’t Ask Jack” follows significant themes such as the passing of time and childhood. The story is following the Jack-in-the-box and how it haunts the children who have possession of it. The

       Jack does indeed begin as an immature, spoiled child. In Scudder's version, which is a moral version containing a fairy who justifies Jack's decision to steal the Giant's treasures, Jack's mother blames him for making her "a beggar" (23). In Jacobs' version, which is a traditional version without the fairy, Jack's inability to get a job shows his immaturity. As Martha Wolfenstein states, Jack "is spoiled or lazy or cannot hold a job or . . . has carelessly exhausted the family substance" (243). When the cow, Milky-white, stops giving milk, Jack's mother sends him to the marketplace to sell the cow for money (Jacobs 59). This venture is a very important first step in Jack's road to maturity, though it may not seem so at the time. This is the first time that we know of Jack's mother ever sending him to the market. According to Bruno Bettelheim, this first encounter with the world represents the end of infancy for Jack. As Bettelheim reminds us, Jack's mother demands that he "learn to make do with what the outside world can offer" (188). Now that Jack can no longer expect his mother to do everything for him, he realizes that he must take steps toward maturity. As Bettelheim says, "The child then has to begin the long and difficult

During the book, “Small as an Elephant”, the main character Jack is introduced as a young boy, who at age 11 had figured out how to live on his own when his mom Rebecca went “spinning”. These were times when she would go off her pills, and leave for a couple of days at a time. This time, she left Jack at a campsite in Maine, where he had to avoid suspicion, and figure out a way to get food and survive with $14.63 that was left in his pocket.

Jack has demonstrated the ability to understand and apply all the concepts of rhythmic and melodic notation that have been presented this year. When focused, he plays with energy and enthusiasm. Lately, however, his behavior has been problematic. Jack has always enjoyed injecting a capricious comment here and there during our class meetings. Whereas I found these to be fine, enjoyable actually, they have recently taken on a different tone and are too frequent and disruptive. It's important for Jack to stay productive and cooperative while keeping his sense of humor under control.

Jack's disorders branch out beyond creating vivid fantasy lives for him. He lies often, and not only does he change his grades for the previously mentioned prep school applications, but he routinely changes his C's to A's on the report cards sent home to his mother and Dwight. He lies to priests in confessional and to friends about his hunting conquests. He eggs cars, breaks windows, and scribbles obscenities on bathroom walls and denies it all. Jack routinely convinces himself that he is not even, in fact, lying. Once when he is suspected of carving graffiti on a bathroom wall at school, he recalls that he had spent almost an hour with the vice-principal and had become completely convinced of his own innocence. The more he insisted on it, the angrier the vice-principal got, and the angrier the vice-principal got, the more impossible it was for Jack to believe he had done anything to deserve such anger.

Golding uses forms of characterization to characterize Jack at the beginning of the novel as a civilized, moderately bossy teenager, but as the story progresses, he becomes more and more savage and along with that becomes crazy. It begins with Jack being described as, “putting

I sympathize with Jack because growing up his father beat him, he did not have very many friends, and with the way his siblings treated him, he was an only child. Jack’s father, Dwight, was no real father. He beat him, stole his money, often put Jack down, and he seemed bi-polar. One day he would be teaching Jack how to fight and fend for himself, and the next day he would steal Jack’s paper route money and beat Jack. Jack’s father had no method to his madness. Some small things would make him explode. Sometimes, he was a ticking bomb with a fuse that was as long as a mile and other days the fuse was the size of an inch. He was unpredictable as a father, if you could even call him that. I would not wish that kind of father on my worst enemy.

There are a few more things I could state to support my thesis. The rest of Jack’s life would be effected by these events that happened in Room. When he finally does start school he will be behind and not on the same level as the rest of the kids his age. He also might be socially detached from kids that he are around which might be a problem for him. This also supports the thesis that his life will be effected by his

Jack’s family never did think about how Jack thinks because of how introverted, he is, but that’s a problem they’ve been trying to find a solution for Jack to open up to the family to discuss his mental problems. Jack was finding problems when he first started at elementary school to high school. Jack started to hear voices when he was in the 2nd grade, the voices were as quiet as whispers. He would ask his classmates if they heard whispers, but they would look at him funny. This is when Jack started to become quieter and kept his thoughts to himself, it kept building and building until the point he was scared to even whisper. He grows weak when someone looks at him for a second or even hold a short

"Tyler, pass me the maple syrup, please," said his mother, Nancy Quinn. He looked up and handed her the syrup, then went back to looking at his pancakes.

Once we are introduced to Jack, we are quickly shown Jack’s narcissistic attitude towards the other

Another way that Jack grows throughout the novel is through his experience at home. One experience that causes him to grow and learn is through the gift of the little black kitten (58-60). This cat allows him to accept the fact that some cats aren’t bad and that you can’t judge something off of just one experience you have had. Further in the story, he learns that the first cat that he encountered isn’t a bad cat but is a good cat. The fat cat that hurt him at the beginning of the story turns out to be a nice cat because it helps save Skitter from being lost (107-108). This re-ensures him that you can’t judge a book by its cover off of just on experience. The second way he grows in the novel through his experiences at him is through Uncle Bill.

Due to Jack’s atypical environment and development, he could be a candidate for several types of interventions to provide him with protective factors and skills to thrive through childhood and beyond. In the movie, Jack experiences multiple situations of fear and trauma. “Exposure to traumatic and stressful events in early childhood may have enduring consequences for the child 's developmental trajectory given their impact on these areas of development, and it is of utmost important to create effective early treatments to prevent enduring patterns of maladaptive functioning” (Ippen, 2011). Specific goals for Jack should be made to directly address past trauma, while building on the relationship with his mother. An empirically supported treatment found to be effective is Child-Parent Psychotherapy (Ippen, 2011).

Jack is currently being evaluated because he constantly blurts out in class when he has something to say. Ms. Gray, his teacher, complains that he constantly blurts out instead of raising his hand. She has also mentioned that he calls her name constantly when she does not answer immediately.

One biological factor is that there is a possibility of brain abnormalities, such as a deficit in the amygdala, hippocampus, and frontal gray matter, which can contribute to his antisocial behavior. Also, his corpus callosum may be increased in size, which has the same effect. According to behavioral theorists, one of the causal factors for Jack’s disorder may be that his parents unknowingly promoted his antisocial tendencies by rewarding his aggressive and unnatural behavior. This is exhibited many times in his youth, where his parents are more concerned with getting him home than they are with rightful punishment, such as having him returned to their custody and him still returning to his aggressive