Saint Jack: Analysis of Major Characters
"Saint Jack: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the intricate dynamics of the main characters in Paul Theroux's novel, providing insight into their motivations and relationships. Central to the narrative is Jack Flowers, originally Jack Fiori, a fifty-three-year-old American living in Singapore. His character embodies a blend of humor and depth, revealing a restless spirit grappling with the reality of his life and inevitable mortality. The narrative's tone captures Jack's candid reflections and romantic illusions, particularly as he contemplates the mundane death of William Leigh, a British accountant whose self-superior attitude contrasts sharply with Jack's more grounded perspective.
William Leigh serves as a foil to Jack, revealing themes of aspiration and the fear of anonymity, especially after his unexpected death in an undignified setting. Meanwhile, Edwin Shuck, potentially linked to the CIA, initially presents himself as a tourist seeking excitement but ultimately reveals a morally ambiguous character, complicating Jack's journey further. Lastly, Chop Hing Kheng Fatt, a Chinese ship chandler, contributes to the thematic exploration of power dynamics and cultural tensions through his volatile interactions with Jack and others. Together, these characters paint a vivid picture of life in Singapore, addressing themes of identity, ambition, and the search for meaning in a transient world.
Saint Jack: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Paul Theroux
First published: 1973
Genre: Novel
Locale: Singapore, at an unnamed American college
Plot: Social morality
Time: 1953–1971
Jack Flowers, born Jack Fiori in North Boston, fifty-three years old and living in Singapore at the opening of the novel, which is a first-person memoir of his misadventures. His voice is comically candid but consistently underscored by a poignant thoughtfulness. He is a rascal with compassionate inclinations; a pragmatic panderer and a shameless poser, he secretly entertains very romantic illusions. He has lived with an energetic restlessness for imagined possibilities, and now he suddenly confronts the probability that his life will end in pathetic anonymity. The mundane death of William Leigh—whom Jack had very recently met and to whom he took an almost immediate dislike, although he would develop a reflexive understanding of him because of their comparable delusions—prompts Jack to establish a record of his life, not to impose meaning on it but to lend to it whatever permanence exists in the public expression of private experience.
William Leigh, a British accountant from Hong Kong, sent to audit Hing's books. He assumes a transparently superior attitude toward Jack, who is supposed to see to his accommodations and entertainment. Despite his pretensions, William is clearly waiting out his retirement pension. In an uncharacteristic moment, he confides to Jack that he and his wife cherish the notion of retiring to a cottage in the English countryside. When William dies of a heart attack while sitting on an open toilet in the back room of a seedy bar where Jack hangs out, Jack feels a deep pathos. Jack telephones William's wife, to whom he describes a more dignified death, and arranges William's cremation in Singapore.
Edwin (Eddie) Shuck, a U.S. government official who is probably connected in some way to the Central Intelligence Agency. He meets Jack by posing as a tourist who needs Jack's assistance in discovering the wilder diversions that Singapore has to offer. This deception tries Jack's patience, but after Eddie offers Jack the job of managing Paradise Gardens, Eddie seems to exhibit a more agreeable and personable side to his character. He and Jack have few difficulties with each other until the abrupt closing of that establishment. In that situation and in his hiring of Jack to gather blackmail material on the general, he finally demonstrates that his position and his ambition have corrupted his sense of values in a more sinister way than pimping has corrupted Jack.
Chop Hing Kheng Fatt, the Chinese ship chandler who employs Jack. He presents an impervious demeanor to Caucasians, but he is very proud and volatile and is likely to kick his dog or abuse his Chinese employees when he thinks that his doing so will not be noticed.