• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • FREE short summaries for all!

Book Summary

booksummary.net

  • Home
  • Summaries
  • Analyses
  • Characters
  • Biographies
  • Books


Read original fairy tales >>

Jack and the Beanstalk Characters

Characters  Joseph Jacobs

A quality assessment of detailed elements and features of literary characters included in Jack and the Beanstalk by Joseph Jacobs. It contains characteristics of Jack as the major character and minor characters such as his mother, Ogre, etc.

  • Jack
  • Jack's mother
  • The ogre

Further study

  • Jack and the Beanstalk Book
  • Jack and the Beanstalk Analysis
  • Jack and the Beanstalk Summary
  • Joseph Jacobs Biography

Jack

Characterized as brave, a boy with a lack of fear, full of strength. He's a 100% hero with no superpowers. Although his intentions are not that good, as he uses the giant's wife's kindness to his advantage (she gives him dinner and hides him from the ogre) we believe he's only trying to survive in the cruel world. Jack often takes other people's kindness for granted and instead of earning the money legally (although we can see his mother discouraging him from looking for a job) the ogre's wife closes her eyes to Jack's robbery and he doesn't even thank her. He uses the ogre's wife as his pawn in his crime and doesn't have any intentions of apologizing, proving he's nothing more than a con man and has no guilt or feeling about his crime.

When he gets what he wants he cuts the beanstalk and kills the ogre in order to cover up his crime. Without regret or fear about murder or theft, Jack happily keeps stolen things to himself and has no shame in hurting others.

Jack's mother

A complete opposite of Jack. She usually stays home while Jack goes out to the market and adventures. She mocked him when he attempted being a grown-up (when he says he'll go to the market to sell their cow) and prove he can be a provider for the family. She's the only real female character and contrast to him so while Jack is somewhat heroic and active she is passive, stays home crying and fearing for his safety.

The author states that Jack's mother is a poor widow, but why is she a widow? Tabart's version has one part where Jack tells the ogre's wife about his heroic and noble father who got killed by an ogre when he was three months old. Even though the story of Joseph Jacobs doesn't state what happened to Jack's father we like to make a connection and believe this applies to this story giving the tale a meaning and why his mother is weeping all the time - she's afraid she will lose her son the same way as she lost her husband.

The ogre

The main antagonist is characterized as an oversized fool, with benign and a silly grin on his face. He eats little boys and humans, even though he has a human wife he obviously didn't eat. Although he is enormous in size, he never managed to outwit a small boy Jack.

Further study

  • Jack and the Beanstalk Book
  • Jack and the Beanstalk Analysis
  • Jack and the Beanstalk Summary
  • Joseph Jacobs Biography

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Top Writers

Albert Camus Alexander Pushkin Alexandre Dumas Anton Chekhov Arthur Conan Doyle Art Spiegelman Barbara Kingsolver Bible Brothers Grimm Charles Dickens Charles Perrault Clive Staples Lewis Dante Alighieri Edgar Allan Poe Emile Zola Erich Kästner Ernest Hemingway Eugene Ionesco Euripides Gabriel Garcia Marquez Hans Christian Andersen Jane Austen Joseph Jacobs Mark Twain Michael Coleman Nikolai Gogol Oscar Wilde Ovid William Faulkner William Shakespeare

Recent

  • Hills Like White Elephants Analysis
  • Hills Like White Elephants Characters
  • Jerome David Salinger
  • James Joyce
  • Mark Twain
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • Hills Like White Elephants Summary
  • Brothers Grimm
  • Alexander Pushkin
  • Nikolai Gogol
  • The Masque of the Red Death
  • The Masque of the Red Death Characters
  • The Masque of the Red Death Summary

Study guides

  • Analyses
  • Characters
  • Summaries
  • Biographies
  • Books

Footer

Information

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Index of Writers
  • Digital Books

Study guides

  • Book Analyses
  • Book Summaries
  • Character Analyses
  • Biographies

BookSummary.net

The largest collection of book summaries, analyses, books, study guides and educational resources for students and teachers. Here, you'll find works from more than 250 greatest authors of all time. [more]

Copyright © 2016–2023 · KnowHow Network / Mastermind · All rights reserved