Summary

In this take on “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the narrator introduces a boy, Jack, who is not at all reliable and sells his mother's cow, their only remaining asset, for a handful of beans which the buyer says are magical. Jack is portrayed as the type of person who just expects things to happen without putting effort into doing anything. Jack's mother is furious when he tells her about selling the cow for beans when he gets home and she berates him for being cavalier and unreliable. Meanwhile, he inwardly criticizes her for being a spend-thrift with a "poverty of imagination" (24) that is stuck in a limited way of life. Jack's mother throws the beans out the window and sends Jack to bed without supper, at which point the narrator points out that in traditional versions of the fairytale the outcome would be a...