Jacob Portman

Jacob is the book's central character, its protagonist and narrator. In the book's initial chapters, he portrays himself as having been unhappily born into a family of inherited wealth on his mother's side and of both self-delusion and helpless ineffectuality on his father's. Both of these latter traits, Jacob believes, he shares with both his father and once-revered grandfather, who used to be a hero to him but who, the older they both get, seems to be becoming more and more of a crackpot. Over the course of the narrative, however, Jacob comes to understand more about both himself and his grandfather, realizing that they both had more courage than they at first realized and also share a specific enemy against which to focus that courage. In short, Jacob's is a typical Hero's Journey (see "Themes") which features, among several other archetypal or universal experiences, movement from...