Dec 26, 2009

Black Jack | Themes and Characters

Black Jack is filled with a variety of eccentric characters, including a twelve-year-old blackmailer, several traveling hucksters, and a "professional widow" who claims corpses of hanged criminals to sell to surgeons as cadavers. Tolly, the novel's central character, is a poor boy whose generous nature allows Black Jack to involve him in a series of frightening adventures.

Black Jack has spent his life waylaying travelers and killing them for their money, but he is not a totally unsympathetic character. Although he resents Tolly's attempts to reform him and sneeringly...