In the film Ladder 49 we watch Jack grow from a simple rookie to a brave firefighter, loving husband and caring father. At the beginning Jack saw putting out fires as a job he loved, but a job nevertheless. However, later on we see how working as a firefighter and saving lives evolves into a passion and then a duty he can’t walk away from. Even though he cared deeply for his wife and children the film presents his dedication to rescuing lives and to his fellow comrades as central to his life and, one could even argue, as being more important to him than his role as a husband and a father.
When Jack goes out on his first date with his future wife she asks him about his job and he tells her that he loves it, but in the end he explains, “it’s a job.” One can assume that although he loved his job, at this point in his life it still did not define him as a person. This immediately changes when his friend Dennis dies in a fire. Having experienced the death of someone dear to him, rescuing lives passes from being a mere job to a more personal objective or passion. When Jack and the rest of the team make a promise to be back on the truck in honor of Dennis their perspective on the job takes an entirely different form. He has made a promise to his comrades (dead and alive) that he is incapable of breaking.
In the film Jack chooses his profession over his wife and his family early on. When his wife is still pregnant she tells him she is scared: “I can’t sleep. I keep having that dream about the red car turning up in front of the house when you don’t come home.” To which he replies: “I saved that man today” and walks away. It is clear that rescuing people has become his number one priority in life. It is not that he doesn’t care about his wife’s concerns, it is just that he cares more about the helpless people in the fire and about his duty to stand by his comrades.
About ten years into their marriage he is still carrying out rescue-search operations. He finally considers changing jobs when one of his friends gets seriously burned and his family’s constant worrying start eating away at him. However, his wife doesn’t allow him to change jobs based on them because she recognizes that it makes him happy. He then responds: “When Mike asked me today if I still loved this job the way I did and for the first time in my life I didn’t know what to say.” One could interpret this statement in various ways, but seeing as he never did change jobs it is evident that his feeling towards the job have changed. It has in fact become much more than a profession. Rescuing people was now central to his existence and he was willing to risk it all, his wife, family and even his life, for it. So, in the end it could be argued that his mission to save people became more important to him than the relationship to his family and to his comrades.
2 comments:
Campbell-
Your assessment of Ladder 49 is much the same as how I viewed the film and Jack as the central figure. Jack enter in to his occupation not knowing he that being a fire fighter will ultimately define him as a person and dominate his core as person. Once Jack had become defined by his role as a firefighter and the self-imposed commitment’s to his comrades, it became all but impossible for him to honor his responsibilities to his family, not as a provider but to their emotional wellbeing. Perhaps Jack rationalized putting himself in persistent danger to save other people by telling himself, that it could not happen to him. In a way, many people that enter into dangers jobs have the same mentality or they would not do it. I agree that Jack did love his family; however, when he realized that his job was causing his wife emotional distress, he felt as though he was letting her down and failing her as a husband. This was a major conflict deep within jack’s soul that was left un reconciled due to his untimely death while doing that which defined him.
I like the way you track Jack's obsession with saving people. It is almost as if his job has become a religion, and his rolenis that of savior.
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