O'Keefe - Ladder 49

The question of whether Jack Morrison valued his career over his family is one with an answer rife with caveats. Jack may first appear as a standard and simple character but he is actually far more complex than he outwardly appears; he’s torn between his dedication to his job and his duty and his dedication to his family. This inner conflict, I believe, is the most important aspect of his character within the scope of the film. The film acts, more or less, to tell the story of Jack’s conflict. It begins with his first day on the job, whereupon we first see evidence of his unerring dedication to duty and to helping others and ends with his acceptance of his fate and, ultimately, with his demise.

We can see evidence of Jack’s uncertainty in the flashback in which Jack and Mike Kennedy are in the café. After the harsh reality of Tommy’s injury sets in we see Jack questioning the wisdom of such a dangerous career choice in light of his growing family. Jack even goes so far as to consider taking an aide job with Mike as opposed to fieldwork and broaches the subject with his wife, Linda. The fact that Jack would even take this into consideration after his dedication to his work had been so firmly established in previous scenes show just how deeply conflicted Jack is about the subject.

If one was to try and find a concrete answer to the question of whether Jack’s work or his family is more important to him the most logical place to look for evidence would be the last scenes prior to Jack’s memorial service. In this scene we find Jack, trapped in the burning building in which the entire movie is set (assuming that all of the scenes not pertaining to Jack’s final fire are flashbacks) and having just made it through the brick wall and one step nearer the rest of Ladder 49, faced with the realization that due to the wall of flame before him he will almost certainly die in this building. In this moment Jack accepts his fate and asks Mike to call off the fruitless rescue efforts in order to reduce the risk of further casualties. This would seemingly indicate that Jack had ultimately picked his duty to firefighting over his family. However, I think the most correct answer to this question is that regardless of his reflecting and reminiscing while awaiting the rescue that never would come, his decision was ultimately moot, as given the preceding events, he was ultimately going to perish in that building regardless of how he felt.