She knows that Caroline is not bound to this island and to her parents, so Louise sits underneath the shadow of a self-imposed responsibility to her parents and the people of her island. But instead of stepping out, she just continues to believe that the only way to be of use is the stay in the shadows. Louise casts these shadows all the while hoping that she might be seen for who she is. She is constantly striving to make her own way, by secreting away her crabbing money, and by her attempts to become a famous whistle-blower by exposing an island spy. Oftentimes Louise’s shadows are cast by her own decisions. Even in my mid-forties, I hear internal voices like Louise’s and can remember my 13 year old self feeling exactly the same way. Paterson’s greatest gift is her ability to give voice to the young girl growing into womanhood and all the mental and physical struggles that occur during this crazy time of transitions. What Paterson does so well is showing the angst this sibling rivalry causes Louise. To Louise, it appears that her family goes out of their way to advance this musical gift, using much-needed money in order to provide her with singing lessons on the mainland. Caroline is dainty and a beauty and has a special gift of singing. Caroline doesn’t fit on this island of boats and crabs and oysters. She has a twin sister Caroline who is everything she isn’t. Her father is a waterman and she finds herself out on the water too, catching crabs and all sorts of other things to help provide income for the family. She lives on a small island in the Chesapeake Bay in the 1940s, just at the cusp of World War II. At the opening of the novel the narrator, Louise, is just moving into teenage-dom. Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson is a story about siblings, but even more it’s a story about a child trying to figure out how to move out of the shadows and into her own sunlight. We are sinfully wired to listen to the whispers that we are being left behind or forgotten in the shadows. Even as adults, we get the idea that somewhere else or with someone else, life would be better or easier.
I see it in their longing to have what the other one has merely because they do not. I see it in my children as they fight for the front seat of the car. Sibling rivalry and jealousy are natural things. Anyone who has grown up as a sibling knows there is emotional processing that continually goes on as each sibling deals with the attentions, or lack of attentions, of others.
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