Job, Known As J.b. - 1271 Words

Job, known as J.B., in Archibald MacLeish’s J.B. is first introduced to the reader as a successful businessman, who, like Job in the Book of Job, is upright, fears God, and shuns evil. However, unlike the careful, and at times paranoid, Job of the Book of Job, J.B. seems confident in God’s love and grace. In fact, J.B. preaches to his wife about his faith in God’s blessings, saying, â€Å"Never since I learned to tell my shadow from my shirt, not once, not for a watch-tick, have I doubted God was on my side, was good to me.† (J.B., p. 35, pp. 3) J.B.’s faith in God’s justice and grace is put to the test when his children are killed in increasingly tragic ways; unlike Job’s suffering in the Book of Job, J.B.’s suffering is drawn out. J.B. loses†¦show more content†¦He puts all of his trust in God, and determines that he must have done something to deserve his suffering, but cannot find his fault. J.B. serves as a more pe rsonal example of what a faithful follower of God may be feeling when struck with misfortune. J.B., like Job in the Book of Job, does not know why he is suffering; however, unlike Job, J.B. does not blame God and call him unjust. Instead J.B. seeks his own faults, hoping to understand why he was made to suffer. The Tree of Life is an abstract adaptation of the Book of Job, featuring a young boy named Jack O’Brien who experiences a series of grave events that rock his understanding of life. Jack can be understood to represent Job in the Tree of Life due to his significant struggle with the loss of his brother, and his attempt to understand why people suffered. Some significant differences in Jack and Job are that, unlike Job, Jack is not perfectly innocent, nor is he an upright, God fearing man. Instead, Jack holds only the semi-innocence of a child. Like Job, Jack contends with undeserved suffering; however, Jack explores the suffering of others, such as the drowning of a child, rather than his own. Jack learns through watching both his mother and father suffer that the good suffer along with the wicked. Jack’s father insisted that one had to be ruthless, selfish, and tricky in order to get ahead in life,