ou have to be willing to risk rejection in the hope of acceptance. Jack does not seem to want to do this, however. Jack says, "We all had an aura to maintain, and in sharing mine with a friend I was risking the very things that made me untouchable" (74). He is unwilling to let down his defenses and possibly let people see the "big, harmless" man underneath. Perhaps this is why he married two different women in intelligence - since they did not let their guards down, he did not have to either. Jack's false image is also an inconvenience, however. Because he has to appear strong and sure, he cannot deal with his shortcomings out in the open. For example, Jack does not know German. He has to learn for the Hitler conference, but his image forces him to keep his lessons secret (31-2). Again, he does not want to appear vulnerable. The end result is that his speech at the start of the Hitler conference is composed mainly of German words that sound the same in English. He spoke Hitler's name often, in hopes it would overpower his uncertain sentence structure. Later, he spent most of his time hiding in his office (274), probably because he shattered his own image by appearing weak and unsure of himself while fumbling through his speech. The good news is he is aware of his problem, saying, "I am the false character that follows the name around," (17) when discussing his name change. The bad news is that he does nothing to change his character to a true one. Jack is not the only one who goes into hiding when his image begins to crack. When Orest fails his attempt to break the record for sitting in a cage with snakes, he totally drops out of sight (298). This lends support to the earlier statement that Orest was extremely desperate for an image, and thus attention. Since his attempt failed, he is left devoid of any image but that of a failure. Jack's and Orest's cases show that the failure to live up to an image produces disastrous results for ...
