Louise, the protagonist of Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Patterson, infuriates me. She fights against the ghosts of what she wishes to be and what she really is, kicking and screaming all the time. I don't dispute that she's struggling for good reason: her family's neglect, whether perceived or real, and the expectations her culture (I really mean environment here) has placed on her gender role. contributed to his fate. -- but his great inner strength and insight conceal his inability to overcome or at least circumvent these obstacles. To me, she is a rebel whose only reason is to declare her independence from the expected gender role. And, in this, I find myself, a young man with no common ground with my same-sex parent, knowing that I am strong in not being one, and yet, I fight loudly but emptyly against this fact as if it wasn't good enough. I don't like Louise because she is my feminine reflection whose wounds are mine. Early in the novel, the roots of Louise's problems are easy to trace in her resentment toward her sister and the attention she demanded, leading to my initial disdain for her as, to use colloquialism, a crybaby. Indeed, I didn't identify with it at all, other than my experience with younger siblings (I'm the oldest) who complained about me in much the same way. It certainly made it easy for me to create objective distance from Louise and, in fact, allowed me to tolerate listening to her since I saw nothing in her as myself - she was not a threat and although I didn't do it. like her, it was more a question of taste than of sensitivity. This changed dramatically when she suggested that the school's Christmas pageant be reconsidered in light of the war and was met with indifference by her teacher, Mr. Rice. His reaction to his rejection (at least to her) cut me to the bone: ...but the burning shame and indignation within me made me forget the wind as I walked. I was right. I knew I was right, so why were they all laughing? And why had Mr. Rice let them do it? He hadn't even tried to explain what I wanted to say to others... (31) First, the power of this quote overwhelms me with the same pain I always felt when I was rejected by my peers and/or abandoned by a trusted adult. (whose gender and role also have importance, as I will soon show) in the face of this rejection.