Analyzing Evil: Jack From The House That Jack Built

Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 76 of Analyzing Evil, featuring Jack from The House That Jack Built. In the same vein as American Psycho, this film gives us insight into a serial killer and his development from his own perspective, which is a rarity in this genre. It's more often than not that we encounter serial killers in films, shows, and books through the perspective of the people who are attempting to apprehend them, and to be given a detailed look into the mind of such a killer holds an incredible amount of value when studying the behavior and actions of certain people who suffer from antisocial personality disorder.

The account of Jack's life given to us throughout this story may be fictitious, but as others have pointed out, the similarities between our mad protagonist and real-world serial killers like Ted Bundy are readily apparent. And though this film is essentially a character study, in this video, we'll be combing through the many details present in this study to give you one of the most accurate pictures of a serial killer that's ever been presented in popular media. To accomplish this, we'll first discuss Jack's background and how his upbringing, education, and profession have developed him into the man he is, and how they've influenced his philosophy and beliefs. The rest of this video will then be dedicated to an overview of his personality and how it, and the information from the previous section, tie into his many crimes.

Luckily for us, we're given a handy list of personality traits that Jack displays, by Jack himself, when Verge and Jack are discussing his personality. Here, we see Jack hold up several Q cards that display these different personality traits that are often found in people with ASPD. And through these traits, we're given a good look into the person that Jack truly is, as he displays each and every one of the traits that are shown on these cards. And while there are a few other traits within Jack not shown here, these cards will give us a good baseline to follow as this video progresses. Now, without further ado, let's take our tour through Jack's life.

Jack grew up in a rural village in what was likely either the 30s or the 40s. Though he says at one point that he played hide-and-seek when he was a child, we're never given any memories from Jack that would indicate that he had too many people to play with, and it seems that Jack was a very lonely and introverted child, sensitive, as he calls it, even claiming that he had an innate fear of playing when he was younger. Whatever the case may be, Jack seems to have been left to his own devices for the most part. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the term "idle hands are the devil's playthings," and that couldn't be truer for the young Jack, as we see in one flashback that he caught a duckling and cut off its leg after caressing it gently. One of the earliest indicators that a child will grow up to be a serial killer.

The also shows Jack's morbid curiosity. Suffering abuse and trauma in one's youth is typically another cause of a person's development into a serial killer via the exacerbation of their antisocial personality disorder. And it's possible that Jack did suffer some sort of abuse when he was younger, but the only bit of evidence we have in that respect is the statement Jack makes about his mother pushing him to be an engineer rather than an architect because there's more money to be found in that profession, which could indicate that he possibly grew up in a controlling environment. Regardless, it's more likely that his isolation left his worst impulses unchecked and allowed Jack to perform any twisted experiments that he could think of without anyone around to reprimand him for his troubling behavior, which unfortunately allowed his antisocial personality disorder, specifically psychopathy, a condition that many serial killers suffer from, to grow within Jack without limits.

There's another disorder that Jack suffers from that serves as both a hindrance and a boon to Jack's life and efforts to become and remain a serial killer: his OCD. As we saw in the scene where Jack was cleaning up after killing his second victim, Jack's OCD nearly got him caught, as he returned several times to ensure that the room he murdered her in was completely free of blood. On the one hand, when you murder someone, you want to make sure that you leave no evidence behind, but on the other, it's again the consequences of a compulsion that in this case could have led to him getting caught. As far as it helping in hindering his overall livelihood, though, you have a maintenance of good hygiene and rigid structure in your life, which could have helped him when he was getting his education, as well as afterwards in his profession, but it comes as a hindrance in the annoyances and inconveniences this disorder can provide, such as not being able to sleep in sheets that have even one wrinkle, or not being able to leave a room unless it's absolutely clean and organized. Of course, this disorder and its symptoms vary from person to person, but I think it's safe to say that this is the way in which Jack's OCD has affected his life, and the diminishing of its symptoms with each kill also serves as a source of motivation for Jack, as if something's curing your ailments, that's a pretty good reason to keep pursuing that endeavor.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, Jack would eventually go on to become an engineer after completing a lengthy course of studies at whatever university he attended. At which time, Jack's already intelligent mind would become educated in art, science, philosophy, politics, and culture. This education factored heavily into Jack's development into a serial killer, as the combination of his rural upbringing that enabled him to cultivate worldly and mechanical knowledge, and a collegiate education ensured he would have all the skills necessary to pursue a life dedicated to killing others without getting caught. Not only that, but his extensive education has facilitated the formation of a unique set of beliefs that define Jack's career as a serial killer.

Jack is, above all else, an artist, and he intended to pursue an artistic career in architecture before that dream was derailed by his mother. From a young age, Jack displayed his appreciation for the esoteric and the abstract, as we see him admiring the men of his village cutting the grass in a meadow and the synchronized breaths they take as they mow. And later on, we learn that Jack was interested in photography when he was young, younger, as well, discovering the beauty of the dark light, as he calls it, that comes out in the negatives of photographs. And later in life, this would translate into an artistically philosophical outlook on the world around him, especially when it came to the more carnal aspects of life, like the predator and prey dynamic, which Jack, with the help of the poems "The Tiger" and "The Lamb" by William Blake, rationalized as being artistic and divine.

Now, the purpose of these two poems is to challenge the reader's preconceived notions about God and morality, putting forth the idea that a tiger and a lamb are both beautiful, and if both were created by God to be beautiful, then the ferocity of the tiger is also a representation of God, just as much as the meek disposition of the lamb is. And therefore, labeling the ferocious aspects of nature as a perversion of the divine benevolence of God is a falsity. Essentially, this poem underlines the beauty that is all of nature, not just parts of it. But where Jack delineates from its core message is viewing these poems as the beautification of violence, rather than the beauty of the more ferocious aspects of nature. Blake wasn't finding about how beautiful a stab wound is, or how wondrously magnificent a gunshot to the head is. He's simply stating that all of creation is beautiful because it was created by a divine being, which includes the evolutionary need predators have to seek out prey and consume them for sustenance. I think you'd have a hard time convincing William Blake that unjustified and unnatural murder is something to compare to the beauty of a tiger, an animal who's evolved with a need to kill in order to survive.

But unfortunately for many artists and philosophers out there, their works can fall to the twisted interpretation of people like Jack. That's not to say that art isn't subjective, because it certainly is, and as Blake outlines in these poems, life and art aren't black and white, and there's definitely room for a gray area when examining nearly everything in this world. And depending on who you are and what your beliefs are, you can develop beliefs and opinions like Jack, whose gray area is substantially larger than the average person's. That's the problem with subjects like this, though. Jack, and a scant few others, have the ability to see serial killing as another artistic pursuit. But are we really going to admit that it's art just because 0.00001% of humanity believes it to be so? No, I don't think so.

Morality, like art, is subjective in the absence of the divine. Because if you draw your morals from divinity, they're pretty much set in stone. But even then, interpretations between individuals can vary. And though one could argue that art is a product of nature, both are, in the absence of divinity, artificial extensions of humanity. There is no morality in nature. The universe doesn't care whether or not we kill each other, but we do. And we are the ones who have, over a great amount of time, made a distinct effort to determine what is right or wrong in the scope of our understanding. And we've differentiated what is good and evil by stepping back and asking ourselves several questions regarding morality. But there's one that stands out as the most important amongst those questions: Would I appreciate myself, those I love, or innocent people being harmed in any way? The answer to that is more often than not, no. And because of our understanding of our own emotions, and thus the emotions of others, we're able to classify something as being evil because of the negative effects it has on us and those around us. And a general rule of thumb to use when determining what is generally considered to be evil is by sticking to generalities, or in other words, the opinions of the majority. So, with that in mind, who's in the right in this situation? Jack and the small amount of others that would consider what he's doing to be a gray area in the artistic world, or everyone else who recognizes actions as utterly selfish, cruel, and wrong? I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

Even if you take into consideration his speech comparing the putrification and decomposition of grapes into wine and the same process as a human body undergoes, you'll find that this supposition is injected with a sick understanding of life. As Verge points out here, Jack reduces everything to matter, and he doesn't have any inkling of human suffering or emotion. And he cannot fathom how decomposing grapes into wine is any different than murdering innocent people and turning them into art. Now, his admiration of art, talents as an artist, and formation of a philosophy that viewed nearly everything in existence as a work of art would be crucial in Jack's development into a serial killer, as his desire to create art using the corpses of his victims, and even trying to mimic the great works of art created by others, as we see with the intermixing of classical works in the aftermath of his killings, would be all the motivation he needed to keep killing. And because Jack continuously kills without ever suffering any repercussions for his actions, he believed that he had a divine protector throughout his career as a serial killer, instilling within him further reason to continue doing what he's doing, even if he himself claims that he has little to no faith in a higher power.

That essentially sums up who Jack is outside of his personality. And though all of these components of Jack are integral to his evolution into the man we see in this film, it's his personality that serves as the driving force behind every hard action that he takes.

Now, in our first encounter with Jack, what stands out the most is how standoffish and awkward he is. There isn't a rule book for how someone should act when stopping to help someone, nor is it mandatory that someone stops to do so, but when they do, you tend to expect a friendly or helpful attitude, as after all, why did you stop to help if you weren't willing to help? Jack's demeanor here is not at all how you would expect, and though it doesn't seem to phase this very forward woman, this is our first indicator that something isn't quite right with Jack. If you're like me, you might have expected his character to progress along this line: a brooding, melancholy, and vicious killer who's socially awkward, says little, and displays little to no emotion outside of carnal ones. However, that's not the case for Jack.

And after his murder of this first woman in the appropriately named "First Incident," our next run-in with Jack is initially more odd than it is menacing. Speaking to yet another clueless victim through a screen door, it's a wonder that this woman didn't slam the door in his face the moment he opened his mouth. Here, Jack tries miserably to convince this woman that he's a police officer, fabricating a story that was likely hastily made, as he stumbles over his words and struggles to hold this conversation in any sort of normal fashion. He's jittery, wide-eyed, and he stutters as he speaks, displaying a complete lack of social awareness, as well as violent mood swings. When he finally manages to get into her home, and all of this only becomes more apparent after he murders her, and he's trying to maneuver his way around the officer who's intruded into his business, as he similarly manufactures a confusing story full of inconsistencies and oddities that barely manage to give him an out in this situation.

However, as Jack explains after this incident, he has been actively working to try and mimic average people who are able to empathize with others. As Jack is a rare psychopath who has recognized that he suffers from his disorder without being told so, and so he can continue murdering people without getting caught, he's trying his best to appear as a normal person, with some success as time goes on, as we can see when he's taken out his "quote family" on a hunting trip where he manages to appear as a kind and gentle tour guide. But no matter how hard he tries, Jack can't escape the traits he has that are a symptom of his disorder, many of which are shown to us by Jack himself on the Q cards I mentioned in the beginning of this video. Let's take a look at these traits now, and how they manifest when Jack is committing his crimes, and we will do so in groups, as several of them overlap with or are derived from one another.

The first group consists of egotism, narcissism, and verbal superiority. As a serial killer with a sense of divine protection and artistic superiority, Jack has an overinflated ego, and it makes itself apparent with the aforementioned beliefs in himself, but also in his want and disregard of the suffering of others and the torment that he subjects them to. And we can also see it when he claims that he's a gentleman for adhering to proper hunting rules when he kills people. Lacking empathy, everything that Jack does is centered around himself and the so-called art he creates by using his victims, rationalizing that he's a divine artist and his victims should be gracious that Mr. Sophistication has decided to lift them up to the likes of the Mona Lisa. His egotism and narcissism are essentially present in every crime he commits, but his verbal superiority appears much more often, namely when he's speaking with Verge, when he's speaking to the woman after he murders her children, when he's demeaning that woman, when he's demeaning the woman he had a relationship with, and finally, when he's berating the owner of the gun store for selling him the incorrect ammunition. Regardless, Jack is an inherently self-centered person, and these traits are part of the reason why he's able to commit these murders without feeling any remorse.

The next set of traits are vulgarity, rudeness, mood swings, irrationality, impulsiveness, and verbal superiority again, as all of these traits are readily apparent in the way Jack conducts himself during conversation. His vulgarity and rudeness are on full display in the situation in the previous group, but they mostly come out when Jack has a mood swing, like after he's led inside by the second woman, and when he's speaking to the police officer after he murders her. However, the most prominent display of all three is shown to us when he's interacting with his lover, and he abuses her simply for the sake of abusing her by giving her the name "Simple" and calling her worthless and stupid, deriving a sadistic pleasure from abusing people emotionally, just as he does from abusing them physically.

His irrationality is also tied to his mood swings and his impulsiveness, as well as when Jack becomes enraged, falls prey to his OCD, experiences a rush of desire, or has an attachment to something. His irrationality and impulsiveness manifest in the form of things like his continuous use of a very identifiable red van, going back and cleaning the second woman's apartment several times over after he's murdered her because of his compulsion, dragging her body behind his car and leaving a trail of blood leading to his freezer, risking the transportation of a corpse back to the scene of a crime to take more photos of it, running over an old lady in the middle of the road, screaming at a store clerk who sold him the wrong item, and murdering a man who just called the police to his house, then subsequently murdering the cop, stealing his car, and leaving the siren on after he arrives at his freezer. If, as Verge points out, the police in Jack's area weren't so incompetent, he probably would have gotten caught far sooner than he did. But at the very least, we can be thankful that Jack's impulsiveness and irrationality only worsened over time, and he would eventually be caught because of them.

However, it's interesting to take note of Verge's observation that perhaps Jack was trying to get caught in these moments, as it makes sense that someone so self-centered as Mr. Sophistication would eventually like to see that his so-called art be recognized and properly attributed to him.

Now, the last group is comprised of his intelligence, which we've already covered quite a bit, his talents as a manipulator, and two things that we've glossed over so far that isn't displayed on a Q card: his morbid curiosity and sadism. Maybe because he seems so strange and harmless, Jack is able to pass as an incompetent and gentle man who just needs a break. Yeah, he gets a little emotional at points, and he's a tad stern at others, but overall, he seems to get by with conning people into believing he's a genuine person simply by appearing so mundane and awkward. And of course, practicing the emotions of a normal human being helps in this regard as well. This facade is what enables Jack to convince people to let him come inside their homes, persuade a police officer that he has no ill intentions, create relationships, and con a family into coming on a hunting trip with him. And to pull all this off successfully does require a certain amount of intelligence and skill in manipulation.

His sadism and morbid curiosity, however, require neither. Rather, they are, at the same time, the fuel and the byproduct of everything he does, and the satisfaction he gets by satisfying both is his reward for the success he achieves by using all the tools available to him. And that's ultimately what Jack is looking to get out of everything he's doing: satisfaction of his morbid curiosity and pleasure through that satisfaction, and the emotional release he achieves upon killing someone, as well as from emotionally, physically, and psychologically abusing his victims. But most of all, is the pleasure of creating art by using the divinity that is the darker side of God manifested from Jack's fingertips, the ultimate way to satisfy both his sadism and curiosity.

It's interesting to note that Jack's evolution into a serial killer essentially derailed all the aspects of his life that he had worked towards previously. Jack had always desired to build a home of his own, to design the most pristine dwelling he could think of that he could be comfortable in for the rest of his days, an expression of his artistic genius that would stand as a paragon of his craft for perhaps hundreds or thousands of years. But as Jack gave into his bestial side, everything else in his life became clouded by his increasing need to create art with the materials that he believes have a will of their own, and those materials include the people that entered his sights and begged him to transform them into something greater, art that's in the same category as the tiger bringing down the lamb with its mighty and majestic form. So, Jack's ambition to create this home increasingly fell to the wayside, as the materials he worked with never seemed to convey the divinity that he envisioned it would.

Well, that is until, in his final moments, the divine spoke to him once more in the form of his soon-to-be guide through hell, Verge. And with Verge's input, everything Jack had been working towards through his murderous artistic endeavors came to a glorious conclusion, and thus, "The House That Jack Built" became a reality, a horrifying monument to his insane views on the nature of art and the vision he'd labored so long to bring to life, an icon that could compete with the so-called genocidal art of great icons like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and many more, bringing to life his idea that heaven and hell are one and the same. In the end, Jack enters this house of his own making, a hell of his own creation, and descends to the depths with his guide, trying in vain, once he reaches the lower recesses of hell, to lift himself up to a heaven he doesn't deserve, forever condemned to lament the life of carnage and terror that he lived, a life he exchanged for one of love, prosperity, and happiness.

And at this end, who was Jack? Our Mr. Sophistication? He was a man with ASPD who grew up in an isolated setting that allowed his disorder to flourish. A man who lived in a time where forensics were primitive and surveillance nearly non-existent, developing his substantial intelligence through higher education. The seeds of the serial killer that Jack would become that were planted in his youth were cultivated into brilliant blossoms as he aged, allowing Jack to slowly shed the persona of normality that he had created over time to become his true self: the diabolical, sadistic, selfish, and cruel Mr. Sophistication. An artist at heart, Jack would go on to push the limit of art itself, challenging the world to view his experimentation with morbidity as art that's inherent in every human being that had been pushed down and tamed, an art that comes from the divine that has been repressed by the ignorant hand of mankind.

The amount of people that died at the hands of Jack is unknown, and that number is likely quite high. And the amount of suffering that emanated from the perverted mind of this terrifying man is sickening to think about. Jack may have viewed himself as an innovator, a man who dared to tread where few others had, a misunderstood artist. But in reality, he was nothing more than a man so thoroughly without empathy that caused the death, suffering, and strife of countless innocent people for the sake of his own twisted view of what art can and should be, a man who is utterly lost in the shadowy grasp of evil.

Thank you all for tuning in to this episode of Analyzing Evil, and I hope you've enjoyed it. What are your thoughts on Jack? Did I miss anything? Let me know down below, and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode. While you're at it, if you like this video, hit that thumbs up button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't already. A big thank you to all of my subscribers and to my patrons, and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now. Join the channel's Discord server and Reddit to interact with myself and the community, and follow me on the social media platforms listed below to keep up with the channel. And lastly, if you or anyone you know are having thoughts of harming yourself or others, I ask that you seek out help, as violence toward yourself or others is never the answer. If you do need help, I'll put some useful links in the description that you can use to find it. As always, thanks for watching, and I'll be seeing you soon.