Diary.11: Jack (Protagonist) - A Tragic Genetically Engineered Puppet

Introduction: The One Devoid of “Choice” Fallen into the Deep Sea and the Paradox of Objectivism

In 1960, a passenger plane crashed into the gloomy expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. As flames and black smoke scorched the night sky and debris sank beneath the waves, a man thrown into the sea swam to a towering, isolated lighthouse. His name is Jack. He is the protagonist who will destroy “The Great Chain” laid down by Andrew Ryan, the founder of the underwater city of Rapture, and deliver the final blow to this dystopia of madness and decadence. However, his stepping into this underwater mausoleum was by no means a coincidence, nor was it divine guidance.

In Rapture, a city founded on Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and Rational Egoism, where the absolute right to self-determination—“A man chooses”—is held as the supreme value, the existence of Jack is the embodiment of the most abominable paradox. This is because he was created as “a slave” who has never chosen anything for himself.

In this article, based on the historical records of Rapture, we will thoroughly unravel the “inside” of the individual known as Jack—from the formation of his flesh and blood, to the mental cage based on Behaviorism, and the sorrowful reality brought about by genetic manipulation. How was a single human being transformed into a “perfect assassination weapon” in the deep sea, where the paranoia of the 1950s, swirling with Cold War suspicion, intersects with science unshackled by ethics? While distinguishing between the “facts” explicitly shown by audio diaries and environmental evidence left in the game and the ideological context hidden behind them, we will logically elucidate the deep psychology and philosophy of Jack’s existence.

1. The Usurpation of Flesh and Blood and the Truth of His Birth

1.2 The Fetus as “Capital” and the Limits of Objectivism

Jack’s tragedy was promised even before he let out his first cry, even before his cells began to divide. His parents are Andrew Ryan, the absolute ruler of Rapture, and Jasmine Jolene, a dancer at “Eve’s Garden,” a strip club in the entertainment district of Fort Frolic.

【Fact】 According to the in-game audio diary “Pregnancy” and related records, when Jolene became pregnant with Ryan’s child, she sold the fetus (fertilized egg) to Brigid Tenenbaum and Dr. Yi Suchong. The one who orchestrated this transaction behind the scenes and provided the funds was Frank Fontaine, Ryan’s political rival and the ruler of the underworld. Upon learning the truth, an enraged Ryan visited Eve’s Garden and brutally murdered Jolene.

【Analysis】 What these facts indicate is the ultimate consequence and the darkest shadow of the “perfect free market” that Rapture advocates. In a market economy devoid of all moral and religious regulations, even a fetus, the very sprout of life, is reduced to a mere “tradable resource (capital).” The Objectivist ideology of “everything for one’s own self-interest” that Ryan himself created gave rise to the irony of degrading his own flesh and blood into an object of trade on the black market.

Jack was not the crystallization of love, but an industrial product ordered amidst extremely cold-hearted economic activities as a “biological key” to seize control of the city. The fact that he was commodified at the fetal stage can be said to be the first step in the loss of his mental and physical right to self-determination, which will be discussed later.

2. The Usurpation of the Body - The Madness of Eugenics and the Rapid Growth Process

Bought as a fetus, Jack was treated as “Lot 111” under the management of Dr. Suchong, and subjected to aberrant genetic manipulation using ADAM and Plasmid technology.

2.1 The Drastic Shortening of Biological Time and the Deprivation of Identity

【Fact】 Dr. Suchong’s audio diary “Baby Status,” found in Rapture Central Control, records astonishing facts regarding Jack’s physical growth.

As this record shows, Jack was forcibly grown into a body equivalent to a 19-year-old in just one year after birth. Although his physical age appears to be that of a robust young man in his 20s or 30s at the time of his return to Rapture in 1960, records stating he was born in 1956 and backward calculations from the timeline reveal that his true “chronological age” is merely 2 to 4 years old.

【Analysis】 Here, the violence of unethical body modification, which can be called the extreme of Eugenics, is laid bare. The forced acceleration of cell division using ADAM completely deprived Jack of “childhood,” a time indispensable for the formation of human identity. While his body is that of an adult optimized for combat and sabotage, his inner self remains empty, making him nothing more than a rapidly constructed vessel.

The fact that he does not utter a single word throughout the main game (being an extremely silent protagonist) can be interpreted as implicitly indicating the biological trauma that he is “an infant who was not given the time to spontaneously form language and thought,” going beyond a mere meta-game expression (a technique to enhance player immersion). Human mental maturation requires irreversible time and interaction with others, but Jack is an extremely distorted existence for whom this was bypassed by the chemical substance known as ADAM.

3. The Usurpation of the Mind - Behaviorism and “Would you kindly”

Even more cruel than the rapid growth of his body is the brainwashing and mind control programming inflicted upon Jack’s mind. What Fontaine sought was not merely a soldier with Ryan’s blood, but “a puppet with no free will who would absolutely never betray him.”

3.1 Conditioned Absolute Obedience and the Obliteration of the Ego

【Fact】 Jack’s mind was conditioned to be forced into complete obedience by a specific audio trigger. That very code is “Would you kindly.” The abominable evidence demonstrating the perfection of this brainwashing is Dr. Suchong’s audio diary “Mind Control Test.” In the recording, a young voice (Jack) is petting a puppy he was given. However, when ordered by Dr. Suchong to “break that dog’s neck,” Jack cries and refuses. The moment Dr. Suchong rephrases it to “Break that puppy’s neck — Would you kindly…”, accompanied by the sound of snapping bones, Jack is forced to execute the command.

Furthermore, as unused audio in the game files, there is another version of the test recording where Jack is made to put his own hands into a fire, suggesting that even the desire for self-preservation is overridden by the trigger phrase.

【Analysis】 This brainwashing process strongly reflects the horrors of the top-secret brainwashing experiment “Project MK-Ultra” conducted by the US CIA during the Cold War in the 1950s, as well as Behaviorism, typified by Pavlov’s dogs. In Objectivism, what governs human reason is “choice based on one’s own mental imagery.” However, Dr. Suchong bypassed the reason of the cerebral cortex and performed “imprinting,” writing commands directly into the unconscious neural circuits. When this trigger phrase is uttered, Jack’s consciousness loses control over his own body, degrading into an “automaton” that merely responds automatically to external input signals. This is nothing less than a metaphysical murder—severing the “ego” from a human being. The silence at the moment he broke the puppy’s neck does not merely signify the death of the dog, but records the decisive moment when the free will of the individual known as Jack was completely destroyed.

4. Code and Restraint - The Multiple Curses Indicated by the Chain Tattoos on Both Wrists

The most striking of Jack’s physical features are the “chain” tattoos inked on both of his wrists. These chains, which the player constantly sees from a first-person perspective, are not mere decorations, but an extremely important symbol that embodies Jack’s raison d’être and the ideological contradictions of Rapture.

4.1 The Dual Metaphor of the Tattoos

【Fact】 Tattoos of three thick, linked chain rings are engraved on each of Jack’s wrists. These tattoos were already present when he became self-aware, and while he himself might have perceived them as a gift from his “parents” in his false memories or as having some religious significance, their true origin is a brand engraved during his manufacturing process (childhood) in Rapture. As the game progresses, Jack’s genetic code is rewritten every time he uses a Plasmid, but only the chain tattoos on his wrists remain as physical imprints.

【Analysis】 These chain tattoos function as a perfect “double irony” against the ideology of Rapture.

First, it literally means a “slave’s leash.” It is proof that he is a collared property, stripped of his physical and mental freedom by Fontaine. It is like a barcode carved in place of a serial number, visually solidifying the fact that he possesses no right to self-determination.

Second, these chains are a metaphor for “The Great Chain” advocated by Andrew Ryan. Ryan preached that “the selfish pursuits of all people are linked by an Invisible Hand, becoming a great chain that drives society as a whole forward.” However, ironically, that chain of noble ideology functioned as a slave’s chain to bind his own son and assassinate himself. Jack is a walking monument, with the process of Ryan’s philosophy causing self-contradiction and collapsing engraved into his very flesh. Every time Jack looks at his own hands, he is unconsciously made to ruminate on the fact that “he is a slave chained to the very bottom of Ryan’s chain.”

5. Incubation and Activation - The Causality of False Memories and the Hijacking

In 1958, just before Fontaine faked his own death, went underground, and was reborn as “Atlas,” the completed Jack was put on a Bathysphere and secretly sent out to the surface world (surface society).

5.1 Forged Identity

【Fact】 To live a life on the surface, memories of a “fictional family (such as memories with his parents on a farm)” were implanted in Jack’s brain, and he was given a forged passport and identification cards. Jack lived on the surface as a sleeper agent, completely believing himself to be an ordinary young man born and raised quite normally. His passport and other documents were all forged, and even the contents of his wallet were calculated props.

5.2 The Time of Activation: Tragedy Over the Atlantic

【Fact】 In 1960, aboard a passenger plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean, Jack opens a box containing a “gift.” The letter attached to it read as follows: “Would you kindly not open until…” Inside the box was a revolver. Awakened from his suggestion (or having completely lost his sense of self) by the trigger phrase, Jack forced his way into the cockpit with the handgun, hijacked the plane with his own hands, and crashed it precisely at the coordinates of the lighthouse, the entrance to Rapture.

【Analysis】 This crash signifies the complete collapse of Jack’s identity. The nostalgia of a “gift from his parents” that he felt on the plane, and the attachment to his own upbringing, were nothing more than artificial hallucinations created solely to induce action. When the sleeper agent is activated, the “human and warm memories” within him transform into a “detonator” to send him to his death.

The fact that his own past, his love for his family, and his purpose in life—all of it was a fiction—is the true psychological horror borne by the existence known as Jack. The moment when the fundamental conviction of “I am me” is ruthlessly shattered by a single letter coldly thrusts before us just how fragile a foundation the human ego is built upon.

6. The Ultimate Paradox - Genetic Authentication and the Bloodline of Rapture

Why did Fontaine need to spend so much time and money to raise a baby with Ryan’s blood? It was to exploit the contradiction of “genetic determinism” inherent in Rapture’s systems.

6.1 Ryan’s Paranoia and the Fall of the Security System

【Fact】 As the civil war in Rapture intensified, Ryan, tormented by suspicion, locked the city’s major infrastructure to respond only to his own “genetic code (DNA).” The prime examples of this are the city’s transportation network, the “Bathysphere” network, and the miraculous device that resurrects the dead, the “Vita-Chamber.” Dr. Suchong’s audio diary “The Vita Chamber” records that “Ryan gave permission to tune it only to his own genetic frequency for testing purposes.” Because Jack is Ryan’s direct offspring, he could pass through this biometric security with a complete free pass. The automated defense systems were also designed not to take lethal elimination actions against him, as they detected the DNA of a relative.

【Analysis】 Objectivism was originally supposed to aim for “a world where only individual ability and effort are evaluated, regardless of origin or bloodline.” However, Ryan, clinging to the maintenance of power, ultimately constructed the city’s defense lines using his own “bloodline (DNA),” the most pre-modern “privileged class element.” Fontaine (Atlas) ruthlessly exploited this contradiction. By using Jack, who is of Ryan’s bloodline, he utilized the absolute defense system Ryan built to protect himself as an express ticket to plunge a blade into Ryan’s heart instead. Jack’s genetics were a “master key” to the city of Rapture, and at the same time, an invisible chain that cursed him and destined him to murder his biological father.

7. Rebellion and Reclamation of the Body - Code Yellow and “Lot 192”

When Ryan dies and Atlas reveals his true identity (Fontaine), Jack’s “role as an assassin” ends. However, to dispose of a tool that is no longer needed, Fontaine activates a further curse.

7.1 The Physiological Death Sentence “Code Yellow”

【Fact】 Fontaine activates the second failsafe embedded in Jack’s body, “Code Yellow.” This is a slow-acting lethal command that acts directly on Jack’s cranial nerves, forcibly stopping his own heartbeat. Against Jack, who had the linguistic brainwashing of “Would you kindly” partially broken with the help of Brigid Tenenbaum, purely physiological violence now strikes. Fontaine declares over the radio, “I just told your brain to tell your heart to stop beating,” and Jack’s vision blurs as he gradually loses his strength.

7.2 The Antidote “Lot 192” and the Reconstruction of the Self

【Fact】 To escape Code Yellow and gain true freedom, what Jack had to seek out was the antidote to mind control, “Lot 192.” “Dr. Suchong’s Free Clinic” on the second floor of Artemis Suites in Apollo Square was a front for using the poor as test subjects, and a massive experimental facility spread out in the back. There, beside gruesome blood trails and the corpse of Dr. Suchong, pinned to a desk by a Big Daddy’s drill, Jack discovers and consumes the first dose of Lot 192.

However, the consumption of Lot 192 was accompanied by severe side effects. This drug, referred to in the game’s system files as “Lysergic Acid” (the main component of LSD), fundamentally rewrites Jack’s cellular structure and Plasmid system.

【Analysis】 This process is a gruesome metaphor for “Deprogramming,” breaking free from a state of brainwashing. The experience of temporarily losing complete control of one’s own body (control of Plasmids) as the price for regaining mental freedom demonstrates just how agonizing the reconstruction of the ego is.

Jack had been someone’s property ever since he was born. Objectively speaking, he was nothing more than a “means to another’s end.” Through the process of self-collapse and reintegration by Lot 192, he stood on his own two feet for the first time, experiencing the birth pangs to emerge from a “manufactured doll” into a “human who chooses.” The representation of the side effect where color is stripped from the world visually symbolizes the process of the fictional reality peeling away and awakening to the harsh world of truth.

Conclusion: A man chooses, a slave obeys - The Philosophical Consequence of Jack’s Existence

As the final destination of this report, we will summarize what the existence of Jack meant in the history of Rapture.

The core of the story, the confrontation with Andrew Ryan in Rapture Central Control. Ryan completely understood that the assassin standing before him was his son who inherited his genes, and at the same time, an automaton that merely followed Fontaine’s orders. Ryan gives Jack one final lesson while accepting his own death. Jack himself must have shuddered at his own body unconsciously obeying the command, “Stop, would you kindly?” And then, as if to prove his own convictions, Ryan handed Jack a golf club and ordered, “Would you kindly kill me.”

“A man chooses, a slave obeys”

This blood-stained lesson was both a curse and a prayer directed at Jack—a chimera born from the crossbreeding of extreme individualism and unethical science.

Jack is an existence that seems to have boiled down all the dark parts of the “great ideological experiment” that is Rapture. Bought and sold as capital at the fetal stage, his body prematurely matured through eugenic means, his free will stripped away by behaviorist brainwashing, and ultimately utilized as a biological key known as genetics. He was designed as the ultimate altruistic existence (a tool that moves solely for the will of others) possessing no “self” whatsoever. That is the ultimate form of “individual sacrifice,” which Ayn Rand’s philosophy despises the most.

However, Jack’s story did not end “as a slave.” By breaking the conditioning that had robbed him of his will with Lot 192, he acquires the ability to take action by his own will for the first time. Will he rescue the Little Sisters from the depths of madness, or will he reign as the new tyrant of Rapture? That final decision left to him was a pure “choice of his own,” written neither in his genetic code nor in Dr. Suchong’s programming.

Jack, born as a sorrowful doll with false memories and a manufactured body. His footsteps are a harsh yet majestic proof that no matter how much one’s body and mind are usurped, the single ray of free will that remains at the end is what truly makes a human being human. What the hands with the chain tattoos finally grasped in the darkness of the deep sea is engraved in history solely as the result of what he himself chose.