In Katherine Paterson’s Jacob have I loved, the narrator Sarah Louise has a hard time defining herself as an existing individual. She feels that all people care her sister Caroline more and would like to appreciate Caroline more. So Sarah would even like to be a monster to catch more attention from her parents. Despite the twins’ inborn closeness and intimacy, Sarah is actually trying to achieve her own value of being a human, or in the other words, differentiate from her sister throughout the book.
Sarah starts to question her existence in her family when her grandmother tells stories about the twins’ births. She is born several minutes earlier than Caroline. But all things that their grandmother recalled are about Caroline because she is so delicate and beautiful. Since then, Caroline becomes the pearl of the island. Her sweet voice and singing talent makes her popular in RassIsland’s neighborhood. While people are complimenting Caroline, Sarah, on the contrary, is usually neglected. For example, Sarah proposes to cancel Christmas in the year of Pearl Harbor, but her classmates cannot understand her sad emotions. And the school concert goes anyway. When the grandmother asks Caroline the reason that she does not sing Holy Night, the more complicated song, mother says Betty Jean sings this song well, too. After failing to expect Sarah to contradict momma, Caroline imitates Betty’s voice herself. She performs so well that she ends looking around to seek family’s approval and applause. However, Sarah remains envious and unnoticed by the side. Although the girl has perceived that she lives in that big family, she is not at all recognized by her family members, among her sister, parents, and grandmother alike. As a result, she finds her sister annoying and she even comes up an idea to smack Caroline when that incredibly talented girl is showing off her talents, which make Sarah’s radiance fade.
After Sarah finds a hard time defining herself within her family, she starts to reach out to shine in the outside world. The first step she takes is to write lyrics for cash. She sends her lyrics to New York, confident, wishing to win the money prize. Later, she checks with the daily ferry, which transports mails from mainland with hope, every day. Yet when she finally gets the letter, she is coaxed to send twenty-five dollars to that organization to “make her lyrics popular” instead of having money come in.
The inner conflict between Sarah and Caroline does not stop on the road where Sarah explores her own identity. Captain, Call, and Sarah have difficulties disposing the wild and half-starved cats of Auntie Braxton when she is in hospital. Caroline, nonetheless, cleverly thinks of paregoric, and uses her popularity in the island to distribute the cats before long. Call and the Captain have been familiar with Sarah after they work together in the afternoon, however, Caroline quickly replaces Sarah by laughing, celebrating together after they successfully send out the cats. The lonely girl, again, feels vague of who she is, and what she is born for.
The twins’ parents’ have established perspectives of each one’s importance, while Sarah and Caroline themselves are competing with each other. The failure of Sarah gradually makes her hard to be noticed by the crowd. Thankfully, that she has tried to put values on her life by many other ways. Yet still, she is hard to find her place in the world where she lives in.
