Jacksonville

Jacksonville is the city Rob and his father leave after Caroline’s funeral, a place associated with both the family’s bereavement and the treatment Rob later says he is applying to his leg rash. Its brief appearances establish the loss and displacement that shape Rob’s life in Lister, while linking his earlier home to the school’s decision to keep him away temporarily.

Departure After the Funeral

Six months before the opening events, Rob and his father moved from Jacksonville to Lister after the funeral. The move marks a rupture in their lives: Rob has not cried since the day of the funeral, when his father slapped him to stop his crying and told him that crying could not bring Caroline back. Jacksonville is thus present not through an extended description of the city, but through the departure that leaves the two of them living elsewhere with grief unspoken.

Rob’s memory of packing to leave Jacksonville gives shape to his method of emotional self-protection. He imagines his feelings crammed into an overfull suitcase, then sits on it and locks it shut. The image recalls the actual suitcase he packed after the funeral while turning the move into a lasting metaphor for his effort to suppress what he feels. In the present, he tries to keep that imagined case closed by placing the tiger on top of it.

Medicine and the School’s Decision

Jacksonville also enters the story through Rob’s leg treatment. When Mr. Phelmer questions him about the medicine, Rob confirms that he has been using the ointment given to him by a doctor in Jacksonville. Mr. Phelmer raises parents’ concern that Rob’s condition might be contagious, then proposes that he stay home for a few days so the medicine can take effect and his legs can clear up.

The reference connects Jacksonville to a practical consequence in Rob’s life in Lister: his earlier medical care becomes part of the school’s explanation for sending him home temporarily. Together, the two references make the city a point of origin for both the family’s bereavement and the treatment of Rob’s rash, although the evidence gives no further description of Jacksonville itself.