Jacob and the flight from the self
Existential analysis
The ontological collapse
In Sartre’s philosophy, the human being is “condemned to freedom.” Bad faith arises when an individual flees the pain of this responsibility and seeks refuge in a fixed role, like the waiter who “plays” at being a waiter in order to avoid being a free human being.
Jacob finds himself in a coerced form of bad faith. He experiences what Sartre calls facticity (the physical and social conditions into which we are thrown) as an invasive force. The voice in his head functions as the ultimate catalyst for bad faith:
Jacob thinks, “Because God said so,” but says what the doctor wants to hear. Both are escape patterns from the fact that he (or his body) has committed an act of violence. This is Evasion of responsibility.
The doctor does not see Jacob as a person, but as a “narrative” (a patient, a case). Jacob accepts this role because it gives him relief. He chooses to become an “object” in the doctor’s file rather than the “subject” who bears the unbearable truth of the possession. This is Objectification.
The most disturbing point in the text is Jacob’s feeling of relief when he lies:
“Relief washed through my chest. A reward, because the system had accepted the answer.”
Here the work shifts from being a story about an external threat to a critique of the human psyche. Sartre argued that bad faith is a lie one tells oneself, in which one is both the liar and the one being lied to. Jacob knows that the story about the fall is false, yet he adopts it so completely that the inner “voice” rewards him. He has achieved a false harmony by allowing the system’s expectations (the doctor’s questions) and the internal compulsion (the voice) to merge.
This illustrates how society—represented by psychiatry and the justice system—not only accepts but demands bad faith. The doctor is not interested in Jacob’s radical, subjective experience of a “voice” or “possession.” He seeks a causal explanation that fits into a box:
“He underlined something. He made a box around something else.”
This is the social manifestation of bad faith: we all agree to a lie because the truth (chaos, the inexplicable, absolute freedom or absolute unfreedom) is too threatening to the structure of society.
Conclusion
If we read Jacob as a parable of modern humanity, the conclusion is even darker than Sartre’s:
The possession is not merely an intensified version of social impulses, but an illustration of a society where technology has usurped the role of morality. Jacob does not find peace by being a part of the machinery; he becomes the machinery. Here, “bad faith” is no longer a human phenomenon, but a system error that has been corrected.
The story thus serves as a correction to existentialism: Sartre believed we always had a choice. Jacob’s Possession suggests that in the face of total technological control, choice no longer exists—there are only questions asked and answers answered.
Read the story—see if you understand:
