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Originally Posted by fantasyfan
One of the great things about Catlady’s points is that they make me think.
I’m not completely happy with the idea of the “inevitable prophecy” as a way of handling the problem of why Jack leaves the toddler to last. I think that Jack’s own personality has something to do with it. He regards murder as a kind of art form and I believe that in his pride he decides to start with the parents first because they are the source. He then goes to the daughter and finally to the son. Thus, I think he likes the inverse progression of murder as aesthetically satisfying.
There are other examples of Jack’s sense of pride—a kind of hubris that destroys him in the end. We see it especially in that final scene where Bod kneels on the altar to be the sacrifice that Jack believes will lead to his triumph.
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We know that he was supposed to kill them all (from the other Jack's conversation), so I'm sure he did it in that order since the baby was the one least likely to get away if for some reason a noise or alarm was raised. Start with the ones that are most likely to cause issues (parents) then the one who is more mobile (older sister) then the baby. Does he really need more justification?
As for the prophecy. I took this line
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"We had people casting nativities before London was a village, we had your family in our sights before New Amsterdam became New York."
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less literally. I took it to mean that they knew that there was a someone out there so they were working to find them this whole time. Not that they always knew specifically who the family from the prophecy was. Or, if they did, they had a lot of branches to prune before they got to this one.