American actress, Idina Menzel, once said, “You get to relive your childhood when you have a baby and you see these toys and these books you read when you were little - the innocence that you are able to maintain because you have to find that again in order to connect with your child keeps you in a special state of mind.” When we are young we have this extraordinary amount of innocence that is so fragile and eventually we grow out of, but most of us long to have that innocence back. We do not realize how quickly one can lose that sense of innocence. In Neil Gaiman’s short story, “Don’t Ask Jack”, the author uses diction and imagery to tell a story that brings a Jack-in-the-Box, a children’s toy, to life and to illustrate how innocence can be lost in minutes.

Gaiman uses a great deal of diction throughout his narrative which allows the story to come across much more compelling. He uses an eerie and chilling language when he talks about Jack and how he, “deliberately, intently, would rise from the box and motion to the child to come closer, closer, and smile,” (Gaiman, 72). The toy was created for children and was intended to be something with a fun jingle and a clown that pops out of the box at the end of the song. But this seems to be no ordinary Jack-in-the-Box. He seems to have a personable relationship with each one of the children in the nursery. “And there in the moonlight, he told them each things they could never quite remember, things they were never able entirely to forget,” (Gaiman, 72). When the children grow up and leave the nursery, they never come back, and the nursery shuts down and is almost forgotten. But it suggests that there is almost a deeper connection with the box that they feared as a child that they eventually all come back individually when they are adults. There seems to be a hidden meaning within Jack, he is holding his secrets within his box until children return to the house. This allows the passage to show how powerful something from our childhood can be and the loss of innocence can hold a piece of our hearts for years after.

Imagery is used to show the dreariness and remorse of the once children, now adults’, lives. The reader is provided with a strong sense of imagery throughout the passage which illustrates the creativity, innocence and colorfulness of their childhood and paints a picture in the readers mind of what the nursery really looked like. The narrator describes the Jack-in-the-Box as, “carved and painted in gold and red…quite valuable-perhaps even antique,” (Gaiman, 71). This in depth description shows the reader how intricate and special this box is in the children’s minds. I remember as a child, going to my grandmothers house, and pretending her old jewelry boxes were so fragile and worth a great deal of money. I would dress up in her jewelry and pretend to be a classy, wealthy adult. This just goes to show how pure and incorrupt our minds are as children. Once the children lose their innocence, and their minds are corrupt, the narrator explains how, “the windows of the house were all boarded up, and the doors were all locked with huge iron keys,” (Gaiman, 73). The reader can just imagine how dark and lonely this house is and how horrifying Jack was to these children while they were growing up. None of the women want to return to the place where they had their innocence stolen from them by this toy, Jack. “Years have passed, and the girls are old women, and owls and bats have made their homes in the old attic nursery; rats build their nests among the forgotten toys,” (Gaiman, 73). No one wants to return to this place, they have outgrown their old home. They do not look at the nursery as home and a place they’d like to return to. They want nothing to do with the nursery. It is now just a memory of a place that horrified them as children. Death and age have consumed their lives and the memories of their childhood. The author brings this feeling to life with his in depth description of their emotions and reactions to the attic. 

A woman named Sheniz Janmohamed once said, “The child I was is just one breath away from me.” As children, all we want is to grow up and become independent. Yet once we are finally there, and it’s time for us to become responsible, we would give almost anything to have our innocence back. We don’t realize how quickly life can change and are ever fully prepared for that moment we are supposed to grow up and become independent people. I believe that Gaiman does an incredible job of portraying how quickly one can be forced to grow up.
