Throughout Niel Gaiman’s “Don’t ask Jack” there are several different meanings of what the jack-in-the-box stands for. On the surface of the text the toy is just a toy that the children don’t like and can’t get away from. However, there is also a central message that Gaiman is pointing at with several different interpretations of the jack-in-the-box and how it resembles the children’s lives. From when the children fear the toy to when they never want to go into or see their childhood home again is all given explanation through the use of the Jack-in-the-box. The greater meaning of the box throughout the text stands for how the box resembled the childhood that the children had and still resembles the hatred for the house they grew up in and their childhood. 

When the Jack-in-the-box is first used as a symbol to what the overall meaning of the piece comes in the very beginning of the story when the author is describing where the          jack-in-the-box is and what it looks like. Gaiman illustrates this when he says, “It was a box, carved and painted in gold and red. It was undoubtedly attractive and, or so the grown-ups maintained, quite valuable-perhaps even an antique.” This quote by Gaiman shows that the box is a symbol of something unattractive and undesired and yet the box is still there and no one has removed it. Also this section of the text shows how it is the children’s parents that keep the toy around because they believe is has some value and that it is the parents that cause their children to be unhappy by keeping what they dislike around them at all times. The use of the box in this case represents the children and how they grew up in a place that they considered to be their undesirable and ugly box that was controlled by their parents. This is related to the second instance of the use of the Jack-in-the-box when the author says that the children that lived in the home thought that the box held an evil wizard and that it was like Pandora’s box. While the children say that the toy is Pandora’s box they also state that Jack is a guardian inside the box that is keeping the evil wizard, the children believe to be inside, contained and will not let the wizard out. In this case Jack is what is protecting the children form what is inside the box just as someone is projecting them from the wizard inside their home. With this use of the jack-in-the-box it shows how the children viewed their home just as the box that kept the evil wizard in it. The significance of this is that it shows again how the jack-in-the-box resembles the life that the children had when they were little and how one of their parents was the wizard while the other was their guardian. While the symbol does not give specifics at this point to what the children went through the symbol of the jack-in-the-box gives a very ominous feeling throughout the passage for how the children were treaded. 

When the story continues the author describes what has happened to the children throughout their lives and where they are when they are older and no longer live at the house. One very important aspect of what happens when the children grow up is that none of them ever want to go back to their childhood home. Gaiman exemplifies this when he says, “the other children, who had once been girls and now were women, declined, each and every one, to return to the house in which they had grown up” (Gaiman 3). This is another sign that what the children went through when they lived in that home was so scarring that it has now caused the children to never want to go back to the house. This is because they would have to face all of the horrible memories that they experienced and it is clear that the children do not want to be remembered of that horrible time in their lives. The jack-in-the-box is still in the home and the author says the jack-in-the-box is going to wait in the house until he is once again found always being there waiting for the children. This shows that the box that holds the horrible wizard is also a representation of how the box and house hold the memories from a childhood that are still waiting to be remembered once again and that while the children can avoid facing these memories they will always be there waiting to be brought up again to remind the children of the life they once had.

The continued use of the jack-in-the-box throughout the text serves as a symbol for what the children experienced in their early years of life. To this day the children cannot get rid of the memories from that time of their life and the jack-in-the-box which was once what the children were afraid of now holds all the memories and fears of the children from the life they lived. The toy was not actually Pandora’s box and did not hold an evil wizard however to the children the box was a symbol for their box, their home, and the evil wizard that lived inside of it with them. The box was only a toy and yet through several different uses of the symbol Gaiman was able to convey a much deeper meaning of the text that can only be seen when taking a much closer look into what the symbol of the jack-in-the-box means.  
