Revival

Charles Jacobs is the antagonist of Revival. He is introduced as a charismatic young Methodist minister with a passion for science—electrical engineering in particular. Jacobs is married to a woman named Patsy, with whom he has one child, Morris. After spending three years in the Harlow community, he destroys their trust in him by delivering what is eventually called the “Terrible Sermon,” an invective against the fraudulence of organized religion inspired by his family’s tragic deaths in a fatal car accident.

These deaths define the later course of Jacobs’s life, as Jacobs devotes himself to discovering what became of Patsy and Morris after their deaths. Though he abandons religion, he remains convinced that their souls live on in another plane of existence. Through his studies, he becomes aware of a world beyond life. He devotes himself to catching a glimpse of this other world using a secret form of electricity. King thus uses Jacobs to show The Dynamics of Science and Faith. Jacobs replaces his love for the Christian god with a devotion to electricity. With his newfound faith, Jacobs is every bit as exploitative as the religious hucksters he decries, viewing other people as a means to his ends. He is contemptuous of those who come to him for help, as he cannot reconcile their desire to escape their pain with his own lifelong grief and suffering. Jacobs weaves showmanship into his ministry, employing props to convince his congregation that his miracles are real even as he uses his congregation as test subjects and takes their money to fund his research.

Jamie describes Jacobs as his “fifth business” or his nemesis, but they have a complex relationship that is initially marked by love. Jamie views him as a friend and mentor in his early life but starts to see the flaws in his character over time. Jacobs and Jamie are also mirrors of one another. Like Jamie, Jacobs goes through a series of reinventions. After losing his job as the minister of Harlow, Jacobs becomes a showman selling Portraits in Lightning. Hugh Yates later reveals that around this time, Jacobs also established himself as the purveyor of an electronics shop. Jacobs later reinvents himself as a healing pastor, building a public persona through his television appearances and his revival tour. Jacobs finally retires from public life when he is able to fund his final experiment.

Jacobs is a cautionary tale about the dangers of curiosity and obsession. Rather than see the aftereffects of his cures as a warning that he is approaching something dangerous, he allows his grief and curiosity to drive him onward. When he discovers the truth about his family’s suffering in the afterlife, he dies in a state of shock.

Mother is the secondary antagonist of Revival. She is described as an otherworldy entity who holds dominion over the world beyond life. She is first alluded to in Jamie’s dream in Chapter 11. Astrid later refers to Mother during her electrical treatment, describing her as the one who waits for Jacobs but “not the one [he] want[s]” (374). Despite this warning, Jacobs’s desire to see the world beyond life is so strong that he goes ahead with his last experiment.

During the revival of Mary Fay in Chapter 13, it is implied that Mother uses Mary Fay’s corpse as a conduit to enter the world of the living. Jamie catches Mother’s attention when he defiantly screams, “No!”, at the sight of the afterlife. Mother tears a hole in the sky to seek him out, revealing herself partially as a large furry leg. At the end of the leg is a claw covered in human faces. When Jamie breaks out of Mary Fay’s grasp, a claw attempts to reach through the mouth of Mary Fay, and Patsy and Morrie Jacobs appear on this claw.

Mother’s intentions are never made clear to the reader. In one sense, this makes her a flat character; however, it also contributes to the cosmic horror she embodies, as this genre of horror typically relies on the reader not being able to understand its monsters’ intentions or designs. Mother’s motivations are deliberately opaque, the implication being that they are fundamentally alien to (and likely uninterested in) human experience.