Zero Days

“I wasn’t sufficiently into Game of Thrones […] though admittedly if I had been, Arya was the best character.”

This allusion to the Game of Thrones novels, from which Jack identifies Arya Stark as her favorite character, provides early indirect characterization. Arya is a tough, no-nonsense, but physically diminutive young woman who has the ability and willingness to kill, and she poses as a boy to aid in her survival and manipulation of a patriarchal world. Jack admires her, indicating that she would likely want to be like Arya, at least in some ways.

“[I]n this job, doing nothing was a risk in itself. Sometimes you just had to go on your gut—act on impulse.”

Jack relies on her intuition to help her when she must make important or quick decisions. Her claim that doing nothing—and waiting for an answer or path to reveal itself—can be risky is prescient. If she waited for the police to find Gabe’s killer, she’d likely be in jail with no idea what really happened. Jack’s words reflect her experience both before and after Gabe’s murder.

“It was the camaraderie, the sense that it was him and me against the world.”

Jack’s reflection on Gabe helps to characterize their partnership in every sense of the word. They are spouses and business partners, each with a stake in the other’s personal and professional roles. Rather than one having control over the other, like Jeff and Jack, or one depending on the other, they have a reciprocal relationship.