He was a cruel man- I think he meant to scare the HELL out of Jack. I don't think he would have killed him, because I think if he was going to kill Leary's kids he would have killed Dylan first. I think Norman was so consumed by hatred (it's implied that Jack's mother was Jewish (his father I don't think is- Leary is an Irish name, not Jewish), however I always thought Jack and Dylan were half-Jewish and Norman (who was a neo-nazi) was tormenting them in part because of that. (The image of Jack's deceased mother in the photo and the look of her in his flashbacks, well, she had stereotypically "Jewish" features).
I think Norman targeted Dylan (and Jack) for two reasons
1) Because Jack's father, a "white" man, slammed the door in Norman's face and made fun of him on Midnight Shriek (Norman say this as a "white brother" turning his back on a fellow "white")
and 2) because Jack and Dylan were "half" Jewish and therefore not worthy of protection. Norman attacked and traumatized them to send a message to John.
I think he wanted to scare the *beep* out of the boys and his hatred of John brought out his sadism.
He would not have molested Jack. For one thing, his interest in Dylan and Jack was never sexually motivated- he targeted them to send a message to John. For another thing, if Norman had been a sexual predator, he almost certainly would have molested Dylan when he took him... but he didn't (according to doctors, Jack's voice-over says this either during or just after the hospital scene).
"We all go a little mad sometimes." - Norman Bates
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danasider
8 years ago
The way it works is if the mother is Jewish, the child is Jewish (not half). So Norman probably just saw them as Jews.
I kind of think Norman wanted to kill Jack. He abandoned the little boy in the woods, but that was a move that could potentially lead to death (a basically defenseless 3 and a half year old all the way in the woods...whether he could have killed him straight up or not, he basically left him for dead).
I imagine Norman would have tried to kill the older brother rather than leave him stranded in some woods, because Jack wasn't as defenseless. The guy broke into a house so I just think his psychotic behavior was escalating from the time he kidnapped the younger brother.
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straw_hat_boy_luffy
8 years ago
That's hardly "the way it works." It may be a belief that many Jewish people hold but speaking as somebody whose mother came from a Jewish family, it is not simply "the way it works."
Given that the guy was a bigoted creep, I imagine it wouldn't have mattered if the father or mother was Jewish. The Nazis didn't just not imprison a boy with a Jewish father and a Christian mother because the mother wasn't the Jewish one. He was a bigot and used any reason to hate. Any Jewish heritage would've made him hate the kids.
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danasider
8 years ago
Actually, one of my good friends is Jewish and he told me as much. I may have oversimplified it (yes, the mother may be Jewish, but she may not choose to pass on the religion to her child, and yes, the child will eventually have to go through a strict regimen of training, and yes, if the father is Jewish, he may choose to have his child converted), but customarily, it is through the mother that the religion is passed.
And most Jews don't say they are 'half-Jewish.' They either are or they aren't. They can spell out their other ancestry, but I can't recall people saying they are half-Jewish unless it was a person that wasn't Jewish describing a Jew who had one non-Jewish parent.
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