And Abigail, Jack’s wife, does her best to help Ben and Jack make peace with each other (and their conflicting ideologies), using her own love as a bridge.īen and Leslie raised their children in a rabidly anti-religious-specifically, anti-Christian-environment. Jack, Leslie’s dad, isn’t a tyrant: He loved his daughter dearly and wants to protect and care for his grandkids. But there are moments in which we see humanity and love even among capitalists.
Or, at least, they return it most of the time.īecause Ben seems just so practically perfect in every way (from a progressive point of view, of course), Captain Fantastic can be heavy-handed in its praise for him. And she can point to relevant moments in American history where those rights were challenged.īut Ben’s not just a grim, hippie taskmaster: He loves his children deeply, coaxing the best out of his kids even as he assures them how much he appreciates and cares for them. Explain what each individual right means. Little 8-year-old Zaja not only knows what the Bill of Rights is (which already puts her above a healthy chunk of America), she can recite it. The results are astounding: Oldest son Bo has been accepted to the nation’s top universities. The children not only grow their own food, they bone up on advanced calculus and physics. The kids are reading Middlemarch and The Brothers Karamazov, books most kidsdon’t get to until they’re English majors in college. Evenings end with reading time around the campfire-and we’re not talking about Goodnight Moon. Mornings begin with runs up the mountain. Say what you will about Ben’s radical philosophical leanings: The guy takes his role as a father very, very seriously. And introduce his kids to the big, bad world for the very first time. Pack the kids up for a road trip, of course. They have a right to see their mother, he argues. Plus, Ben’s children want to see their mother one last time. She never wanted to be put in a box and stuffed in the ground under a Christian headstone. And if Ben dares show his face at the church funeral in New Mexico, Jack’ll have him arrested.īut here’s the thing: Leslie was a Buddhist. Jack, Leslie’s well-to-do-father, blames Ben for everything-from the suicide on down. When Leslie and Ben ran off to their utopia, they severed a lot of bonds along the way. But Ben’s gut-wrenching loss isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a catalyst for an existential crisis. It’s hard enough to lose someone you love. And one day, when Ben drives into town to call Leslie’s sister to check on her progress, he hears stifled sobs. She left months before to get treatment and didn’t return. After the birth of one of her babies, Leslie developed a chemical imbalance in her brain. And there were no outlets to recharge the thing anyway.īut even paradise can’t be perfect. They’d gather ’round the campfire, not the television. Ben and Leslie wanted to raise their family outside society’s selfish, superficial folds. There were no bogeymen under the bed, but there sure were monsters-capitalists and preachers and Big Pharma representatives-beyond the woods. “Stick it to the man!” the others would chime in. They practically had enough family to field a baseball team if such things mattered. Their settlement in Washington state grew a child at a time: Bo, then Kielyr Vesper, Rellian, Zaja and Nai. The couple left society for a homemade utopia, living season by season through harvest and hunt. Ben and Leslie didn’t much like the world.
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