Violence, family, and self-destruction are the primary social issues in Hey Jack! The personal and indiscriminate violence manifested within and among families, communities, and societies (i.e. war) are familiar components of many of Hannah's works.

Although the narrator is older and feels wiser, during times of excitement and stress he has frequent flashbacks to Chosin Reservoir in Korea where "man [was] shooting at what was not himself."

Frequently, the violence is self-inflicted by family members who commit suicide or who are already dead because of addictive behaviors. Delia, drug addict and daughter of a hypochondriacal and now dead professor, is described as "dressed like a violent queen skeleton of the Nile, dying and mysterious," during a Ritalin binge in the Peabody Hotel. Jack's daughter, Alice, is a school teacher who finally hits adolescence at forty. She becomes addicted to cocaine and Ronnie Foot. In a...