I always imagine myself in stories, and inevitably end up comparing my life to the story. For some reason, I have no trouble imagining myself in Middle-earth, or enduring horrible, recurring unfortunate events. But, as I try to imagine myself sitting in Room, knowing only Dresser, Ma, Bed Wall, etc, I get stuck. This is one situation where, no matter how hard I try, there is no way I could ever imagine any situation like Jack and Ma's. My world, and Room, which is Jack's world, are just too different from each other
11 by 11 feet. That's a big enough space for a single 17-year-old girl who only uses her room for the basics: sleeping, studying, getting dressed, rotting away in front of a laptop screen, etc. However, an 11 by 11 space is no where near big enough for a (physically and emotional) growing 5-year-old boy and his mother. And it's not just that the room's size that matters; it's the room itself and what it represents and doesn't allow.
I can't even begin to imagine my world reduced to just my room, Yeah, maybe I could do some simulation/experiment thing and lock myself in my room. And I guess then I would be feeling what Ma is feeling. I would have the knowledge that there is a world out there, an amazing, endless world that's never-ending. However, I would never be able to understand what Jack feels. Locking myself in my room forever would do nothing to help me imagine Jack's very specific situation. Only one Duvet? no no no, I know there are hundreds of thousands of duvets that exist. Outer Space exists outside of Room. Wait, no, that's not right. A front porch and a front yard and a whole world exits outside of my room. Because I have a prior sense of what exists outside my room, I would be able to imagine how Ma feels. But imagining Jack's situation...
It's so heartbreaking for me to think of Jack, living how he is. To me, his situation seems extremely unfortunate and limited. However I do have to remind myself that Jack is happy and content in Room. But then, there's another aspect that I could not imagine myself in: being content in a space that I see as constricting.
I've definitely never read a book before with a situation as unique and troubling as Jack's. Trying to put this into words is hard, so forgive me if I keep going in circles and am not connecting ideas. But for some reason, I just can not, for the life of me, imagine myself thinking of the world in Jack's perspective. It's like I get this weird odd feeling whenever I try and think of living like Jack. (Wow this is getting confusing I'm sorry. basically I'm just trying to say Room is intense and creates a situation that is so amazingly difficult and specific that I'm kind of mind blown and... not confused but surprised? that such a situation exists? because it seems impossible to me, because I've never lived in a 11x11 ft Room for my whole life? I think I'm going to end this post here because I'm never going to stop rambling and I might say things over and over [I already have] and this whole post is just me being slightly amazed and troubled by Room [but mostly just Jack]).
I think this kind of disbelief is pretty common as a response to a novel like this (or to a news story like this)--similar to stories of people on death row or in solitary confinement, or suffering torture, for crimes they didn't commit, the reader can't help but imagine how *we* might hold up under such circumstances. (We should keep this in mind whenever we are inclined to criticize one of Ma's decisions, or ask why she doesn't try something else to try to escape . . .)
ReplyDeleteBut Jack is an interesting case. In some ways, it's easier for us to relate to Ma--I know that for me, as a parent, I'm constantly recognizing familiar parent-kid dynamics being taken to a twisted extreme in this context. Because Ma is the one who is aware that this is far from right, that Room is *not* "the world," and that she's not only being horrifically abused but that she's also confined from participation in that world. Jack, however, is innocent when we first meet him--like the sleeping Perseus in the epigraph, he is unaware of the great troubles that afflict his mother's mind while he sleeps. Donoghue seems to suggest that Jack could live his whole life in Room and not know the difference--his active mind will find plenty to engage it even in this confined space, as he literally doesn't know any differently.
But as we've discussed, that is not a sustainable fiction, and now that Jack is aware of "Outside," his perspective on Room starts changing as well. There's a profound shift of consciousness entailed in him moving from seeing it as "Room" to seeing it as "a room."
I also was pretty perturbed by this book as well. I seriously can't imagine being Ma and being abducted at a young age and confined for 7 years, with nothing to do about it.While Jack's life is "okay" without Nick in Room, being Ma in this situation seems horrifying. I would be constantly thinking about life before Room. Yet I think readers can't ignore the fact that kidnapping and abduction does happen in real life.
ReplyDeleteIt's really sad to think that Room was at one point Jack's entire world and that he was happy in it. It's even sadder to imagine Ma's life in Room. She has already experienced some life in the real world and knows what she's missing out on to some extent. Not only was she taken away from her life, friends, and family without a choice, but she had to deal with Old Nick in order to survive which is really awful as well. It also makes me sad to see how long and hard she's tried to escape without success, but now that Ma and Jack have successfully escaped, I wonder how well they both will adapt to this larger world after living in Room for so long.
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