I've been majorly procrastinating on doing a blog post about Room. I actually considered not writing a post about the novel anyways, but I would have felt malicious if I excluded the novel on this post. I don't know. My head doesn't make sense. However, I will try to explain why writing a post on this novel is so difficult for me.
Room is a sad story.
Yes, I know that Ma and Jack managed to escape and were in Outside for the last half of the novel, but it's still such a despairing read. For me, at least. I think the novel being written in Jack's point of view makes it even more sad. On one had, Jack (naturally) has an unknowing, childlike narrative, so reading his thoughts isn't anywhere near as depressing as it would be reading from Ma's point of view. On the other hand, the reader knows what Jack doesn't, and watching him struggle to understand Outside vs Room, and that his life isn't really real, and that people don't typically hug random strangers, and that it really is him and Ma on the TV, and that there are multiple copies of Dylan the Digger, is heartbreaking.
Also, it is entirely possible for this to happen. Like... I can go off to college and everything that happens to Ma could happen to me. Heck, it could happen now. And, quite obviously, I don't want to be kidnapped and raped and be trapped in an 11 by 11 room for seven years. I'm actually shaking right now thinking about being in that situation.
And yet... There are people who actually have been in similar situations. I've read a few blog posts that have mentioned the Fritzl case and the Castro case. I think that's another major reason I'm uncertain about writing this post on Room; I don't want to seem insensitive, and I just don't know what it was like for the victims. I mean... I'm even feeling bad about calling them victims, because if it were me I wouldn't want to labelled as a victim my whole life. I feel like it would be a weight dragging me down and making it hard to move forward. But it's not me, and so I have no way of knowing. It's just such a sensitive subject area that I'm not comfortable in. Does that make sense?
I don't know if that clarified anything, but those are my thoughts.
I agree with you Tiye in that situations like these, it's hard to move forward with different opinions surfacing. Even though these "victims" want closure, and for that, need the help of the outside world, it can be hard to move forward. We see this in Ma's case when she is in the interview and wants to focus on how bad Old Nick was, but all the reporter could focus on is Jack and why she chose to raise Jack in such an envronment. I suppose it's sort of a trade off. If the "victims" want immediate action to be taken, they need to rely on outside sources, and face the concequences of judgements and labels that will be pressed on them.
ReplyDeleteI think Madeleine brings up a really good point. It seems like a real Catch 22 because if you want the publics help you are going to have to be what they want. Ma needs to be like a victim but I think her strong attitude is not what her interviewer had been expecting. I think we can all agree that what the interviewer said was horrible but, in a sadistic kind of way, it helped Ma financially at least.
DeleteRoom is interesting because it describes such a grotesque and awful situation that we of course would want to take no part in, but some aspect of it is just incredibly intriguing so that we want to know more! It's some sort of morbid curiosity. A story can be interesting and despicable at the same time, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteI definitely know what you're talking about here--I had the same hesitations about assigning the novel, although I think that Donoghue is really careful not to be exploitative and to explore this story in a way that's not strictly lurid or voyeuristic.
ReplyDeleteAs my first post on _Room_ indicated, I've long been interested in language and the philosophy of language and early linguistic acquisition and issues related to these topics, and I was struck by this novel right away as a kind of thought experiment, to explore what the world would look like for someone who acquired language in the way Jack did. But this, too, has a potentially discomfiting aspect, as if Ma is made to suffer simply for the nifty science experiment we can get out of it. (Clearly, the challenge or representing Jack's voice and point of view must have been a big part of what motivated Donoghue creatively--this novel is so different from an exploitation-memoir from the "victim's" point of view simply because Jack isn't aware he's a victim.