So I'm just going to say it: I really hate the book. No, it's not because of the writing style, no it's not because of the little kid (though I don't really like little kids), it's because of the stuff being mentioned.
So this 5 year old and his 27 year old mom are stuck in this super tiny room. After doing a search on Google, I found a picture somebody had of what the room might look like: http://lhdreviews.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/room1.png and I'm just going to say, without that picture, I wouldn't have been able to even begin to imagine what the room would look like. If I were stuck in a room like that, I would go crazy, and I'm amazed the mother hasn't already.
It's been stated that they're both malnourished and the mom's teeth are rotting. I think it's stated that they're also in a tiny shed, so it probably gets ridiculously hot in there. I don't know, just the fact that there's people being kept (presumably against the mother's will) in a tiny room in what I think could definitely be considered sub-human (is it one word or hyphenated?) conditions. This is some pretty dark stuff, and I'm really uncomfortable reading this.
Then there's how Jack's innocence makes him view things in unique ways. He can only hear the sounds of Old Nick and his mom having sex, and he just describes the process as Old Nick making the bed squeak a lot and then makes a "gaspy sound"...This is also something that really bothers me, because from what I can tell, the only reason Jack's mom doesn't resist is because she can get the essentials for Jack, and hearing his "innocent" description of what she has to do just really...rubs me the wrong way. I'm not saying I hate Jack or anything, I'm just saying the depiction does make me very unhappy.
There was a mention today in class of whether or not solitary confinement should be considered torture. I think so. From my limited knowledge of human development and all that good stuff, I know that babies need to be touched at least once a day and have some sort of human interaction or they won't develop properly. I also know that people in solitary confinement can and will go crazy given enough time. Humans are social creatures, and so it makes sense that without social interaction, bad things can happen. I'm amazed that Jack's mom hasn't gone crazy, because I assume she's been in the room longer than Jack's been alive, and so she's somehow stayed sane. I think it might've been easier for her once Jack was born, because then she would have been able to have another human to interact with on a daily basis.
Actually, it's not really the book I hate. I'm amazed how the author's able to accurately portray a five year old and manage to show their point of view in a convincing way. But the plot is just really dark and I feel a bit disturbed when reading it. If I could get away with never reading the book I would, but since I can't, I'll just deal with it. So that's all I really have to say about the book so far...
Given what we can surmise about Jack's origins, Old Nick has been raping her from well before Jack was born. But having him (more or less) witness it brings a whole new level of torture to the situation--we get a kind of intensified Freudian/Oedipal scenario here, with the "son" growing jealous of his "father's" intimacy (that should be in quotes, too) with his mother, and Jack has begun saying he wants to kill Old Nick. By insisting he stay in the wardrobe, Ma is trying to maintain boundaries, or a wall of innocence, around Jack as long as possible--but we see how impossible this really is in these horrific conditions.
ReplyDeleteBut it also seems clear that Jack has played a crucial role in keeping Ma sane. She describes nearly succumbing to despair and solitude in those first two years, and her claims that Jack's arrival "saved" are genuine. Becoming "Ma" gives her absurdly circumscribed life meaning and purpose, and the project of caring for and educating Jack keeps her mind active and engaged. Many parents who read this book will attest that Ma's patience in dealing with this precocious 5-year-old all day, every day, is utterly astounding--but as I said in class, it's her rigid rules about limiting TV usage that are maybe most remarkable. It would be *so easy* to simply drop him in front of the TV all day and not have to deal--but she heroically doesn't want his "brain to turn to mush," and takes pains to ensure that it won't.
Sorry for commenting like a week later because I know you wrote this pretty early in the book, but while the premise is obviously dark, I have to say I was surprised that the actual novel doesn't feel as dark as it could. We talked in class a bit about the effect of having Jack narrate the novel vs Ma and I think that Jack is a big reason that the book doesn't feel incredibly depressing -- his innocence (and his attention span) keep him from brooding on some of the more disturbing details (even if the disturbing bits are described in a "unique" way). And, like Mr Mitchell says, there's also a lot of optimism in Ma and Jack's relationship, and the way they help and love each other, which takes the edge off a bit of the really dismal situation.
ReplyDeleteI just saw this blogpost, and I had to comment because so much of this is still present in the book (it's interesting how reading more of a book, and then coming back to older sets of comments about it because then you have a more in-depth and interesting stand)! The dark plot, Jack's innocence, Ma's "innovative" ways, and the extreme lack of social interaction for Jake are all things that we can still see present in the novel, as well as the implications and the results of these actions. In response to Adina's point about optimism between Ma and Jake, I have to say that after they were able to escape, I saw a sharp exponential decline in that optimism (kind of like the rapid stock crash in late 2000 due to the Dot Com Bubble Burst). And I believe that this decline in optimism was because of the breaking of the bubble of innocence around Jake -- when he comes Outside, he is exposed to so many new things that there is a small time in the book, where I feel that he is no longer interested in Ma.
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