I have to say that genetics intrigues me-I’m always looking for the nature aspect of nature versus nurture to raise its ugly head. Old Nick is never called father and he never calls Jack son, Ma certainly never encourages them to interact, and yet her relationship with Jack is intimate, loving, and protective. One thing that the readers ignore until the media forces us to think about it is the fact that Jack is Old Nick’s son. Lucky for Jack, he doesn’t fully understand being asked if he was molested, but it jars the reader (and Ma) because he has been so cocooned until now. They are made into instant stars (a woman missing for six years with a five-year-old from her abuser? What news show wouldn’t lose its mind to get the exclusive?) and the outsiders are not nearly so considerate of the harsh and delicate truths as Ma was.
In fact, after Ma and Jack escape, the real world is the most graphic. For a story about sexual abuse, there’s nothing particularly graphic or upsetting. Donoghue does a masterful job giving us an understandable story while maintaining a reasonable guise of children’s prose. There are so many deep themes laced into Jack’s whimsical narrative-themes of motherhood, genetics, control, survival, and innovation. Ma keeps him hidden in Wardrobe when Old Nick visits and Jack counts Old Nick’s panting breaths the way other children count sheep Old Nick is always gone when Jack wakes up.
I was expecting the abuse to be a primary factor in the story but Jack is never exposed to it. Ma has even hidden her absolute disgust of the place, her pain, and her nightmare. Ma has protected him so thoroughly that their 11×11 foot cell is Jack’s fairyland, his home, his sanctuary. Jack, our narrator, is completely unharmed. I’ve read Lolita, Bastard Out of Carolina, and a dozen other stories about abused women, and even abused children, but this story is completely unique among them. The innocence of children, their ability to see the world as unique, beautiful and inspiring, is precisely what one needs to stomach an abuse story. Room immediately appealed to me because it was a child narrator in an extremely unusual situation: the child is the product of a mother, who has been sealed in a shed, by a sexual abuser. I read a lot and I find myself predicting things when they aren’t innovative (this could be a moment for a 50 Shades of Grey rant, but we’ll wait, shall we?). I am always on the hunt for a new narrative-not new as in recent, new as in different.
0 kommentar(er)
