Jack's Recovery

I would say that Room is my favorite book that we read this semester. As we discussed in class, it is very interesting to look through the eyes of Jack and see what an impact a situation like this would have on the growth of a young child and his mother. However, now that I read the end of the book, all I can think about is how this would impact both Jack and Ma in the long term, both more Jack because the book is narrated from his point of view.

I would say that Jack in the next year or so would still continue to struggle to adjusting to the “real world”. However, from his last interaction with Room in the last pages of the book, I think he would be able to appreciate the outside world more. Throughout the beginning of his time outside of Room, Jack tended to want to trade all his confusion from the outside with going back to room, by saying things like “I wish I could go back to Wardrobe”. However, only in a few weeks, we see Jack confidently saying goodbye to room and everything in it. He actually can’t believe that the shed he was taken to at first was room and mentions if the room shrank. This in itself shows how much Jack grew in such a little time, in terms of disattaching himself to the idea of going back to Room. I believe that this has something to do with the fact that he is young. His brain and body is still developing, and from a psychological standpoint, childhood traumas affect the brain and mental health a lot more less than traumas after the brain is fully developed (at least that’s what they told me in my psych class).  In that case, I think in 10 years time, he would be able to function as a regular 15 year old. The only thing that I can think would be a problem would be classmates mentioning something along the lines of,  “hey weren’t you the guy that got stuck in a room for 5 years”, or classmates treating him differently because they knew about his past. However, if he changed his name and didn’t have his experience in room constantly brought up, I believe that Jack would be able to have a normal, healthy life after this experience.

Unlying

The last few chapters that we have read, there have been a lot of new developments that changed the way that we view Jack and the impact his environment has on him. The way the Unlying chapter starts off is Jack describing the marks he saw on his mother’s neck. He soon realizes that those marks came from Old Nick trying to hurt him mom. I think this is the first significant time that we see Jack finally realizing what Old Nick actually is, compared to how Jack treated Old Nick as almost a “god-like figure”,  when he asked his mom why they didn’t thank Old Nick when they thanked Baby Jesus for the food.

Throughout this chapter, Jack’s concept of the entire world completely shifts and changes. This is the first time that his mother tells Jack that the outside world is real and the stories about her past, family, and how she got into the “Room”. When she first told him that TV things are real (except for spongebob and dora), and then he looks up on the window on the ceiling to see all the TV things he expects to be real, he gets mad at first because he doesn't see anything but blue sky and clouds. When his mom is first telling him about the story of her family’s house and hammock and the story where she got taken in college because old Nick pretended his dog was dying, Jack thinks she is kidding and is not even interested. However, over time, and by the second time he climbs up to look through the top window, and he sees the airplane, he finally understands that what his mom is telling him is true.

As I was reading this chapter, one of the saddest moments so far of the book was on page 88, when it sort of finally hit me how tragic Jack’s situation truly is. Jack's mom says “Hospitals are real too, and motorbikes. My head’s going to burst from all the new things I have to believe”. Then he asks how come he didn’t see the city when he first looked up through the Skylight and his mother responds by telling him “Skylight looks straight up in the air. Most of the things I’ve been telling you about are on the ground, so to see them we’d need a window that faces out sideways”. Then Jack says, “We could ask for a sideways window for Sundaytreat” and then Ma just laughs. Here, it really just hit me that Jack doesn’t know anything about the outside world and is deprived of so much. Now he begins to understand what he is missing out on, and it is very tragic to watch.

Another aspect of what really hit me is when Jack’s mother describes how the shed is made, and how it used to be a 12x12 feet room, but because of all the sound insulation and metal Nick used to make sure Jack’s mom can’t escape is insane. Even when she describes trying to dig a hole in the ground and then finding that the shed is also insulated from the ground, and Nick laughing from discovering the whole is just horrible. Hearing pieces of the backstory really begins to put things in perspective and really highlight the tragic parts of the novel so far.