Ma's Patience and Heroism
As
we’ve followed Ma and Jack’s story once they’re outside of Room, I find myself
sympathizing more and more with Ma. From the beginning, we talked about how
impressed we were with her patience with Jack and her ability to continue to
keep him engaged and out of trouble despite being around him nonstop for five
years. However, to me, her level of dedication is an even greater feat once
they’re Outside, even though Jack sees more of her frustrations there. We as
readers can’t even begin to fathom what must constantly be going through Ma’s
head all the time: relief about being out of Room and back to the familiar, frustration
about the things that aren’t so familiar, and maybe even regret about the
things that she has missed and the fact that she can’t just slip back into her
old normal life.
It
has come up in class a couple of times whether or not Ma is moving too fast for
Jack to keep up and if she should slow down and give him time to adjust to this
completely different world that he is now living in. While I definitely feel
for Jack and can only imagine how confusing and overwhelming this must be for
him, I also think that we cannot overlook the strength Ma is showing in taking
care of Jack, trying to adjust to the world again herself, and wanting to do
all the things she hasn’t been able to for the past seven years. I would argue
that Ma suffered more while they were in Room than Jack did – he had no idea
what he was missing, but Ma had her memories of her old life Outside every day.
Now that she and Jack are out of Room, I’m sure she has a bucket list of things
she wants to do and people and places she wants to see. Yet, while they are
out, her life still is nowhere near normal, and she is still almost imprisoned
in the clinic. How tantalizing it must be for Ma to be “outside”, but still
stuck in the clinic, abiding by their rules, and still not able to fully live
her life with her own agency.
One
might say that Ma is held back by Jack in her freedom now that they are Outside,
and they could make a good argument. You could also say that she is becoming
frustrated about how much Jack is struggling to adjust. However, I honestly
find her ability to stick with Jack without losing too much patience incredible
and brave. I know for sure that I would not be able to do that were I in her
position. Yet, as we overhear her conversations with Dr. Clay through Jack, we
know that she is also struggling with adjusting to the world, just in a
different way than Jack is. So not only does she have to help guide Jack
through Outside and teach him how the world works, she also has to find a
balance between what she wants to do and what she can do, based on her
limitations as well as Jack’s.
In summary, I
think Ma is incredibly heroic and is doing an amazing job parenting Jack given
the circumstances. She is defensive and protective of him, maybe too much so,
as we saw right after they got out of Room and the doctors wanted to look Jack
over. Yet these qualities can also be a good thing, as we see when Ma stands up
for Jack to her own father and showing her love for him and how important he is
to her life.
I totally agree that Ma's patience is incredible. Not only did she manage to make it through Room with Jack, as you mentioned, but she also does an incredible job being able to deal with Jack still seeing Room as benevolent and wanting to return.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that Ma has to find a balance between doing the things she has wanted to do for years and slowing down for Jack. This is further complicated by the fact that she feels so strongly for Jack, as caring for him gave her real purpose while she was in Room. What we may have to watch for as we get further through the book is evidence that Ma's reasons for caring for Jack and the ways in which she expresses those cares may shift now that she doesn't need him to sustain her sanity during her stay in Room.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that Ma's ability to keep standing up for herself and for Jack and to keep dealing with all the effects of her imprisonment is amazing. As you mention, she goes from being trapped in Room to being trapped in the clinic by paparazzi, her own need for care, and Jack's inability to go outside. You say that Ma probably has a bucket list that she isn't able to work on and I'd add that she hasn't been able to experience most of the parts of the world that she mentioned to Jack while she was explaining Outside. I don't remember everything but she did mention oceans/lakes/rivers and her home and her hammock and she hasn't seen any of those. The main thing she told Jack about was her family and she hasn't even been able to really regain that since so much has changed in the years since she's last seen them.
ReplyDeleteMa is amazing! I can't imagine being trapped like she is right now. She got out of Room, but she's still very much trapped -- she can't leave the clinic because she has to adjust, but adjusting is difficult because she has to adjust with Jack, and Jack is taking much longer to adjust because he's a five-year-old and adjusting to an entire new world as opposed to a changed world. The way Ma is managing to stay relatively patient amazes me. She really is quite heroic. Maybe she is moving a bit too fast, but I honestly couldn't tell you what the right speed for Jack would be. At some point, he's going to have to leave the clinic, live in a normal house, and go to school. It seems almost crucial that he does so soon, in order to override his worldview from Room and make him into a normal child. But at the same time, Outside is extremely overwhelming for Jack. He's not used to the amount of light outside, he can't use stairs, and he's not too great at social interaction with anyone but Ma (to be fair, this isn't as abnormal -- five-year-olds can be a little shy). Forcing everything on him is too much at once. It'll be a long process to get him used to it, but I think what Ma's doing right now is working out alright. It won't be perfect, and there's times when I think she should cut back a little on everything they're doing in that day, but in the end she'll make the right choice and Jack will be fine.
ReplyDeleteMa's life has definitely changed so much since her imprisonment. The world has moved on and for Ma, her biggest challenge is finding herself again and trying to be Ma at the same time. She has to process the idea of her parents' divorce and witness her friends living their lives for the past seven years, while explaining every single little thing to Jack. Even with all this chaos going on, Ma does seem to be keeping her cool and being patient. She isn't putting all the pressure on herself nor she does force Jack to do anything. She's just going with the flow.
ReplyDeleteMa is incredibly strong for not only having to deal with seven years of captivity, but also having to raise a child properly. I do feel that now that they are outside Ma wants to taste the freedom she's longed for over these past seven years, but she still has to stay with Jack. I think that once they got outside Ma thought she and Jack could just move back into a normal life, but with Jack's behavioral abnormalities her ability to resume a normal life is very limited. Ma definitely is okay with distancing herself from Jack, seeing as she is okay with just taking a shower and being awake at different times than Jack. Jack on the other hand has tied himself completely to Ma, which makes sense to him, but now that they've escaped it is beginning to frustrate Ma.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I agree that Ma is doing a great job sticking with Jack in and out of Room. I feel like she may be going a little too fast for Jack, but I also feel like she's doing her best to hold herself back for him.
ReplyDeleteMa is SUCH A HERO. Jack also does a lot of heroic things, like the big Escape, but Ma has gone through more than I can even imagine. I've never raised a child, but I've heard that parenting itself is a kind of heroic act but Ma has to do this in an 11x11 foot room and just using her imagination basically to raise a relatively normal child. All while having to live a nightmare everyday of being trapped in a room, assaulted nightly by her captor, and not knowing if they'll ever get out. Ma is unbelievably brave.
ReplyDeleteThis is a small part of your post, but: I find our view of Ma's protectiveness of Jack extremely interesting. We treat Jack's clinginess to Ma as a given (he's never been farther than sixteen feet away from her!) but we seem not to notice that Ma's never been that far from Jack, either, since he was born. While Ma did have a life before Jack, she's never had the experience of leaving him with a caretaker or another parent while she does the shopping. She's never dropped him off for preschool and returned to collect him, happy or sobbing, hours later. She's never even been to the doctor with him. Because she's always been the sole parent, Ma hasn't learned to trust others being alone with, or even touching, her child. While we rightly focus on Jack's separation anxiety, I don't think we should overlook Ma's.
ReplyDeleteI think Ma's patience with Jack just shows how deep her love for him goes. She's (literally) willing to put her world on hold for him - he's become more valuable to her than reconnecting with "Outside". I'm always amazed by the strength of the bond between them. There's no bitterness between them; their relationship is amazingly pure, even through the hardships Jack was born out of. This is part of the reason I think we all get so mad at Ma's dad - he simply can't understand that JACK, not her past life, is the entire world to her now. She cares about him so much and so obviously, to the point where she's specializing all of her showers for him. There's no way he could understand that bond, especially with Room being part of the equation - but it still hurts to think that none of them can understand her love.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that Ma is amazingly strong in this book. You mentioned that Ma still had her memories of Outside while she was in Room and that made it hard for her because she knew what she was missing. At the same time, I think she needed those memories to keep her going and to try to find a way to escape. And even though what she found when she finally did escape wasn't what she expected, she does have people that are on her side. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteThe two heroes, Jack and Ma, seem to roughly switch roles as events transpire. When they're still stuck and plotting their escape, Ma is the one formulating all their plans and even training Jack to follow through with them. Jack, however, is the "hero" during the escape, as he journeys into a foreign land to fulfill his goal. After their escape, though, Ma takes the leading role again, as she helps Jack adjust to the outside world.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your point that Ma is much more negatively affected by Room than Jack. Since he was born there, Jack doesn't know anything besides Room. Therefore, he doesn't see anything wrong with it; Room is his home. Ma, on the other hands, knows that there is a better world outside Room's walls, and she understands the true severity of the situation (being trapped by a crazy man).
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