The effect of having a 5-year-old as the narrator for Room is similar to that of the childlike art style in Persepolis. We discussed that Marji's young voice and simply drawn visuals make the gratuitous violence of the revolution somehow both more and less palatable. The drawings of torture and murder don't make you squeamish at first, because they eschew the gore that would be in say, a photograph of these events, but then you remember the cost of this clean portrayal is its being filtered through the eyes of a child, who should not have to process these things.
Similarly, reflecting on Room, at first I can't help but feel very relieved the story is not told from Ma's perspective. Its an emotional portrait I can't even imagine trying to write, and it would be incredibly heavy to read. Ma is kidnapped at 19, sexually assaulted, held in isolation, brings a child into a life of captivity, and attempts suicide (among any number of other accompanying ordeals). Jack, on the other hand, has had a pretty happy life, from his perspective. There have been some very stressful episodes, but there weren't any sections of this book I found hard to read because of emotional intensity, the way there definitely would have been if Ma told the story.
That being said, immediately after expressing this relief to myself, I felt guilty. It's like I'm saying "I'm glad there was a child there to experience this horror with Ma, or else I'd have to hear about it from someone who has the experience to know they're being ill-treated and the words to convey that," which is horrible. We, the reader, are exploiting Jack's innocence for a degree of separation from Ma's story. Obviously that's not all we get from having Jack's perspective. I think it's fascinating for a whole plethora of other reasons besides this one. But I'm still struck by that same guilt I had reading about the prisoners of war in Persepolis. We get to read about Ma's suicide attempt in relatively inoffensive terms, but at a great cost to Jack, who nearly loses his Ma and will surely have psychological blowback to come. After the initial softness of a five-year-old's language, their words almost make things seem worse, because of the loss of innocence that comes with it.
I like how you compare the two child narrators, and I agree that in some cases it softens the impact of the story, but I also agree that Ma's suicide attempt has a stronger effect on the reader told through Jack's eyes.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Donoghue herself might have been thinking of Jack-as-narrator in a similar way that you do here. Obviously, in conceiving of this story and developing all its details, she had to go to some dark places, imaginatively (and in terms of research). And clearly Jack is an interesting kind of "thought experiment" as a narrator, and this must have been appealing to her as a writer, to try and reconstruct this experience of a profound "journey of consciousness." In some ways, Jack is the more interesting character, from an intellectual standpoint. But Ma's story, from Ma's point of view, would be incredibly taxing to have to contemplate fully, and we can imagine the author finding some relief through the sheer fun and enthusiasm of Jack's voice--and also some relief in his relative innocence.
ReplyDeleteIf you *are* interested in reading a story like this from the victim's point of view, _The Collector_ by John Fowles is absolutely harrowing, but very very good. He narrates both from the chillingly mundane point of view of the captor (a very "nice" and "normal" British man who collects butterflies and has no idea how to behave among actual people) and the journal of his captive, a very intelligent and even philosophical art student who recounts her experience in vivid detail. It's a gripping book, but it goes headlong into some very dark territory. I am impressed with Fowles's ability to represent the young woman's point of view, as a male author. I wonder if you'd agree.
In Henry's blog post he quotes Donoghue on why she chose Jack as her narrator. Her reasoning boils down to "it is more interesting and less horrible." But, as Caroline said, we the readers would be completely unable to effectively process or relate to this story told from Ma's perspective. In the same way, perhaps Donoghue simply *could not* tell this story from Ma's perspective. Jack has almost the perspective of another observer and spectator, perhaps allowing Donoghue to give the only kind of convincing representation she could.
DeleteA more separate idea that I almost now want to write a blog post on has to do with how Donoghue is a little like Old Nick. We talked in class about how she keeps the characters in their little container. Perhaps, like Old Nick, she wants to see what she is doing as positive, and therefore writes the story from a perspective that has an almost happy tone.
I definitely agree that the reason why we were able to read both Persepolis and Room, books that tackle very depressing and dark issues, without becoming too distraught emotionally was because of the filters that we had in terms of perspective. In the case of Room, we are able to infer things from what Jack says, but we are never given much explicit detail or explanation. On top of these filters, I think that these books were able to keep the atmosphere much lighter than it should have been by adding humor, sometimes through the innocence of the narrators. If these two books were written in the perspectives of adult characters who were able to narrate exactly what was happening, then I think that these two books would have been far too depressing for me to read and actually enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't felt guilty about it before, but now I see where you're coming from. Ma's story would be so completely different from "Room," because she has the rest of her life to contmplate. Jack has nothing, and after Room, Ma is having a period of getting used to things again, while to Jack all is new. So, I guess I don't really feel guilty just because the stories are so different in focus, and duration. But I definitely see where the idea came from.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree. If the story was told from Ma's point of view, this whole story would be really depressing. However, since it is told from Jack's point of view, we get this innocent perspective from him. It makes the story a lot less depressing and even a little be more interesting (at least for me personally).
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