“Instead she just looks at me. My feet my legs my arms my head, her eyes keep sliding over my whole me like she’s counting. ‘What?’ I say. She doesn’t say a word. She leans over, she doesn’t even kiss me, she just touches her face to mine till I can’t tell whose is whose. My chest is going dangadangadang. I won’t let go of her.” (150)
Donoghue, Emma. "Dying." Room: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and, 2010. 150. Print.
Room is a story about five year old Jack and his mother. Jack’s mother was kidnapped and kept in a small room, where she eventually gives birth to Jack. Room describes the lifeline of their struggle to escape their caper and how they deal with the aftermath. After seven years of being locked up, Jack’s mother has had enough and comes up with an escape plan based upon the book, Count of Monte Cristo. The plan involves Jack pretending to play dead in order to get out of the small room and get help. The plan works. Adjusting to the real world is not going to be easy for both of them, but they have each other and the incredible mother-son bond to keep them strong in any environment. That is what the passage is describing above; the unconditional love between mother and child is so incredible powerful that nothing, not even the change in environment, can change it.
Emma Donoghue, author of Room, wrote an amazing survival story about overcoming your fears and the bond between a mother and her child. The passage I chose above clearly shows that bond between Jack and his mother right before he is about carry out their escape plan and how much they rely on each other. At first glance this bond can seem rather strange because most parents aren’t as close as Jack and his mother are in the story because of different circumstances. Donoghue is showing the reader that environment you raise your child in can make all the difference in forming a good bond with them. Granted the small room that Jack and his mother were locked in is not an ideal environment, but Jack’s mother made sure to make it a kid friendly environment that would help Jack grow and flourish. That bond between Jack and his mother is tested, because Jack finds out relatively quickly that the things done in the real world are done differently than they were in the small room. But I feel that only makes the bond between Jack and his mom that much more special because Jack must now rely on his mother for support to understand the norm of society. This is important because it helps you understand why certain things happen in the book. Like why she would risk Jack’s own life to escape, and why she would overdose on her pain killers.
This model capstone project has been very fun and entertaining. I really liked reading the short story, the non-fiction and fiction book. What made it enjoyable was because the books and short story were spread out throughout the whole project. The short story was a nice way to start the project. I absolutely love the blog. It is a very creative way of keeping all our assignments organized. Plus it allows us to express ourselves. There was nothing about this project that I disliked. I did learn that there is more to the environment than global warming and the ozone. It is really crazy how many different types of chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis and there is really nothing we can do to ignore them. I can’t wait to do it with on a topic that I am really interested in learning more about!
