Ma's Suicide Attempt

Ma's suicide attempt is one of the most dramatic moments in a book filled with dramatic moments. Upon first reading, it's baffling why Ma, who has never showed a waver in her drive to protect her son, would abandon him.

When she was in Room, Ma coped by creating a routine, a mask of normalcy, that served to block out the actual horror of her situation. Ironically, when Ma leaves Room, she is forced to confront Room and her trauma. This is evidenced by the talk show scene, where Ma is asked questions that -- while eloquently answered -- we never saw her having to think about in Room. So perhaps Ma's suicide attempt is, at its core, simply a response to fully realizing what has happened to her (of course, we can't really ascribe a logical chain of thought to this situation, and it's probably more a confluence of factors that push her over the edge).

Another thing to consider is that Ma had never raised the questions that had been asked of her on the talk show, and her suicide attempt is perversely fueled by her desire to help Jack. I'm referring specifically to the question about giving Jack away. Perhaps Ma felt that she couldn't parent Jack now that she was out of Room, or that the "professionals" could help him better than she could. We discussed how Jack's tether to Ma was limiting his adjustment to Outside, and how the silver lining of the suicide attempt is that Jack had to learn to run before he learned to walk (so to speak), so in a sense, that line of thinking might not be too far off the mark. Of course, the idea that Jack would be better off without Ma borderline ludicrous at best, because her death would traumatize him. But it's understandable that Ma might come to some of these conclusions in her severely depressed state.

I also wondered about how Ma never attempted suicide in Room. She had access to knives and pills, and it could be days before Old Nick checked in. It's possible that she considered suicide on some of the days when she was Gone, but couldn't do it with Jack there (I think there's a world of difference between killing yourself and killing yourself in front of your child). However, there were two comparably horrendous years in which Ma didn't have Jack to serve as an anchor, so if she was going to kill herself, she probably would have done it then. This makes me think that Ma didn't consider even suicide until after she got out of  Room.

Thursday Night Fever

I logged on to find that my blog had moved almost to the bottom of Mr. Mitchell's list! I cannot abide (another toe). So I'm joining in the Thursday night posting orgy.

One of the things that I've noticed a lot more in this read though -- I read Room once before -- is Ma and Old Nick's interactions. I think in the first read through, I was just totally skeezed out, but their conversations are interesting in a dark way.

First and foremost, Ma's conversations with Old Nick exemplify Ma's overriding commitment to protecting Jack. We see how she placates him and plays into his delusion that she somehow wants to be there and be subjected to him. Jack's arrival actually made Ma's situation a lot more complicated in terms of her behavior with Old Nick, because when Jack was born, she acquired something to lose. Still, Ma never wavers in her insistence that Jack's birth was the best thing that ever happened to her. I think Ma's devotion to Jack, even though it puts her in a more vulnerable position, is an awesome statement about the inherent heroism in motherhood, the idea of putting another persons needs completely above your own.

I wonder what exactly Old Nick's plans were. Ma was certainly getting edgy about Jack's development in Room. Old Nick doesn't have the same concerns about Jack being happy in his world, but he had to recognize that, at some point, Jack would become strong enough that him and Ma together could pose a physical threat. It seems like he might have had to dispose of Jack eventually, or otherwise make Jack go over to his side (which seems very unlikely). On the other, Jack seems to have always been Ma's domain. If Old Nick tried to mess with that, she undoubtedly would flip.

The Memory of Running through the Airport

I wasn't incredibly into The Memory of Running, with its misleading title (it ought to be called The Memory of Biking, as you know if you've ever overheard Berit and my pre-class conversations.) However, I didn't hate the ending.

Artistically, it made sense. It had to end pretty much directly after Smithy gets to Bethany's body. You can't continue the 1960s narrative after that point, and while you could have continued the 1990 narrative, to do so would have been stupid and anticlimactic. The 1990 narrative is linked to the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative provides the framework (Smithy's x-country musings) into which we see the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative needs the 1960s narrative to give it oomph, and as the explanation for the bike ride in the first place.

So the ending wasn't abrupt, it was clean. I would have hated seeing anything to do with Norma and Smithy's return home and the "aftermath". Nobody cares. Speaking of Norma, she needed to be there to symbolize Smithy's transition to some sort of life in the present. If she hadn't been there, she would have seemed perfunctory, and her presence in the rest of the book would become an annoyance rather than necessary buildup.

Yes, it was corny to have her enter the way that she does. But the fact that it's not ultra-realistic isn't really a problem. We read to divorce ourselves from reality, and the corny ending is much more seamless than Norma coming in at a later time and having to explain herself (because, in McLarty's ending, the necessity for an explanation is drowned out by the serendipity of her arrival).  Imagine:

"Over the beach, kites rose and soared side to side, and Bethany did, too, held only by string to the earth, and she dove and dipped and finally broke free of us, trailing the string behind. I stopped running and watched as my sister drifted up into a clear evening sky. When I finally wrenched by gaze from where she had disappeared, I saw a figure gliding toward me. Not gliding, rolling, her red hair shining in the setting sun. 

'Norma?' I whispered, and broke into a run.

'Smithy! I wanted to get here earlier, but there was a storm over Chicago and they delayed my connection by two hours and then they changed the gate, but by the time I figured it out, they were boarding and I couldn't get my wheelchair down to terminal C that fast, so I had to catch the next flight to LAX. They were refueling the plane, so we had to sit on the tarmac for 85 minutes, and when I finally arrived in California, they lost the bag of clothing I had packed for you, it somehow got sent to Toronto, Canada, and the woman in front of me in line at the baggage claim help desk couldn't speak English and took forever. Then I had to wait 20 minutes for a cab that is wheelchair accessible, and some mail truck of full of cocaine had wrecked all over I-10 W and it took two hours to get through.'"

Plus, the shining sunset Hollywood ending fits with the nostalgia of the rest of the book. If you don't like that, fault the book as a whole, not just the ending. For me, the worst part about the ending was Bethany flying off like a character in a Far Side comic.