A Study of Room from the Perspective of Trauma

○ Qian Jin Lan Yunchun

(School of Foreign Languages, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018)

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A Study ofRoomfrom the Perspective of Trauma

○ Qian Jin Lan Yunchun

(SchoolofForeignLanguages,HangzhouDianziUniversity,Hangzhou,Zhejiang, 310018)

Published in August, 2010,Roomis a popular novel by Irish writer Emma Donoghue. It tells a story of a 19-year-old girl, who has been kidnapped and imprisoned for seven years and gave birth to a boy. Few researches studyRoomfrom the perspective of trauma theory. Combined with trauma theory, this paper analyzes the causes and the symptoms of Ma and Jack, the hardships they endure and their elevation after trauma.

Room, trauma, psychology, elevation from trauma

I. Introduction

Born in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer who lives in Canada. Irish describes her as a Lesbian novelist[1]because she dares to deal with the controversial subjects. Emma Donoghue was seldom known for us before 2010.Roomwas the 7th full-length novel of Emma Donoghue. After being published in August, 2010, Room became the winner of international best seller. The novel came from a real story called Austrian Frazier case. In this case, natural father locked his own daughter for 24 years and she gave birth to seven children.Roomchanged this custody time to seven years. During this time, the mother was raped, suffered a miscarriage, and gave birth to a boy called Jack.

Study onRoomwas started in 2010 abroad. Most focus onRoom’s achievements and Emma’s awards.Roomwas published in 2010 and it was translated into Chinese in 2012. Research ofRoomin China started in 2011. The number of research articles onRoomhas reached 10 in total. The studies mentioned at home and abroad are mainly from the perspectives of feminist and realism, and exploring the significance ofRoomor extolling the great maternal love in it. Among the journals ofRoomresearch from the trauma theory, they hold the view that love is the cause of struggle. But, in fact, there are many reasons. So this paper attempts to make a further research ofRoomfrom the perspective of trauma theory to help readers understandRoomand trauma theory better.

Ⅱ. The Origin of Traumas in Room

2.1 Physical and psychic trauma caused by being imprisoned

Traumatic events can be divided into three categories: 1. natural disasters.eg, earthquake; 2. accidental disasters. eg, air crash;3.human-made disasters.[2]22

InRoom, the traumatic events they suffer can be viewed as the third category. The concrete contents are being kidnapped, imprisoned and being sexually assaulted (for the mother) for a long period. This only eleven-square-foot room seems warm, but it is a prison actually. In order to protect Jack, the mother tells that the lives on TV are false and their life is real. The white lie made by the mother makes the traumatic events Jack suffers stay in psychological imbalances. Through the long capacity, they have no connection with the outside, only relying on Old Nick. In life, they are short of survival materials. For example, Jack counts the oatmeal to 100 and takes it as the breakfast. And the “Sundaytreat” becomes the only chance they can ask for materials besides survival materials. They ask for chocolate, raisins and jeans on Sunday. But it all depends on Old Nick. It is admitted that the mother hides the truth that they are imprisoned, but Jack grows with the delayed development is also admitted. During the long room period, the common ground of their traumatic traumas lies in the shortage of materials. So they lead a low-level life, and only can survive.

The outward manifestations of the mother inRoomturn out complicated because of the sexual assault and being imprisoned for a long time. In spirit, the mother is helpless, frightened and depressed. Jack writes, “Today is one of the days when Ma is Gone. She won’t wake up properly. She’s here but not really.”[3]74This is the scene when Ma is really depressed. In a behavioral sense, Ma avoids talking about Old Nick. But she is afraid of Old Nick; otherwise she won’t get what she wants on “Sundaytreat”. This is the manifestation of relying on the hijacker: the hostage will rely on the hijacker on the psychological level. This is what we called Stockholm syndrome.[4]26Out of self-protection, or rather emotional disguise, Ma tends to be submissive more or less. Social belonging and Jack’s 5th birthday are not the direct reason why she decides to get rid of room and searches for the escape route. Power outrage threatens the existence of Ma and Jack. When their physiological needs can not be satisfied, Ma chooses to find the escape route.

Taking hell as the game zone, Ma spares every effort to take care of Jack and educate him. But Jack still grows with developmental delay. In the physiological level, Jack still relies on breast milk. In the cognitive level, besides Ma, all his cognition comes from TV and books. We admit that Jack suffers from traumas in a speechless way. And these traumas turn out to be obvious when they come out of the room.

2.2 Psychic trauma caused by being overexposed

Although imprisoned in early childhood, Ma hides this truth for Jack. So we admit that this small range of activity gives Jack a sense of safety. From the room to the outside world, he lacks the sense of space, and he is not used to the sudden change of living habit of eating and sleeping. So Jack cannot help himself, thinking: which world is real? During this period, his psychological trauma turns out to be obvious. In the psychological level, in the first night when they come out of the room, Jack enuresises; in the cognitive level, lacking sense of space, he does not know how to measure distances, therefore he falls down from time to time; in the behavioral level, Jack relies on Ma’s tooth. He sucks tooth constantly to ease his mental pain. In some senses, coming out of the room is the beginning of enlarging his mental trauma.

Compared with Jack, Ma doesn’t have these problems. But the journalist who has an interview of Ma makes her emotional flooding. This journalist can be the spokesperson of those lacking love and respect. The journalist asks whether Ma relies on the hijacker or not; whether she has the impulsion to kill her son or not, only because Jack is the son of hijacker; whether Ma has the demand of pathological. These questions closely smash her defense. In the emotional level, tears drop while being interviewed; In the behavioral level, “days when Ma is gone” still exist. Besides, she even tends to commit suicide. She vomits when they come back to the room. The room is a rather long scared nightmare for Ma. Out of love for Jack, she hides the truth. And show him Ma is a strong and brave woman, and she can live alone. However, under the harms of others, she tends to commit suicide.

In the cognitive level, Both Ma and Jack have the symptom of hyper vigilance. For example, Ma is afraid of letting Jack face the relating TV programs. Jack’s grandmother avoids relating newspapers around Jack. The outside world does not mean safety. A modern disease is filled with the atmosphere, which makes people pry into others’ affairs.

Ⅲ. The Working-through of Trauma——from

Haunting to Healing

3.1 Integration of the past and present

Janet claims that the traumatized becomes “attached” to the trauma because of the failure of integration of memories of past experience into existing cognitive schemes. Therefore, the key to healing trauma lies in the access to traumatic memories.[5]1-32

The repetition of trauma is partly due to the dissociation of a traumatic experience, which accompanies the occurrence of trauma.[6]85-101Dissociation means when a subject doesn’t remember a trauma, its “memory” is contained in an alternate stream of consciousness, which may be subconscious or dominate consciousness. When the victims later on suffer from flashbacks, hallucinations and eventually amnesia, they tend to keep dissociating the traumatic memory.

The bad experience inRoommakes Ma unwilling to remember it. However, nobody can fully abandon his memory actually. The avoidance of memory related to the room is exactly the dissociation of Ma’s traumatic memory. InRoom, it writes:

After a minute, she says, “This is a fresh start, remember?”

She says remember but she doesn’t want to remember room.

I think of Rug, I run to get her out of the box and I drag her behind me. “Where will Rug go, beside the couch or beside our bed?”

Ma shakes her hand.[3]381

A fresh start is not a real start, which takes Ma back to those she tries hard to dissociate and repress.

Both Freud and Janet argued that the crucial element that causes the repetition of trauma is the presence of mute, symbolized, and unassimilated experiences. According to the silence and inaction of the victims, their bad memory becomes more and more distorted, thus, affects their basic life to a large extent. The victims wander from two traumatic experience worlds: the traumatic past and the bleached present. That is what we called the importance of integration. There is a bridge between the previous two realms: the realm of trauma and the realm of the present ordinary life. Some experts hold the view that the key to heal the trauma is to drag the memory to the level of consciousness.[7]27InRoom, Ma and Jack finally come back to the room, facing their past directly. Any abandonment or repression of it only gives one the illusion of getting away from it. Without integration, the traumatic memory will lurk both in the subconscious and unconscious. Once facing it, we can get out of the room.

3.2 Reconstruction of Identity

Herman argues, “Traumatic events destroy the victim’s fundamental assumptions about the safety of the world, the positive value of self, and the meaningful order of creation”.[8]52

Erik Erikson proposed that an entire identity is composed of three parts: the ego identity, personal identity and social identity. Ego identity emphasizes a distinction among the psychological sense of continuity, which is sometimes identified as “the self”.[9]17

An essential reason that accounts for the escape is for the strong social belonging. And he should also realize that he can bring values to others. Accordingly, a deficiency in either of these factors may increase the chance of an identity crisis or confusion.[10]78

It is a pity that Jack lives in a small room and can hardly communicate with the outside world. Jack spends his early five years in the room, so it is hard to establish his social identity. InRoom, all the knowledge about the world comes from the descriptions of Ma and TV. And Ma tells him that the world on TV is false. But when they come out of the room, lacking the sense of safety, Jack wants to go back to the room. It takes him a long time to accept the outside world and realize he belongs to the society. The second part of social identity: he will realize his own values. In the room, Jack relies on his Ma. When he is five years old, he overcomes his fears, and escapes successfully. The social identity improves in these two aspects.

3.3 Enhanced relationship with others

Post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when individual

experiences, witnesses or encounters one or more traumatic events. He may suffer from mental disorder like individual delay or persistence. Death of others, death threat, severe injuries all belong to the traumatic events. The core symptoms of these traumatic events are traumatic re-experience, avoidance and numbness, high alertness. We can find that Ma avoids mentioning the life in room, because she finds it really hard to forget. The horrible memory keeps moving and haunting around her.

For the victim of trauma, one’s sense of self has been shattered and a viable way of reconstructing traumatized is to build up the attachments to others. Herman contends “he seeks for emotional support from his family, lover and friends, and will accordingly change them in the wake of the alteration in the process of dealing with trauma.”[8]51The underlying reason why relationship with others may help to relieve trauma is that by doing this, they can find a sense of existence. InRoom, Ma and Son have both successful and unsuccessful experience concerning enhancing relationship with others. For the unsuccessful experience, the rogue reporter and other curious people make Ma feels so uncomfortable. For the successful experience we have a lot. For example, the exodus event with the help of the careful man; the careful inquiry of policemen makes it successful to find the location of the room; emotional support of Jack’s grandma and patient guidance of Doctor Clay. In the following passages, we will discuss some successful examples in detail. For example, the careful man who meets with Jack and Doctor Clay accidentally helps them a lot.

Ⅳ. Elevation from Trauma

4.1 Growing self-reliance

Trauma is always buried deep in the conscious or even repressed into the subconscious and unconscious. Thus it is a painful experience usually rejecting any sharing of it. Therefore, the coping with it counts on the victim’s own strength and determination.[4]26As in the novel, their struggle takes a lot of time. Finally we can see much progress they make. It writes:

When we get home to the Independent Living we write everything down that we tried, the list’s getting long. Then there are things we might try when we’re braver.

…

Finding our really own apartment that’s not an Independent Living

…

Making new friends

…

Having jobs.[3]391

…

They reach an agreement that they should try every new thing so they will find their true interests. Besides, Ma is considering starting a new life.

4.2 Compassion for Others

A person, filled with compassions, can understand and tolerate others, and make others trust him. Besides, compassion is the highest principles of humanity. A group of people filled with compassions construct the humane society. When Jack meets a woman with glasses, he is willing to wave his hands to greet, although this woman cannot see. Besides, Jack has formed a habit to feed ducks in the garden. This is certain a kind of compassion.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

Making a further research ofRoomfrom the perspective of trauma theory, the article mainly analyzes the traumas in this novel from two respects: physical and psychic trauma caused by being imprisoned and psychic trauma caused by being overexposed. The causes and symptoms caused by trauma are also analyzed. Fortunately, Jack and Ma finally get their elevation from trauma by growing self-reliance and compassion for others.

[1]蘇婭.用風趣筆調消解悲傷[N].第一財經日報, 2011-03-10C04.

[2] 宋惠玲.對創傷理論的嘗試性思考——創傷是生命的體驗和需求[J].文學教育(中)，2013(6).

[3] Emma Donoghue. 2010. Room[M].New York: Picador.

[4] 高明華.斯德哥爾摩綜合癥：表現、成因和應對[J].中國農業大學學報(社會科學版)，2009(1).

[5] Janet, Pierre. 1904. L’amnesie et la dissociation des souvenirs pay l’emotion[M].Marseilles Lafitte Repints.

[6] Putnam, F. W. 1989. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder[M].New York: Guilford.

[7] 汪小霞.從創傷理論角度解析小說《追風箏的人》[D].蘇州大學，2012.

[8] Herman, Judith. 1992. Trauma and Recovery[M].New York: Harper Collins Basic Books.

[9] Erikson, E. 1959. Psychological Issues[M].New York: IUP.

[10] Cote, James E., Levine, Charles. 1989. Identity Formation, Agency, and Culture[M].New Springer-Verlag.

浙江省社科聯研究課題(2014B001)；杭州電子科技大學人文社會科學研究基金資助項目(KYH115615012)。

錢進，杭州電子科技大學外國語學院英語專業學生，研究方向：英美文學；

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創傷理論視角下的《房間》解讀

錢進 藍云春

(杭州電子科技大學 外國語學院，浙江 杭州 310018)

發表于2010年的《房間》是愛爾蘭作家愛瑪·多諾霍力作?！斗块g》講述了一個19歲少女遭到綁架和監禁長達7年的故事。鮮少研究從創傷理論解讀該小說。結合創傷理論，本文分析了母子創傷的原因和癥狀，走出創傷的過程以及走出創傷后的自我提升。

《房間》； 創傷理論； 心理； 自我提升

藍云春，杭州電子科技大學外國語學院副教授，研究方向：英美文學。