Heroic Contemplation

The major question that keeps coming back to my mind as we read Room is whether Jack will be able to recover from everything and live a normal life afterwards. I didn't expect them to escape Room so quickly. I thought that the whole book would be focused on them escaping Room, but now that they are out a new conflict has arisen. That is the problem of whether Jack and Ma will be able to adjust. I personally do not think that Jack will be able to develop normally. On page 209 Dr. Clay mentions how Jack is still plastic, and so there is still the possibility of him putting the whole Room experience behind him and developing normally. The reason why I don't think Jack will be able to recover is because he is still so attached to Ma, and Ma has kind of raised him in ignorance, so he doesn't understand the actual world. To address my first point, Jack is still unusually dependent on Ma. He still breastfeeds from her, and he can't stand being separated from her for any am

When I reflect back on this book the one thing that keeps coming back to my mind is Jefferson's journal entry, and I don't think it's recency bias. It was a super emotionally fraught and raw chapter. It was also drastically different from what we were used to reading. Everything we had read so far was from Grant's perspective, and very little included Grant's actual encounters with Jefferson. So, it was a stark contrast to have a whole chapter from Jefferson's perspective, at the climax of the book. I was thinking: what does this chapter tell us about Grant and Jefferson's relationship? I think it confirmed that Grant was successful in achieving Miss Emma's goal. Jefferson seemed much more mature and heroic than he did at first (developing from acting like a hog to make a point, to wanting a whole gallon of ice cream, to asking for a thoughtful final meal with a reasonable amount of ice cream). The chapter also showed that Grant was successful in becom