The book I'm reading at the moment, Room, is about a woman who was kidnapped at the age of 19. Held captive by her kidnapper in a workshop behind his house, she is repeatedly raped by him. She ends up becoming pregnant by him once, losing the baby, only to become pregnant again with Jack, the book's narrator. In the book she tells Jack that the baby who died, she, was him but she was 'wrong' so she went to Heaven and came back as him. I don't know how I feel about this. I mean in some way I guess it's true. Your child is trying to come to you, but just isn't right. I don't know, though, that I could ever think of my future child as the reincarnation of the one I lost. It's not that I don't believe in reincarnation, I just see them as two totally different individuals.
This book is really interesting though. Midway through the book, Jack and his mother make their 'Great Escape' and their captor is caught and jailed. The rest of the book is about the both of them trying to adjust to the world. Five year old Jack's never known 'Outside,' and he resembles a toddler learning, touching, smelling, hearing the World for the first time. His mother has to deal with media scrutiny and being judged over the way she gave birth to Jack and raised him. Someone in the book asks her why she never considered asking her kidnapper to take him to a hospital or adoption center so 'he could have a better life.' Her response is, 'A better life without me?' It's an interesting question b/c you wonder what you would do in that situation. I mean parents give their children up for adoption all the time so that they can have a 'better life.' What makes Jack's mother's situation any different? I wonder if it had to do with companionship? Did she keep Jack so she wouldn't be alone? It's hard to say that she kept him because she loved him b/c that might imply that parents who give their children up for adoption do not love them. And I know this is far from the case. In actuality, many parents do so because they love their child. The one thing that is clear is that no matter how Jack's mother handled the situation of having Jack, he would have been missing something. Would you rather miss the World? Or a mother's Love?
