I’m reading (and loving) the book ROOM by Emma Donaghue and am confused about something… Please don’t say anything about the rest of the story as I am not very far in.
I’m around page 60 or so, and Jack and Ma are flipping the mattress. He mentions the brown stain on the mattress from where he “came out of Ma’s tummy the first time”. He has already talked a couple of times about the stain on Rug from when he was born, and I feel like I’m missing something. Usually I would just read on to see if it was cleared up or if it just didn’t matter, but I have a nagging feeling that I should “get” it. Should I know what it means? Or should I just shut up and keep reading and I’ll find out?
The bloodstains on the bed and the rug are from childbirth. As to why they are on both, not sure, I haven’t read the book in a long time. She doesn’t have at on of resources, I would guess she used the rug to clean up or maybe was lying on the rug on the bed.
I don’t know how to do spoilers, but you do know that women bleed a shiteload during birth, right? There’s not much else to “get” other than knowing that she not only didn’t get free of ROOM to give birth, she didn’t even get replacements for the things damaged and stained during birth.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I don’t get what it means to come out of her tummy “the first time”, implying that there is more than one time.
I do get that women bleed a lot in childbirth (I’ve done it twice) and that the room is small, but during the messy part at least, I wasn’t overly mobile… It makes perfect sense to me to expect stains to be just on the rug or bed, though it makes sense to me that there are stains in multiple places as well. What doesn’t make sense to me is the wording of “came out of Ma’s tummy the first time”.
That may just be a mistaken conception of a small child - I’m not sure if the book goes into that specific one, but he’s got a lot of odd ideas, and one of them may be that he was small enough to hide in there for a while before he got too big. I honestly don’t remember if that ever came up or not, but it fits with everything else I do remember.
Well, part of the “charm” of Room is the narrator is a kid and talks like a kid. Sounds like his interpretation of how she explained his birth. I forget how old he is supposed to be (6? 7?). Kids don’t always make a lot of sense.
If I’m remembering correctly, there is an explanation later in the book, from Jack’s mother, that would explain the two bloodstains.
Here’s a spoiler of what I remember, so that maybe someone else who read it can confirm for you that it is the explanation:
Jack’s mother had a baby before Jack (a girl?). I believe it died and that is how Jack’s mother gets the idea to pretend Jack died and allow him to escape that way.
Thanks! The narrator is 5 and sure, talks like a kid, but the author uses the device well and at no other point have I been at all confused about what he means (or about what I am supposed to infer from his naive descriptions)
Looking at StarsApart’s spoiler, I’m pretty sure that explains it exactly… Thanks all!
If you like Room, you should check out Still Missing. Both books came out almost at the same time, I liked them both (felt they both excellent first halves and faltered a tiny bit at the ends).