We All Had Stuffed Animals

In class discussion (and a few blog comments) I’ve noticed that lots of people don’t really understand Jack’s attachment to inanimate objects. After some light research, I found the name of this behavior. Its anthropomorphism, which I though was largely human characteristics applied to animals, but turns out it can be used on objects too.

We’ve all anthropomorphized before, most often with our pets, stuffed animals, or the animals in documentary videos. I think what throws everyone off is that Jack finds this connection mostly in objects. This is basically because the only other person in the room is Ma, and she only lets him watch TV (which also has people) for a limited amount of time. But as I looked back at Jack talking about the things in his room, I found that the way Jack talks about and treats his objects is the same way he talks to people (or the characters in his books, the closest Jack has to the real thing). This makes sense, because as I was researching, I found out that when people are anthropomorphizing, they use similar brain regions to those used when they think about the behavior of other people.

I think that for some people in our class, it’s hard to understand the connections Jack makes, because these objects don’t have a “face,” or anything that makes it seem more human and conveys emotion. Indeed, the articles I read showed that most people exercise selectivity when anthropomorphizing; that is, they tend to interact more with objects that appear similar to humans. It’s one thing to say a teddy bear looks “friendly”; it’s another to read the emotions and intentions of Rug.

But one of the driving reasons behind anthropomorphism, according to my readings, is a search for social connection. I’m sure we can all think back to times when we were very young, or lonely, and played with stuffed animals or toys because everyone else was busy. Now Ma has done a great job of raising Jack, and they are always together, but having just one “social connection” is not enough for any human, especially a young child. All children anthropomorphize, and more so than adults, but Ma encourages Jack to exercise this ability to the utmost.

A major part of the reason that Ma can keep Jack entertained in Room, is because she helps him make friends from all the objects they have, and give them personalities and backstories. Not just that, but Jack has been in Room long enough to kind of watch these “characters” evolve. He knows the stories of their various scars and imperfections, such as the stain on Bed or the hole in Floor. When I first started reading Room, I remember being struck by the detail of all these personalities and backstories, maybe even a tiny bit in awe/jealous of Jack’s abilities? These object stories were way ahead of anything I did when I was five, and honestly pretty impressive, especially given the circumstances.

The story behind the refinement of Jack’s story-building abilities is heartbreaking, but Donoghue deals with it in a really touching way throughout the novel. Often people like to focus on the darkness of situations, or abhor everything that came from an impure source, if that makes any sense. This happens especially often with mental illness; it’s still pretty controversial to talk about strength or certain abilities learned through the struggle, because the gut reaction of many people (even though often unexpressed) is judgement that the person had the problem, or a kind of disbelief that they actually gained anything from it. The embodiment of this is how the TV interviewer tries to characterize Jack, as another horror coming from Nick. But for Ma, Jack is what gave her a reason to live.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, moving away from a lot of dark rambling, is that I really appreciated how Donoghue just showed us Jack’s skills at making friends from what there was in Room. Since we saw everything from Jack’s perspective, we were more inclined by nature to be impressed by everything he could do, and had to work to step back and figure out what was going on. For me, it kind of felt like regarding Jack’s ability to make friends and be entertained by random objects as a gift, I really appreciated that this wasn’t treated as just another aspect of “the freakshow.” ~Fin