Jack's Future

    Room by Emma Donoghue was a novel that left me with a lot of questions. How will Jack grow up in society? Will people ever see him as anything other than the boy from the shed? How will his mother care for him all the way to adulthood? I am happy as to how Donoghue finished the novel, but like many others expressed in class, I wanted more. This is just what I think might happen in his future.

    I think Jack's life will be in the publics eye for quite a long time. He might go on tv once a year and get checked up on much like how Oprah has here "Where are they now?" episodes. People will be curious as to where he is and what he has been up to. I think that school would be difficult for Jack until he understands ownership and how to interact with other children. We saw him with his cousin but he may act strange around other children. I tried to look up some information on cases like this but many are about the adults and not the children. I think Ma will have a much harder time integrating due to the fact that she already was "gone" earlier in the novel.

    I think Ma will have an easy time finding a job because who doesn't want to higher a huge media story like this. I think it will be difficult for her to keep a job due to so many people trying to meet her much like celebrities. She won't be able to find soplitude for probably a year or two until people forget and move on. They will be financially hurt no matter what due to medical bills from Jack being sick all the time after starting school. Remember, his immune system is awful. It also will be down due to debt from their rescue and such. She also will have a really hard time not always thinking about her imprisonment even if she seemed to have taken a step in the right direction at the end of the novel.
 
    I hope that everything in the end turns out nice and Jack is fine and that Ma is not damaged psychologically but that just doesn't seem very realistic. Things will be damaged but hopefully it is not enough to ruin them.

The CIA and Black Box

We recently read Black Box by Jennifer Egan and I found the practices that the agent used very interesting. I think that a lot of what happened in Black Box could happen in the real world. Other than some of the technology, I think that they might be able to train normal woman to do something extraordinary. Things like the dissociation technique and how the beauties are taught to lie seem very realistic.

     I had heard about stories of people having out of body experiences but I wasn't for sure if it was actually a thing people could practice. It turns out it actually is something used for people with PTSD or other disorders that may be too hard for them to handle. It is a technique that therapists use to help the patients calm down. I think that it is an interesting thought to have the agent in Black Box to do something while anything that is out of her control is happening to her. I am curious as to if it will make her PTSD easier to deal with because she won't really recall the incident from the act. The fact that they can get vets to do this leads me to believe that these women can be taught pretty much any of the same things if given enough time.

    Soldiers are drilled, and drilled until they can walk straight into a war. They are able to put their basic instincts behind them and do what most of us deem impossible. I think that this would be some of the same training the agent was given due to the fact that she doesn't crack even while sleeping with a very dangerous man or being whisked on a boat ride to god knows where. It is something that we could probably never believe possible but I think with enough training it could be done.

    Egan does an amazing job of spinning reality and fiction together to help us connect with the agent. I think it made for a great short story and it showed she did some research before launching into this project.