Annemily's Blog

Having spent half the novel with Ma and Jack in Room, I was at first really shocked by how people criticized Ma and how defensive she had to be. It seemed to me that Ma routinely did superhuman things in Room from creating tons of great activities for Jack while always being patient with him to constantly trying to escape or get rescued to acting in her interactions with Old Nick to get as much of what she needed from him as possible. The scene that angered me the most was the one where Ma did the interview. The interviewer asked a lot of terrible questions, whether they completely ignored what Ma had said previously or showed a total lack of empathy and understand of what Ma had been through, but I’ll transcribe just part of the interview here: “[…] did you ever consider asking your captor to take Jack away?” “Away?” “To leave him outside a hospital, say, so he could be adopted. As you yourself were, very happily, I believe.” I can see Ma swallow. “Why would I have done t...

*This post talks about the ending of A Lesson Before Dying so stop reading if you haven’t finished the book and you don’t want to find out how it ends* When we started A Lesson Before Dying , we talked a lot about how the story could possibly reach a resolution and we didn’t come up with an answer. Going into the last chapter, I still wasn’t sure how I expected or even wanted it to end. Given all the anticipation of the end, I found the actual end and especially the last lines really intriguing: “I turned from [Paul] and went back into the church. Irene Cole told the class to rise, with their shoulders back. I went up to the desk and turned to face them. I was crying” (256). The thing that struck me most was the emotional vulnerability of “I was crying.” Of course Grant’s emotions are likely more intense at this point in the book than any other. But I do think it’s a change from the way Grant tries to deflect or avoid the pain he feels earlier in the book. Grant repeatedly tr...