Kidnapping Victim In Donoghue's Room

“It’s like a crater, a hole where something happened” (Donoghue 321). Yet, this crater is flooded with so much more than the dust that provides a thin sheet of remembrance between the event in time and reality. It symbolizes not only the loss of innocence, but also the stripping away of freedom, both intellectually and physiologically, leaving the victim with a deluge of emotional struggles as he or he begins their journey towards a sense of normalcy. Unfortunately, this brutal reality is apparent for every single kidnapping victim. And, it is equally true for the main characters in Room, where Ma and Jack exhibit all the traditional effects of a kidnapped victim, as they exist in an eleven-by-eleven foot Room. However, they each experience
Even though it is common, PTSD is usually the result of multiple incidents of physical abuse that victims endure while being held captive. It can then be understood as an emotional response to physically driven actions. Furthermore, symptoms of PTSD, such as shock and anxiety, can be classified into a broader definition of genuine psychopathology. In order for this condition to be present in a kidnapping victim, there needs to be an “enduring personality change after a catastrophic experience” and “a mistrustful attitude, social withdrawal and estrangement, feelings of emptiness or hopelessness, and a chronic feeling of being ‘on edge’…for at least two years” (David A. Alexander and Susan Klein). With reference to the Chowchilla incident in San Francisco in 1976, where twenty-six children were abducted, every child showed indications of PTSD and even mentally deteriorated further over time. This example sheds light on the harmful effects kidnapping can have on young children, potentially more so than adults. Other psychological reactions to being kidnapped are psychological infantilism and frozen fright, where the victim exhibits shock, fear, and a regressive type of behavior becoming attached to the kidnapper for their