St. Columba’s College
Transition Year Programme: English Department
Extended Essay: Bethany Shiell: Confinement
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Different Types Of Confinement
Chapter 3: How The Stories Are Written
Chapter 4: The Progress Of Their Feelings
Chapter 5; How Their Confinement Changed Them
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
My first plan was to write this essay on the theme of Racism. So I began reading Anne Frank, but I soon realised that the book didn’t actually have much on that theme, but it did have a lot of insight on being trapped; Anne constantly wrote about her relationships with the people she was stuck with and the troubles she found living in such a small space. This made me change my theme to Confinement, as I found it more interesting.
According to the Collin’s English Dictionary, to Confine is to “keep close or within bounds; limit; restrict. To restrict the free movement of.” This is the case of all the main characters in the 3 books I have chosen, which were Room by Emma Donoghue, Stolen by Lucy Christopher and The Diary of Anne Frank.
Room is from the perspective of a five year old boy who has been born and raised in captivity. The first half of the book takes place in a Room, eleven by eleven foot, in which the main character, Jack, has spent his entire life. This is Donoghue’s seventh, but considered ‘breakthrough’, novel. When summarised, the story sounds almost like a horror; a boy and mother being held in captivity by a captor who only visits them to rape the mother and deliver supplies. And perhaps this may have become the reader’s perspective, had the story been told by the mother. But it is narrated in first person by the five – year – old boy Jack.
Told from the perspective of 16 year old Gemma, Stolen is written as a letter to her captor. Taken from an airport Gemma is flown to the Outback in Australia; to the middle of nowhere. Over the next few weeks Gemma is introduced to a whole new landscape and life. Determined to get back home as soon as she can, she soon has to come to an important decision whether to stay or not, but by the end she isn’t so sure of herself. This letter is her explanation on what happened and why she changed her mind.
We all know the story of Anne Frank, but I chose to use her diary in this essay in an attempt to look deeper in to her and her life. Her diary was her best friend for two years and she told ‘Kitty’ everything. “The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings; otherwise, I’d probably suffocate.” I want to understand her journey to becoming a woman in her harsh circumstances: “I’m more of a person than a child – I feel I’m completely independent of others”
Different Types Of Confinement
Some small comparisons between the different types of confinement in my books are the food and exercise routines: All three cases have a lack of food, though in Stolen it is Gemma’s own choice as she doesn’t trust him at first. In the other two books it is mostly a case of boring food. Anne is the only one who really runs out of food.
To compare their exercise routines; Jack does “phys. ed.”, for an hour a day. This mainly consists of running back and forth and jumping, due to the lack of space. Anne runs up the stairs occasionally, but she doesn’t need much as she needs to conserve her energy because of the lack of food. Whereas Gemma is free to do whatever she wants.
All three people in my books are physically trapped. Two of them have no way to escape. They have someone who is physically holding them somewhere against their will. Anne could have escaped if she had wanted to; even though her family (unspoken-ly) asked her to stay, she has the choice to leave. But just as much for her own sake as for her flatmates’, she chose to stay.
Gemma is not actually confined in the sense that she has no space, because she has an unlimited amount of space, and she thinks that makes her lucky. She thinks that she can escape because her captor wouldn’t be able to find her out in the wilderness but after two failed escape attempts, she realises that if she wants to survive, she has to stay close to her captor. Gemma is in complete isolation from the outside world, as opposed to my other two characters who each have companions; Jack also has TV and Anne her radio.
A difference between Jack, Anne and Gemma is that Jack is only physically confined at the beginning of the book, whereas I still think that his book remains relevant to the topic of Confinement as in the second half of the book he is mentally confined; he compares everything to before. Everything is confusing to him. He is stuck inside his own memories, inside his own head.
Even though all three characters are happy at the beginnings of the books, Jack is the only one who is happy in his confinement. He is the only one who is happy being isolated.
Nevertheless, all three characters are unhappy when they are finally released into the outside world; all Jack has ever known is confinement. The bright lights, harsh sounds and vast numbers of people are all scary to him; Gemma doesn’t trust her friends and family anymore because of what Ty told her, and she now has to live without the man she loves and Anne only leaves the Annexe when she’s on her way to a concentration camp, as we know, to die.
How The Stories Are Written
All three of my books are written in the first person, and it makes the book so much more intense by putting you inside the character’s mind. You feel what the character feels. It pulls you in to the story with much more force that from an observer’s point of view.
In Jack’s case the author makes Jack mature for his age in what he says but not how he says it. We are reminded in every sentence that this is just a young boy experiencing these things. But Donoghue has made him “prematurely observant”, and five is just right for someone to be aware of things but not feel the need to understand everything. The fact that he is thrown into our world mature for his age, lets us see what one would see if they had never encountered our world before. Jack has to learn about everything from personal space to shoplifting so suddenly; it would be funny if it were under different circumstances. This book is not only about a woman who is kidnapped or a boy who grows up in captivity, but it is an introduction to our world from an outsider’s perspective and it is a reminder of the uniqueness of our world.
Jack has always believed every word his Ma has told him, but as Ma begins to tell him about the Outside, he appears to start losing faith in her. She is telling him something contrary to everything he believes. "My head's going to burst from all the new things I have to believe”. But as he struggles to believe her, we are uplifted again by what he doesn’t realise and that is how hard she fights for him. This strength that she finds is incredible, and is the only thing keeping both of them sane in their horrible circumstances.
The intensity of the way the book is written is also balanced out when the story moves Outside. Both Jack’s world and the way the book is written becomes less intense as his world is opened up and the writing becomes more like other novels as the subject become more normal.
Anne Frank is honest in her writing because she wanted people to know exactly what she went through when she published her book as she planned to do. The detail she provides really pulls you in as a reader because she lets you in on her every thought. “I long … to cry! I feel as if I were about to explode…. I’m in a state of utter confusion, don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I’m longing for something…”. The fact that Anne was quite a private person; that much more went on inside her head than what she let others know, benefitted the book because she told us so much. “I have an intense need to be alone”. She writes like she is telling a secret, for example “whenever I have my period…I have the feeling that in spite of the great pain, discomfort and mess, I’m carrying around a sweet secret.” It is insights like these that help us to relate to her and show us that she really was just human like the rest of us.
Stolen is written in a letter format. This style let the author explain exactly what Gemma was feeling. It took an intimate and emotional route and as the story went, as Gemma accepted her surroundings more and more, the book made me feel more and more uplifted as I read.
The way that Christopher writes about Gemma being confused about her feelings for Ty makes the reader feel more of a part of the book, because we can’t figure it out ourselves. This is a very good way of getting readers to keep reading, as both they and the character try to figure it out, what feels like, together.
The Progress of their Feelings
Because all three books are told with the narrator as the main character, a huge part of the books is how the characters feel during their confinement and how it changed them. So I feel it is necessary to give a chapter of this essay to the progress of the characters feelings, throughout their confinement.
At the start of the books: Jack is completely naïve to the outside world. He believes what he sees on TV is all fake and the things people do in it are just stories. He is happy. He is having the time of his life playing with his Ma: "We have thousands of things to do every morning," Jack says, "like give Plant a cup of water in Sink for no spilling, then put her back on her saucer on Dresser. . . . I count one hundred cereal and waterfall the milk that's nearly the same white as the bowls, no splashing, we thank Baby Jesus.” What makes Jack different to Anne and Gemma is that he has no expectations. He does not expect, or want, his life to change any time soon. This is what makes him happy, as opposed to Gemma, who believed there was nothing wrong in her life before and that a stranger had taken everything that was good away from her. She believed he was just trying to convince her her life was bad so that she would want to stay with him. She couldn’t wait to get away from him. Anne, too, missed her freedom and hated being trapped. The hope of being freed from the Annexe was the only thing that gave her purpose. At the start of the diary Anne, like Jack, doesn’t think too much of her surroundings. She fusses over the small family problems she has. She talks more about her relationships between the people in the Annexe. In her early entries Anne writes from the carefree and naïve perspective of a teenage girl; wrapped up in her own problems and not paying much attention to the death and war around her.
Anne is also sour at the injustice caused to her, like Gemma is. Anne is upset that they have had to lock themselves away to stay safe. Throughout her confinement, however, while she is separated from many of the things which her life used to revolve around, such as her friends, Anne is forced to realise the harsh reality around her. Although she tries to stay positive throughout the novel, this young teenage girl is forced to face a bleak reality. Such is the case with all these books; all three have had to experience things that no one should have to go through. No one should ever have to feel confined.
Another similarity between the character’s feelings is that each of them is forced to come to new realisations particularly due to the large amount of time they have to think and reflect on their lives. Jack is forced into Outside, into a whole new world, and he is forced to realise that this is where he will spend the rest of his life. Anne comes to conclusions about her relationships with different people in the Annexe, and she starts to think about the war and the impact it has on her. She also goes through some very tough realisations that are very hard to hear such as “I’ve reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can’t do anything to change events anyway. I’ll just let matters take their course and concentrate on studying and hope that everything will be all right in the end”. Anne goes through many low points such as this, and says things like “Our thoughts are subject to as little change as we are. They’re like a merry-go-round, turning from the Jews to food, from food to politics…All I really want is to be an honest-to-goodness teenager!” But she does eventually become happy again, “My life here is better now, much better. God has not forsaken me, and He never will.”
Also, Gemma’s guard begins to drop as she becomes convinced that the things Ty tells her are true. He tells her about when he heard her parents saying they did not want Gemma anymore and were planning on sending her away. At first she is in complete denial, but since she is in the middle of nowhere with only one other person to talk to, she has a lot of time to think; she thinks a lot about her parents and her relationship to them. She begins to notice things that support his statement. Little pieces of evidence. Also, as he tells her about other things which must be true, she wonders if what he is telling her is a lie among some truths, or whether Ty really was just trying to save her.
This deep evaluation affects her when she is set free. She is different towards her parents, who are now showering her in love that isn’t reciprocated. Gemma’s final realisation during her confinement is that she has fallen in love; both with her captor and with her surroundings and the saddest thing about the ending of this book is that she realises this just as both of these things are ripped away from her, and her world changes again. The hardest thing that all three characters have to deal with is not the confinement itself, but the fact that their worlds are turned upside down when they leave.
Jack’s feelings really begin to change when he turns five and his Ma starts telling him about the outside world. She then starts pushing him as her hope picks up and she begins encouraging him as she realises he is her only chance of escape. “Maybe when I’m six” he says. He panics when he gets outside as he is completely out of his comfort zone and all he has ever known. Also now that he is not the centre of Ma’s world he is also at a loss because he doesn’t have someone fussing over him every moment of every day as when he was lost when she was “Gone”.
Anne’s relationships also begin to deteriorate as everyone in the Annexe gets more and more upset with each other. Being trapped can have a huge impact on people’s relationships, as it can “give them a chance to review their old relationships and maybe even start some new ones with the people they are stuck with.”
In Room, the author writes of the feelings of fear and love throughout the book. Near the beginning it is more fear, but this slowly moves over to give space for love. These two feelings are used in all three books; though each uses them in different ways: At first Jack’s world is filled with love. He loves his Ma, Room and everything in it. He loves his world, unlike his Ma however, who feels fear constantly. She hates Room, especially the person who put her in it. Her feelings, and Jack’s, swap when they escape however; Jack is afraid of Outside. He is scared of everything in it, whereas Ma is ecstatic about their freedom. She loves her world.
In Anne Frank, her fear and love become muddled as time passes; at first they all get along fine. She has always assumed that she loved her family- because everyone does, right? But she very quickly falls out of love with her Mother, who clearly shows her preference for her sister Margot. “I don’t fit in with them”. Throughout her time in the Annexe, Anne’s love for her sister fluctuates. At first she resents her for being the favoured child, and in the end she settles as a friend; though love might be too strong a word for their relationship. Anne also starts falling out with her father, who she believes doesn’t understand her, whereas she used to say things like: “I model myself on father, and there’s no one in the world I love more.” Anne never particularly liked anyone in the Annexe , but eventually falls for Peter Van Daan. “I was longing for something…but… a small, a very small, part of the problem has been resolved.” The relief of having someone else to confide in, apart from her diary, who actually knows what she is going through, makes her happier than she has been throughout her entire life in the Annexe.
Anne’s relationships with the people she once loved become complicated. Within the first few months of their captivity Anne realises she doesn’t love her Mother, but as time wears on and Anne become more mature she realises that she will have to tolerate her mother and that they might as well get along “but there’s one thing I can’t do, and that’s to love Mother with the devotion of a child…I’ve cut myself adrift from them. I’m charting my own course, and we’ll see where it leads me…Who else but me can I turn to for comfort?”
Unlike Gemma, however, Anne is forced to be around the people she is falling out of love with. Gemma has time and space to think about things without the presence of the people themselves. The effect that this has on Anne is that she takes out her feelings on her flatmates. She says irrational things to people that she might not have said had she had time to properly think about it. “[about her Mother] It’s true, she didn’t understand me, but I didn’t understand her either…I was offended, insolent and beastly to her, which, in turn, made her unhappy. We were caught in a vicious circle of unpleasantness and sorrow… these violent outbursts on paper and simple expressions of anger that, in a normal life, I could have worked off by locking myself in a room and stamping my foot a few times or calling Mother names behind her back.”
How Their Confinement Changed Them
By the end of all these books each of the main characters has changed dramatically: Anne has been forced to grow up. “As of today, my gossiping is a thing of the past” She has had to come to terms with who she is and her relationships with people, and her situation. She has had more than enough time to reflect and has worn away almost all her childish ways with her thinking. She was forced into a dangerous situation and Anne realised that and came to terms with it; losing her innocence in the process. “My own affairs have been pushed to the background by…a break in!...Now…I want friends, not admirers. People who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile”.
When Gemma is taken from everything she knows at the start of the book, she begins to appreciate it more. She misses the city, her family and friends so much. But eventually she also begins to learn about her surroundings and she begins to question whether the city really is the right thing for her. She grows to love the vast wasteland of the desert, and dislike the idea of a city more and more. Her relationships with the people she returns to as well have also changed in her eyes. Even though she was only in confinement for a relatively short amount of time in comparison to the other books, Gemma has also been forced to grow up as she looked for a way out of her situation she had to look at it through everyone else’s eyes – including those of her captor. She began to sympathise with him as she realises that he is not who she thought. She then applies this realisation to all kidnappers around the world, and even though she knows what Ty did was wrong, she understands him and forgets her first stubborn approach which was just to hate him.
Jack changes the least out of all my characters as by the end of the book he still doesn’t understand his situation like Gemma and Anne do. But he is forced to grow up as well as he finds that if he is to survive he has to adapt. Jack changes in a slower, more discreet way that he only really notices himself when he goes back to visit room and everything is different. “We step in through Door and it’s all wrong”. The difference with Room is that it isn’t so much the character that has changed, but it’s the reader. We have been taken on such a journey with this boy that we don’t realise just how different he is to normal boys, but in a good way. We see just how honest and practical he is. For example when Ma tells him to choose five toys from the bag, he takes six without her knowing and ends up having nightmares from the guilt. This is when he begins to realise that his Ma can’t watch his every move any more. When his Grandma takes him to the playground he doesn’t enjoy it as he realises the pointlessness of it.
The way this book is written keeps you emotionally tied to Jack throughout, and what you most want throughout the book is to save him, but the question is how you would do that; would you set him free and into our world or would you keep him preserved in Room forever?
Conclusion
Almost three months after having been told about the project (when the pressure began), 3 books and 3, 000 words later, I can confidently come to the conclusion that I am glad I was made to write this essay. Whether it has, or has not, turned out as well as I had hoped, I’m not sure I would have had any reason to read the books I did. I didn’t know much about the subject of Confinement and kidnapping, but now a whole world has been opened up to me. I found myself in front of the “Biographies” section in WHSmith’s the other day, instead of the “Teen Fiction” that usually grabs my attention first.
Writing this essay has helped me appreciate things in my life that I hadn’t noticed were there before. Like freedom. Although we grow up with stories about people who are confined; Jews, slaves, prisoners of conscience, immigrants etc. reading these books has helped me understand them more. It has created a more personal connection to the subject than I had before.
Even though we will all be glad to get these essays out of the way, I am really glad to have had done it as I have taken so much more out of these books than I would have, had I just read them and passed them on. I have had to think about what aspects of the books stood out the most to me and to look into them in greater detail, especially with comparing them to one another which I never would have done. Now I can empathise and not just sympathise.
Bibliography:
By Bethany Shiell