“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 their kidnapping differently. Ma is a young adult who is aware of the society that exists outside, whereas Jack is a five-year-old boy oblivious to world that lies beyond the walls of Room. As a result, their coping strategies after their kidnapping are distinctive from each other given their ages, yet still represent the overall methods towards a form of consistency other kidnap victims experience after they re-enter society.
The physical, emotional, and social effects that kidnapping has on its victims can be very damaging to their human development and ability to cope with the detrimental effects that result from an extended breadth of time removed from functioning civilization. In Room, Ma and Jack both portray the archetypal effects a victim is challenged with during and after being kidnapped, as well as their methods of dealing with the trauma. In its most primitive explanation, kidnapping is a statement of power, of dominance over another individual.
However, the motivation for such an evil act of demonstrating bravado is unclear and beyond the reason of any rational argument. Regardless of its gruesome nature, kidnapping creates a type of symbiotic relationship between the kidnapper and victim that can potentially have an ingraining attachment. Essentially, “once they have another human being in their possession, that person has to rely on them for everything, including food and water” (Robert A. Waters). Within an instant, the freedom a person loves becomes the slavery he or she hates.
There is no gray area when discussing the relationship within kidnapping, for there is only one person who possesses all authority over others, “one of captor and prisoner, owner and chattel” (Jeffrey Kluger). With regards to psychological effects of kidnapping, victims express three types of reactions to being kidnapped: cognitive, emotional, and social. The most common aspects of cognitive effects are impaired memory, flashbacks, hyper vigilance, and denial.
Nonetheless, the denial of the incident ever happening serves as a reaction to severe conditions as a “survival value allowing the individual a delayed period during which he/she has time to adjust to a painful reality” (David A. Alexander and Susan Klein). Perhaps, an even more prevalent result of kidnap victims’ experiences is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 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’… or 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 survival. In addition to cognitive and emotional psychological effects, the social impacts of kidnapping are wide-ranging. A common theme for many victims after they are freed is a continued difficulty sleeping because they are “afraid to fall asleep and let their guard down, lest they be taken again” (Allison Gamble).
Furthermore, kidnapping victims experience trust issues, as a result of having their freedom suppressed for an extended period of time. This is especially true for people who have been in a kidnap situation involving sexual abuse, where they have difficulties in establishing trust with a partner and building a healthy sexual relationship. Throughout the duration of a kidnapping, both before and after, victims endure damaging physical effects that can impact their ability to settle back into society comfortably.
It is an unfortunate reality that about eight hundred thousand children get abducted each year, roughly two thousand each year, and of these daily kidnappings, the majority are young teen girls (LAWS). In most kidnapping cases, the defenseless, young girls are at the whim of their captor, where the majority are exploited merely for sexual motives. Perhaps the most frequent type of physical damage a victim may experience is rape, however it is not a lone incident, for it is inextricably linked to other physical abuses, such as being tortured or locked away as if the victim were a caged animal.
