Review of House Rules by Jodi Picoult - Essay Example

?House Rules by Jodi Picoult Jodi Picoult is an extraordinary who writes about extraordinary themes in her best sellers and House Rules is no exception. It is a wonderful book that deals with Asperger Syndrome and shows the difficulties that a family may face when one of its members is affected with this disease. The book reveals how a single disease can change the outlook and lifestyle of each of the family member associated with it. As the father runs away in fright of the disease, the mother devotes herself to the cause of her eldest son. Her world revolves around her AS kid and she does everything within her means (and also without) to make him as normal as possible. In her all absorbing efforts to normalize the elder child, the younger one is thoroughly neglected and he grows up to be a rebel and a thief. The various Asperger syndromes have been clearly shown. The mother’s anguish is visible through her own words. She wants to be a good mother and neutralize her kid’s life as much as possible; still she grieves at each moment when she fails in her attempts. The brother of the AS kid also draws our sympathy in spite of the negative image created by him. He is very miserable in life with an absentee father, an abnormal brother, a busy mother and no money to fund his amusements. His soul cries out for love and happiness and to find out happiness he peaks into happy families. With the passage of time, he becomes bolder in his endeavors and starts house breaking in the absence of the owners and stealing stuff that his mother can’t afford. He feels burdened with having to look after his brother and irritated at having his needs met before his own. While, the AS child is given all the facilities and care, the normal child is left to his devices. Thus, we find different people reacting in different manner towards Asperger Syndrome that starts from fear and shirking of responsibility (father), over protective attitude (mother), to a feeling of resentment and burdened (brother). House Rules also reflects on the inefficiency of the legal system when dealing with people facing some physical or psychological disability. The legal system is created on the basis of normal citizens and when an abnormal individual falls in its periphery then it become increasingly difficult to save his soul. The judiciary system has been inadequately created to mistrust all abnormal people. There is no word such as “abnormality” in their dictionary. They would deal with an AS person in the same way as an ordinary individual showing no empathy whatsoever. Thus, over and above the House Rules deals with the trauma of a suffering family that has a child with Asperger Syndrome and the inadequate justice system reigning in the country. Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder where the patient has difficulty in social interaction. The sufferer also show restricted and repetitive pattern of interest and behavior. This disorder is difficult to diagnose as the cognitive and linguistic development are preserved and are almost equal to a normal person. Hence, most of the time this disorder goes unnoticed. In fact, not many people are aware of this disorder and this is the reason that the sufferers do not get the empathy and treatment that they deserve. Jacob Hunt, the central character of the book suffers from this order and has to face several difficulties (besides the obvious ones) because of it. Jacob Hunt is an eighteen years old boy who lives with his mother, Emma Hunt and brother, Theo Hunt. His father had run away soon after Theo’s birth when he had been made aware of his first child’s condition. Jacob is an intelligent individual with a very sharp mind but his drawback is that he is suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome and is hopeless at expressing himself and reading social cues. Jacob’s highly intelligent mind is revealed by his mother’s words in the first chapter itself: I’ve met so many parents of kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger’s. They tell me I’m lucky to have a son who is so verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later. They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there’s a wider one to explore. But, try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn’t know how.” (Jodi Picoult, Page 5). Later it is reinforced by other examples in the book. Jacob is very frank and speaks up anything that comes to his mind without any subtleties. This makes him look rude and outspoken in other people’s eyes. For example, when in the seventh grade he had the opportunity to sit beside a girl in a cafeteria. Girl: You wanna taste my slushie? Jacob: Sharing drinks can give me mono. So can kissing. Girl (Leaving Table): I’m going to sit somewhere else. Hence, Jacob has few friends and the family has to face hidden whispers behind their backs. But, the example does not fully reflect Jacob’s personality. It seems that the protagonist has a good sense of humor and is even capable of jokes. He shares a few of them with his family- Jacob: “I have a joke: Two muffins are in an oven. One muffin says, “Wow, it’s really hot in here.” The other one jumps and says, “Yikes! A talking muffin.” Jacob is however trapped in his own world and does not understand the meaning of emotions and empathy. He conveys his confusions in the following words: I am the first person to tell you that I do not understand love. How can you love your new haircut, love your new job, and love your girlfriend all at once? Clearly the word doesn’t mean the same thing in different situations, which is why I have never been able to figure it out with logic Thus, we find that Jacob is unable to feel an empathy with anything or anyone. He even takes casually something as elemental as death and explains it in logical words. Dead isn’t angels or ghosts. It’s a physical state of breakdown, a change in all those carbon atoms that create the temporary house of a body so that they can return to their most elemental stage. I don’t really see why that freaks people out, since it’s the most natural cycle in the world. For Jacob facts are of paramount importance. He needs facts to prove anything. Logic doesn’t appeal to him. His sense of judgment is ruled by facts. He corrects someone as soon as he hears them speaking something wrong. In his own words: If I give you a compliment, it's not because it's the right thing to say, it's because it's true. Routine language doesn’t come easily to me. If you say thank you, I’ll have to rummage through my database brain for you're welcome. I can’t chat about the weather just to fill up the silence. The whole time I’m thinking, this is so fake. If you're wrong about something, I'll correct you - not because i want to make you feel bad (in fact, I am not thinking about you at all) but because facts are very important to me, more important than people are.(Jodi Picoult, Page 282). However, Jacob is not unaware of his disability and comprehend that he is different. He wants to join the real world and understands when people speak of him as "the weird kid who stands too close and doesn't shut up." As an AS sufferer, Jacob needs a structured life to organize him. Hence, his mother has made up some ground rules to make his life more ordered. Emma Hunt has made home rules that demands speaking of truth, tidying up places, twice a day brushing of teeth, never being late for school and taking care of one’s brother. Though Theo breaks much of the rules, but Jacob sticks to them with a reverence. Emma is a very conscientious mother who understands that AS child upbringing is a herculean job and requires much attention. According to her, Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I’m living will never really fit. Emma herself is a columnist and writes for the local newspaper. As is obvious her first priority is her abnormal child and she throws herself in this task with full body and soul. Her devotion is appreciable as she takes no vacation, has no leisure time, no enjoyment in her life, but, just work towards making her son’s life as simple as possible. But, she fails in her duty towards her younger child as she thoroughly neglects him for her elder son. She says to Jacob “I love you, and when you love someone, you do things for them without complaining about it.” She spends almost every available time and money on her first born so that his life becomes easier in the long run. This is a slow uphill journey and very draining (both financially and emotionally). This breeds insecurity and isolation in Theo who thinks himself unwanted and unloved. Theo as a fifteen year old boy has developed aggressive and rebellious qualities. He is angry and frustrated because he thinks that he has been burdened by a brother who is “a total nutcase”. He may even be a victim of peer teasing as his friends call his brothers with weird names. Therefore, he himself has gone inside a cell, resents his brother and misses his father. He develops some unhealthy habits like breaking into people’s homes and picking up food and other objects that pricks his fancy (such as video games, MP3 players, CDs and iPods). It is during one of these house breaking episodes that he sees Jess Ogilvy (Jacob’s social skills counselor) taking a shower and later slip and fall to her death. Like other AS kids, Jacob too was obsessed with a specific subject- that of forensic analysis. He had read many books on detective works, autopsy discovery and forensic procedures. He regularly watched murder mysteries and stacked notes to refer to the clues that led him to the discoveries of those crimes. Jacob had a police scanner in his room and with its help he always showed up at the scenes of crimes, telling the cops exactly what they needed to do. And most of the times he was right. Jacob had a very intelligent and analytical brain and could easily think of the right course of action to catch hold of the culprit. Jacob’s obsessions with forensic crimes make him set up dummy crime scenes for his friends and family members where he pays strict and close attention to every minute detail. But, one day he himself is caught in a web of crime with the death of his tutor, Jess Ogilvy. Now the same cops question him about the crime scene and mistake his Asperger syndrome and his deep fascination with forensic crimes to be a sign of guilt. As is common with AS children, Jacob is unable to make eye contact with his questioners. He even has stimulatory twitches and tics. All of these are seen as classic signs of guilt conscious by the police department. Hence, the rope of judiciary system starts ensnaring him in its grip. Jess was a friendly young counselor whom Jacob’s mother had hired to teach him some basic social skills. However, Jess’ boyfriend dislikes her pupil and accuses her of having a fondness for him. Later Jess is found dead under suspicious conditions and her body is found a few meters outside her home wrapped in Jacob’s favorite quilt and having a broken teeth kept in her pocket. According to Jacob, he had seen his brother run away from the scene of Jess’ death and to protect him from the clutches of the police, gave his tutor’s death an entirely new angle. He had found Jess in a pool of her own blood dead in the bathroom. He later dressed her and placed her outside the house. He then cleaned up the original death scene and created a new one to lead the police in a different direction. However, Jacob’s mother recognizes the quilt wrapped around the dead body as that belonging to her son and informs the police. Later the cops find several more clues (Jacob had left his fingerprints at the scene of crime, the evaluation of unlabeled crime scene that was identical to the death of Jess found in Jacob’s notebook, the backpack that Jacob had retrieved from Jess’ home) that point a clear finger of accusation towards Jacob as a probable culprit. Jacob himself is unable to fabricate a lie and under the pressure of the detective accepts all his “crimes”. Hence, he becomes the prime suspect in that murder mystery and it becomes increasingly difficult to prove the teenager’s innocence. Alarmed by the prospect of her son wasting away in a prison cell, Emma hires an attorney (Oliver Bond) for him. Emma accepts that her son has some violent fits, but did not believe that they could be so severe as to actually kill someone. However, Jacob’s own verdict shakes her belief in him. An interesting court scene follows where the young lawyer diligently fights to get justice for his client. But, Jacob’s disability works against him and proving his innocence becomes a very difficult chore. In the end however, justice is prevailed and Jacob is able to prove himself innocent. The book highlights the importance of family and show how the family members step up in defense and support of each other at times of need. It is the tragic moments that make or break a family. The way the people deal in times of catastrophe make way for establishing strong characters. The Hunt family suffered many misfortunes (such as father leaving at an early stage of their lives, elder son with AS disorder, troubled younger son, tight home budget and lastly, false accusation of murder), but they came out stronger and closer due to it. The house rule dictated by Emma was rightly followed by Jacob who had stepped in to save his brother from the accusations. Thus, we find that a tightly knit family can face many hurdles in life but it could overcome all of them and come out a winner. The novel has been written from a personal perspective from five of the main characters- Jacob Hunt, Emma Hunt (Jacob’s mother), Theo Hunt (Jacob’s brother), Rich Matson (head detective) and Oliver Bond (Jacob’s Attorney). It shows the development of the plot through the mind of each narrator. Thus, we get a very clear idea of everyone’s personal feelings and also get a peek inside Jacob’s AS brains. Work Cited Jodi Picoult. House Rules. Read More