I thought Alpha’s questions for Monday’s (2/27) discussion were good things to explore. I especially had interest in the idea of Cha-Cha’s concern about the ghost “running him out of the room” because this was something I had subconsciously wondered myself, and I was curious to see where this would go in the conversation. Hearing this question put into words brought my attention back to a seemingly small detail I found interesting. Why is he more worried about being pulled out of the room than of being injured (or perhaps killed)?
My ultimate idea was that Cha-Cha has this concern because of what the “big room” represents. It had become a space the children moved on to as they grew up. My group mainly dug into the idea that this book carries a sense of ownership and responsibility throughout (so far). The “big room” serves as the first example of this theme. Then the first paragraph or so in the book emphasizes the room as something special and desired, being more spaciousness than any other room in the house. Angela Flournoy describes it as a “rare and coveted space.” (1) A thing I also noticed was that at the end of the first scene, all the kids end up sleeping in that room instead of avoiding it after that event. More than just deciding to sleep there, they can’t sleep “in the right bed that night.” They are worried by “the window curtains puffing out and sucking in like gauzy lungs” (which I believe is spoken of their own bedrooms). (4) This could be another example that shows the importance of the room and what it represents to them. Despite the frightening event, they want to stay together in that room specifically.
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Flournoy, Angela. The Turner House. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2015.