playground; by Aron Beauregard is a novel consisting of 50 chapters. it revolves around a man in his forties named Rock and explores the concepts of violence, mental health, and guilt. Through the testing of a new playground, 8 kids are forced to go through trials of pain. The playground is built with weapons like saw’s and fiber-glass.
Rock considered what came next for Donnie as his eyes twinkled with tears. He didn’t want to see Donnie’s life end that day, but if his childhood was any indication of his future, then the boy would be better off heading outside with the rest of the children. If Caroline was granted full custody of the boy, as it appeared she’d been, then how much worse was the alternative?
I find this quote interesting because though Rock is a somewhat assistant to the murderer, he still feel’s guilt and remorse when he looks at this kid, which is kind of surprising because despite putting Donnie into a literal torture chamber, he doesn’t want him to die. I think that’s interesting because rock himself went through heavy trauma and when you look into it, its somewhat of a “he reminds me of myself” kind of situation. Its where rock see’s himself as the little boy that gets us somewhere, that he feels guilty for sending Donnie out there to die because he see’s it as sending himself out there. also there was a mention on Donnie’s lack of emotion and how that affected Rock about his own lack of emotion, because when you read this paragraph (more so the chapters before it too), you see that Rock feels like he really doesn’t want to send Donnie out there because he’s already really suffering through his childhood, like Rock did himself when he was a kid too, that he feels so bad for witnessing the downfall of Donnie being a kid. And Rock thought of the fact Donnie was already basically dead, a living shell with no emotion whatsoever and despite wanting to save him, Rock realizes that there is no saving him, and then he has to let go of Donnie, not just Donnie but somewhat himself too.