Bobby’s Room

          Bobby’s Room, the short story written by Douglas Dunn, is about a boy named Henry Pollock. When he was 12 years old, Henry and his parents went on a vacation away from their home town, Glasgow. When Mr. and Mrs. Pollock realized that all of the hotels were booked, they began to argue. They continued to argue until then they found a Netherbank hotel with plenty of room to stay in. Henrys parents loved the hotel, but more importantly they loved the older couple that was running the hotel, the Bawdens. Later Mr. and Mrs. Pollock decided to go to Singapore, without Henry.

“Your mother and I have to go to Singapore”, his father said.

“We’ll be gone for most of July and all of August and September.

And I’m afraid it just isn’t practical to take you with us.” (73)

Henry was not keen on this idea, and because he is an only child and all of his grandparents were all dead, he had no one to keep an eye on him. So his parents decided to send Henry to the Netherbank hotel that they had stayed at when he was 12.

“You remember Mrs. Bawden, and Netherbank?” His wife

spoke sooner than Pollock would have liked. “We’ve arranged

 for you to stay with her” (73)

Henry was very uncomfortable with staying with Mrs. Bawden, but sadly he had no choice. So when the Pollock’s went to drop Henry off at the Netherbank hotel, Henry was understandably upset and sad, but nobody seemed to care.

                It’s very sad for Henry because deep down everybody needs someone to care about them, and Henry didn’t really have that. His parents were self-centered and his father was not very nice to him at all. His parents were all that he had, and it was clear that Henry was not the most impotent thing in their life. If he were, they would not have left him at a hotel, with people that he barely knew. Mr. and Mrs. Pollock also didn’t take Henrys feeling about leave school for almost three months under consideration. Or about them leaving the first place. They didn’t think about the fact that they are henrys parents and that he needs them to be around. Henry defiantly needed to be nurtured and cared for. But I think that because he was left at the Netherbank hotel, he resented his parents a lot. All Henry really wanted was to be loved by his parents.