Grief Through A Child's Eyes
The Babadook & Amelia's Resentment
Throughout the events of The Babadook, the two main characters are tormented by the title character, a tophat wearing evil entity that speaks in rhymes and comes complete with it’s own tell-all pop-up book, that serves as physical depiction of the mental illness that is infecting the central family of Amelia and Sam. In order to survive, Amelia must protect Sam from her own grief— personified as a child’s monster— before it destroys their family.
The character of the monster represents many concepts throughout the movie, both for Amelia and Sam. While the most obvious reading of the monster is that he represents the depression Amelia is experiencing throughout the movie, for Sam The Babadook is instead an articulation of his mother’s hidden resentment of him because of the death of his father. Amelia continually blames Sam throughout the movie for the death of his father, since he died on the way to the hospital during Sam’s birth.
To Sam, a young boy, his mother’s grief and hatred is manifested not as a complex feeling, but as a simplified story book villain. Childish in nature, The Babadook is accompanied by nursery rhyming music, a cartoonish design, and speaks in short almost infant-like sentences, while also destroying the main characters from the inside out.
WWhile Sam never knew his father, and is not able to feel the same loss that Amelia feels throughout the movie, he is tormented instead by the presence of Amelia’s grief, depression, and resentment as personified by The Babadook, along with the emptiness of a lack of father figure. Sam acts out continually, often being belittled as a “weird child” and “a problem”, because he is not getting the support mother that he needs in order to cope with his own emotions.During times of intense feelings and grief, children immediately look for parental support and require their mother or father to explain to them how to deal with the emotions they experience as a result of loss (Schonfeld). Amelia instead refuses to speak to him about his father, instead she locks all of his items in the basement, causing Sam to feel as if Amelia is hoarding his father’s life.
The Babadook is initially manifested by Sam after his expulsion from school, in which his mother has to defend him from the critical school board, and this results in him getting a scolding from his mother. Sam imagines these adult feelings that overwhelm him as a dark and sinister figure, because Sam is ill equipped to deal with the magnitude of the situation that is impressed upon him by his father’s death and mother’s hatred. He is powerless to stop this monster that is a creation of both his and his mother’s, and must rely on Amelia to ultimately defeat the creature.
Amelia is the one to truly overcome The Babadook in the end, saving her son from her own grief and learning that in order to be a good mother she must protect Sam from herself. This puts the responsibility on Amelia as a parent to care for her child, emphasizing the importance of her responsibility to support and love Sam over her own personal struggles. The film ends with Amelia exiling The Monster to the house’s basement, showing her commitment to Sam even through her own personal battles.