The Never Ending Hero's Journey

            The novel Room by Emma Donoghue details the captivating story of Jack and Ma’s escape from capture and adaption to the real world. Both Jack and Ma arguably have multiple hero narratives. Their first heroic feats come from their individual efforts that lead to their escape from Room, and their heroism is also evident in the way they adjust to the alarmingly contrasting outside world.

            Jack and Ma’s first heroic journey is quite obvious. Their call to adventure is the escape from their imprisonment. Without having any previous experience raising kids, Ma raises Jack so that he is ready to undertake the escape. She tells him fairy tales of imprisonment and daring escapes. She replaces the character’s names with Jack so that he identifies with the characters and feels that he can be the rescuer in the stories. Jack leaves Room and navigates the outside world. He has to evade Old Nick and find help in an environment he is entirely unfamiliar.

            In terms of plot, Room could have easily ended here. The escape from Room is a satisfying ending to a novel. Instead, Emma Donoghue chooses to continue the novel with the story of how Jack and Ma integrate into society. It is almost as if she writes a sequel contained within the same novel.

            After their escape, Jack feels as if he has used up all his brave, or his courage. It is evident that this is not the case. Jack has to embark on a new journey to explore the world around him. Each day is a struggle to wrap his mind around the concept that the world is bigger than just Room. Ma has to deal with the fact that the world is not the same as it was when she was kidnapped. She has to adjust to animosity from the media and overcome her depression.

             This series of heroic escapades got me thinking about how this similar concept could apply to the other characters we have read about so far. They do not merely embark on one journey, their lives are made up of a sequence of heroic adventures. This is more obvious in some characters than others. In The Odyssey, Odyssues’ return home is his second heroic journey we know of, his first being his fight in the Trojan War. At the end of As I Lay Dying, the entire Bundren family has to return home and adjust to Anse’s new wife. Cash comes to mind as the most daunting journey; he has to live without the use of one of his legs. This is especially challenging considering carpentry is what he loves to do. I like to imagine that in A Lesson Before Dying, Grant returns to his school with a new approach. His experience with Jefferson changes his mentality so that he battles against the oppression of the segregated schools. If we are to take Jefferson as a Christ figure, his journey could live on through Paul. In the Bible, Paul the Apostle spreads the gospel after Christ’s death, similarly to Paul spreading Jefferson’s story. Paul the Apostle is a bridge between the Jews and the Gentiles, and Paul could be a bridge between the Black and White communities.

            It is reassuring to think that although the novel ends, our heroes continue. Even if we do not ever read about it, there are new journeys awaiting them. 

Ma's Perspective

            The novel Room features a unique perspective of narration. The main character and narrator is Jack, a five year old who has grown up his entire life in an eleven by eleven foot room. Emma Donoghue’s choice to have Jack as the narrator brings many features to the book. The brokenness of Jack’s thoughts and his incorrect grammar clearly demonstrate the fact that he is five years old. This promotes a closer connection between Jack and the reader whereas a narration from Ma’s perspective could have painted Jack as a side character. His thoughts not only point to his age but also show that he has been isolated from the world. He describes everything from an objective viewpoint. Because of this, the reader sees both how he thinks and plot elements in an interesting way.

            The most important aspect of reading Room from Jack’s perspective is understanding how much of an effect growing up in isolation has had on his mentality. At the beginning of the novel, he does not know of any existence outside of “Room”. Because of the lies Ma had to tell him, he has trouble distinguishing from fiction and reality. The obscureness of his mindset would be impossible to capture from any perspective except his own. Even though Ma knows practically everything about Jack, she is not able to see things from his point of view. Knowing the way Jack approaches the world makes all his feats stunningly impressive.

            Although I do agree with the decision to narrate the novel from Jack’s irreplaceable perspective, I think that it is interesting to consider the novel from Ma’s perspective. The section titled “Dying” features Jack’s daring escape from Old Nick as he runs out into a world he has never encountered and a loneliness apart from Ma that instills an alarming distress in him. However, the escape is just as much a heroic expedition for Ma as for Jack. Ma is the orchestrator of the escape and has partially been planning the escape for the seven years she has been trapped in “Room”. The escape captures Ma’s bravery because, unlike Jack, she knows the grave consequences of failure.

Ma’s perspective is a much bleaker and gloomy presentation of their predicament, without the delusional optimism and never-ending excitement of a five year old child. The differences between Ma and Jack’s mentalities are apparent throughout the entire book and demonstrated with clarity when they are planning their Plan B escape. Jack is practicing pretending to be dead, but he keeps breaking out into giggles. To Jack, pretending to be dead is not easily distinguished from playing dead in their game “Corpse”. It is hard for him to separate games from real life. The scene from Ma’s perspective would undoubtedly include her musings over the consequences of their actions. She knows how unstable of a condition Old Nick is in and how easily the escape plan could fail. To Ma, Plan B is their last chance at escape and a matter of life and death.

Ma’s narration would also more extensively cover the realities of living in “Room”. Primarily in the earlier parts of the novel, Jack’s portrayals of their activities are skewed by his limited understanding of how they fit into the broader context of the world. From Jack’s perspective, every weekday they play a game called “Scream” where they shout at the top of their lungs towards the skylight. When reading this scene from Jack’s perspective, it is not quite clear what is going on at first. It eventually becomes clear that this is an attempt at attracting attention for escape. If this section were narrated by Ma, the reasoning behind this “game” would at once be clear. Ma’s narration would capture her sheer desperation.

The possibility that fascinates me the most about Ma’s narration is her portrayal of Old Nick. From Jack’s perspective, Old Nick is mysterious. At first, Jack is not even sure if Old Nick is human. Old Nick sways between the polar opposites of a god and a villain to Jack. Ma’s portrayal of Old Nick would provide readers with a much more detailed description of Old Nick. Our introduction to Old Nick would be as a kidnapper, rather than a mythical present bearer. Ma knows a lot about Old Nick’s life through their seven years of conversations that is not provided to the reader.