Safety In Room Analysis

In Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, Donoghue tells the story of Jack and Ma both in and out of captivity. For seven years Ma is held by Old Nick in the confinements of Room, an elev-en-by-eleven foot space equipped with only the bare necessities. In Ma’s second year in Room, she gives birth to her son Jack, who at the beginning of the novel does not believe in the world outside of Room. However, due to Ma’s perfectly organized escape plan they are able to escape Room, thrusting themselves into the outside world, a place completely different from inside Room. This drastic change in setting exposes a new side to nearly every aspect of their lives, completely opposite to that of Room. When this text is analyzed using structuralist theory, one

While in Room, the only person that Jack ever interacted with was Ma, he is accus-tomed to her focusing entirely on him and listening to everything he says. However, outside she is preoccupied with multiple things to do and people to see, causing her to ignore Jack. When-ever Ma is interacting with police or doctors and Jack interrupts to talk to her or ask for “some” (breast milk), she will change the subject or say “later Jack” (180). All of this causes Jack and Ma’s relationship to weaken, which results in them not having each other to rely on during times when they need each other the most. When Ma overdoses on pills in a suicide attempt it is when she sends Jack to be with her brother so she can be alone in a catatonic state. It is not until after her recovery, when she is reunited with Jack and they begin living more similarly to how they lived in Room, that their bond restrengthens and they are secure again, in their new home. An-other negative relationship that affects Ma is that with her parents, and her father specifically. When Ma reunites with her father after seven years, he is extremely uncomfortable by Jack, and makes his distain known to Ma. He says that he did not want to meet him (225), and that Ma would be better off without him, as in better off if he was

The idea of anything besides Room is scary and threatening to his mental state. Upon being told there is a world outside Room, Jack does not react ideally. As a way to cope he tries to refute and ignore what Ma is telling him, “[he says] ’Liar, liar, pants on fire, there’s no Outside.’ She starts explaining more but [he puts his] fingers in [his] ears and [shouts], ‘Blah blah blah blah blah’” (86-87). After this he begins to cry. Jack feels betrayed and lied to by his mother, all this new information that is thrust onto him leads him to be confused and causes him to lose who he thinks he is in the world. Jack has even more negative encounters with the world around him when he leaves Room. One of his first in-teractions with another child is when he is at the park with his grandma and a little girl named Cora arrives. Cora is an inquisitive little girl that says all the wrong things, upsetting Jack who is only just learning about the outside world. From asking if he is a baby girl to asking if he is hav-ing a fit (277), Cora makes Jack feel anything but normal. During that situation all Jack wants is to get away from the ridicule inadvertently being directed at him. The media also confuses him and damages his beliefs in who he is. At one point while staying in the hospital Jack finds an article about himself in the