The Biggest Room, By Emma Donoghue

The Biggest Room: Escape from Captivity as it Pertains to Jack in Room Room, by Emma Donoghue, is a novel written from the perspective of a five year-old boy named Jack. Jack is the son of a 26 year-old woman, Ma, who was kidnapped at the age of 19 and held in captivity for seven years before Jack executes their escape. Jack has spent his entire lifetime in the room their captor built for them, which he names Room, and reacts much differently to the outside world upon escaping than Ma, to whom the outside world is home. For weeks after his escape, Jack struggles, first, to adjust to a new environment and, second, to learn how others interact with it as a result of the extreme simplicity of life in Room and the lack of an adequate support system. In Room, Jack trusts Ma’s word as his only authority on how things are supposed to be, convinced that “Ma knows about everything” (291). When Jack and his mother escape Room,
however, he is thrust in a routine that everyone, including Ma, is familiar with except for him. He quickly figures out that there is more to the outside world than he ever could have imagined, and more than Ma is willing to explain to him. He grasps for something familiar to hold on to, but finds that, in the outside world, everything is different, and not everything is governed by Ma’s rules like it was in Room. Each experience that goes against his experience in Room makes Jack uncomfortable, from finding colored plates “disgusting” (177) to chairs that don’t rock like Rocker does in Room, and Ma offers little solace. To him, “everything’s wrong” (160), and nobody seems to understand or notice his distress. In addition, Jack has a hard time learning the complexities of other people and how they interact with others and the world outside Room, only having known one other person and place in his life—Ma and Room. The most obvious example of this is his trouble with pronouns, unfamiliar to him because he never had reason to use them. He notes that he “doesn’t know who all the hims are” (213), and does not know how to refer to people with the correct pronouns, using “you” when referring to Ma instead of “she”. Conversely, Jack is unable to understand who people refer to when they use pronouns. Jack also does not understand people’s general relationship with time, and how there never seems to be enough for anybody. He notices that people are “nearly always stressed and have no time…everyone has to hurry on to the next bit” (286). This throws him, because in Room there was an abundance of time and not enough activities to fill it, while the opposite is true outside. From Jack’s perspective, “In Outside the time’s all mixed up. Ma keeps saying, ‘Slow down, Jack,’ and ‘Hang on,’ and ‘Finish up now,’ and ‘Hurry up, Jack,’” adding to the list of mannerisms that Jack does not understand. Throughout the post-escape phase of Room, by Emma Donoghue, Jack has a myriad of experiences that remind him that he is alone in his confusion about the world, invalidating any argument that Jack’s time in Room left him unaffected.
Rather, he grows frustrated that the adults present to help him transition do not know how to empathize with him, noting that “adults mostly don’t seem to like [kids], not even the parents do” (287), which validates his feeling of isolation. Further, when doctors at Jack and Ma’s rehabilitation clinic explain to Jack that he’s safe, he withholds, “because of manners,” that “In Room [he] was safe and outside is the scary,” (218) uncomfortable with unfamiliarity. Jack carries this thought through the end of the novel, confirming doctors’ worries that Jack would struggle to adjust to his new environment and place in society. Room, as a novel, ultimately offers interesting commentary on how children are viewed in today’s society, and how their concerns often go unheard, through Jack’s struggles to adjust to mainstream
life.