Room, Entry 3

Wow! What a good book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This plot really made me contemplate my own life. Several times throughout the story I would think, “What would I do if I was in the situation? If I was the mother? If I was Jack? If I was Old Nick (the bad guy who put Ma and Jack in the shed in the first place)?” I came up with multiple solutions on how to escape that situation for each, but I always found flaws in my plans. My first thought was that I would spend my entire days just systematically pushing every button on the padlock until I came across the right code (just like how Ma and Jack play a game where they push all the buttons on the padlock in the hopes that maybe one of the codes will work one day). However, I realized this plan would not work because maybe the lock would not open after a certain number of wrong tries, or maybe Old Nick would hear the beeping and punish me for trying to get out, or what if the code started with a 9 and I went through all the possible combinations first starting from the 1 direction. I think if I was in this situation, though, no matter what I was doing to try and get out, I would just feel immense amounts of hopelessness and claustrophobia. I would probably go crazy, so even though some things Ma does seem a bit irrational, she is way more rational than I would be in that situation. To be honest, I feel scared just imagining myself in that situation. However, I will try to never get myself in that situation, and then I won’t have to worry about getting out.

My friend and I were discussing how Ma got in this situation, actually, and we were talking about how we as readers think of Ma as so stupid, while in another context, she would be considered a hero. Let me explain. For those who don’t know, Ma was abducted to be a prisoner in Old Nick’s shed. This happened when she was 19, and she got in the shed by agreeing to help Old Nick “find his dog” (there was no dog, hence the quotation marks). At first, I was like, “Dude, you’re so stupid! You don’t go with old men into their truck to find their dog. That’s, like, the oldest trick in the book for kidnapping.” But then, I did some more thinking (shocking, I know, right?). I realized that perhaps if there was a different plot, Ma would actually be regarded as a hero, and no one would even realize her stupidity for getting into an old man’s car to find his dog. For example, what if the story was about Old Nick and Ma’s journey to find the dog, and in the end, they find the dog and Old Nick and Ma are best friends? I think that this philosophy is accurate in any story. If you take the event out of context, the situation might not be as good or bad as it is meant to be in the book. In fact, you too, even you, might have done the exact same thing as the character in a book if you were in the same situation.

Based on this idea, I did even more thinking (whoa...). I was thinking about Old Nick’s motives. Perhaps he was being a stupid, mean old man, but maybe he had a reason. Maybe his wife died and he was incredibly lonely and no one would ever love him again and he was just so desperate for love and affection that he was blind to his cruelty. People do things like that all the time when they are blinded by love. Just think of Romeo and Juliet: there is no rational thinking there; they just kill themselves because they disobey their parents in their immature teenage relationship. It would be interesting to have some sequels to this book and have one be from the point of view from Ma and one be from the point of view from Old Nick. I like how the point of view is of Jack, though, because it provides an interesting twist to the story.

The story is not “well-written”, like a classic book with big words and complex themes. Instead, it is written how a five-year-old would talk. For example, when Ma is telling Jack the plan to escape, he says, “‘I won’t do it not ever and I hate you’...I shake my head till it’s wobbling because there’s no just me”, which is exactly how a five-year-old would talk (128). Even though this is kind of poorly written grammatically, I am still impressed at how good at English Jack is. In the Fritzl case, there was a girl who was locked in her basement by her father when she was about 20, and her father raped her, which caused a few children, who grew up in the enclosed basement, but had some problems since their bodies adapted to the enclosed spaces. Additionally, these children had speech problems because of their lack of contact with other people, unlike Jack who can speak fairly well.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I was surprised that Jack did not like the real world, (he didn’t like the weather or the shoes, etc.), which I guess is expected. For instance, I would not like if I suddenly had to go live in outer space or heaven or somewhere that I didn’t believe to fully exist. I can imagine how hard it must have been for Jack to suddenly embrace the new world. I did not really like the ending, because it ended kind of abruptly, but I guess that is how it has to end, otherwise the book would be boring going on and on about Jack’s new experiences and Ma re-learning world. One of my favorite quotes from the book, however, is the last few sentences (spoiler alert). Donoghue writes, “I look back one more time. It’s like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door” (321). I like this ending because it is a full circle ending to a time in the beginning of the book when Jack learns what a crater is because he is learning about the moon. This quote really shows how Jack has grown and become more mature as a character, from when he interpreted craters in the beginning of the book as holes in the ground, but at the end, he interprets the shed figuratively as a crater. Also, it shows his realization about moving on and accepting the real world instead of wanting to go back to the familiarities of room.