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Is Room good or bad? This seems like a juvenile question – of course Room is bad, it’s an 11x11 prison cell. At least for Ma, this isn’t even a debate. Every time she is somehow reminded of Room – whether that is by a flippant comment from one of the nurses or when Jack brings it up – she has an intensely negative reaction. Jack notices how her entire body and face seems to change. For Ma, that reaction is more than understandable, it’s expected. Mere days after being freed from your prison cell, hearing anyone refer to it as a home or as anything but negative has to be angering, frustrating, and traumatic. At one point, Grandma refers to Ma as being “homesick” and although it’s true, Room was technically Ma’s home for over a quarter of her life, Ma’s response is immediately negative. “It wasn’t a home it was a soundproofed cell” she says, and we as readers agree. A home is somewhere you feel comfortable and safe. A place you create for yourself, where you can come and go as you please, decorate and arrange in the way you like, and essentially, have control over. Room is not home for Ma, it is just where she survives (I won’t even say lives) day by day.

Jack’s experience is entirely different. All he has ever known is Room, and Room does provide all of that comfort and security of home. Within Room, he feels comfortable and safe, it’s a place he edits and decorates how he likes (such as with the portrait, or Egg Snake, or the other art projects), and he can come and go as he likes, because “coming and going” just means moving through the world of Room. Because it is all he has ever known, but also because of Ma’s incredibly optimistic and happy parenting, Room is home for Jack. Room makes Jack happy. This is, of course, incredibly troubling when Ma and Jack escape. Suddenly, Jack is bombarded with unfamiliar and scary sights, sounds, and feelings, and not only is he expected to feel safe, but he is expected to like them. Everyone around him is doing unfamiliar, scary, sometimes painful stuff to him, so it makes sense that Jack should be uncomfortable, and want to feel safe. And Room is the only place he has ever felt safe.

So we have Ma’s feelings and Jack’s. What I’m interested in is what is Donoghue saying with this? She could have easily skewed it to favor Ma’s opinion much more than Jack’s, but instead, by choosing to narrate through Jack, his feelings come across stronger. I think that if she had focused on Ma, the book wouldn’t have been as unique and interesting. Donoghue makes us feel these conflicting feeling of simultaneously wanting Jack to be happy, and knowing that he would be happy to go back to room, but also knowing that, long-term, Jack will definitely be happier Outside. I think that Donoghue is not saying that Room is good or bad, it is simply “past”. And just like anything else in the past, it is what shaped the characters, and they wouldn’t be the people they are without it. Although the experience of being in Room may have been extremely unpleasant in Ma’s case, it is forever a part of who she is.