Emma Donoghue’s Room is an uplifting ode to the power of maternal love in the face of unimaginable circumstances, but it is also an unforgiving look at the fear, uncertainty, and guilt that accompany parenthood. Though at the outset of the novel, Ma has spent her last seven years in captivity—and Jack has been imprisoned for the entirety of his life—they draw strength from one another, and Ma especially finds herself reaffirmed in the value of her own life as a result of her love for Jack. Ultimately, Donoghue shows how in spite of its challenges and even in the most painful of circumstances, the act of parenting gives meaning, purpose, and motivation to one’s life—and suggests that in many cases, parents need their children just as much as their children need them.
Through the character of Ma, Donoghue demonstrates just how complicated the nature of parenting is—and at the same time, shows that in spite of the difficulties parenting has brought to her life, Ma is just as sustained by Jack as he is by her. In the opening passages of the novel, as Jack awakens on his fifth birthday, he asks his Ma to tell him the story of how he came to be. Before Jack came, Ma explains, she slept for days, “cried till [she] didn’t have any tears left,” and “lay [around] counting the seconds.” Once Jack arrived, Ma’s story implies, she had responsibility—and love—in her life, and thus something to live for. Though Jack has never known life outside of Room, the 11-by-11 garden shed in which he and Ma are imprisoned, Ma lived 19 years in the real world before Old Nick abducted and imprisoned her. Her world, she tells Jack, was full of only suffering before he came into it—and because of her desire to keep him safe and healthy, she has experienced a renewed desire to do the same for herself. Ma’s bad teeth are a symbol of the years of self-neglect she inflicted upon herself during the early days of her captivity in Room. In the early pages of the novel, however, Ma insists on strict daily oral hygiene for both herself and Jack—a symbol of her desire not to languish in self-pity any longer, but rather to make things better for both of them. Jack’s arrival reinvigorates Ma’s sense of purpose and reanimates her desire to survive and indeed overcome her imprisonment—not just for Jack’s sake, but for her own. This idea is cemented later on in the novel, in Ma’s own words. “For me, see, Jack was everything,” Ma tells a reporter during a television interview shortly after she and Jack have escaped Room. “I was alive again,” she says; “I mattered.” In this quotation, Ma confirms that Jack’s arrival transformed her and actively sustained her through her years of captivity.
One of the novel’s central symbols is the act of breastfeeding. Though Jack is five years old, he still breastfeeds several times a day. For any nursing mother, breastfeeding is an act of communion and a method of bonding with their baby—but for Ma and Jack, the ritual is given heightened meaning and even sacredness. Though Ma’s milk is no longer Jack’s sole source of nutrition—he eats three meals a day, which Ma attempts to make sure contain some fresh fruits and vegetables—it is a source of comfort to him, and to Ma as well. When Ma and Jack escape Room, Jack continues breastfeeding—but when Grandma realizes that Ma has not stopped breastfeeding, she is shocked and slightly disturbed. Ma explains curtly that “There was no reason to stop”—but what she doesn’t say is that there was every reason to continue feeding Jack from her own body. The act of breastfeeding is both practically and symbolically nurturing for Ma and Jack alike—it represents the strength and sustenance they draw from one another, and externalizes the intense, symbiotic relationship between the two of them. Jack would not have life if it weren’t for Ma—but in many ways, it’s possible that Ma would not be alive, either, if Jack had not come along.
“Is there a word for adults when they aren’t parents?” Jack asks his “Steppa” (or step-grandfather), Leo, during a moment alone. Steppa laughs at Jack’s question—but the quotation is actually revealing with regard to Donoghue’s deep investigation into the nature of parenthood. Donoghue uses the emotional and sensational story at the heart of Room to demonstrate how the act of parenting can bring intense fulfillment and purpose to one’s life. Children draw strength and confidence from their parents, and, from the lessons their parents teach them, they learn how to face the world. In Room, the opposite idea is also true: Ma is able to find purpose, resolve, and courage because of her child, and once they are out in the world, she learns as much from him as he learns from her.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Parenting ThemeTracker
Parenting Quotes in Room
“Up in Heaven. Was I minus one, minus two, minus three— ?”
“Nah, the numbers didn’t start till you zoomed down.”
“Through Skylight. You were all sad till I happened in your tummy.”
“You said it.” Ma leans out of Bed to switch on Lamp, he makes everything light up whoosh. I shut my eyes just in time, then open one a crack, then both.
“I cried till I didn’t have any tears left,” she tells me. “I just lay here counting the seconds.”
Nothing makes Ma scared. Except Old Nick maybe. Mostly she calls him just him, I didn’t even know the name for him till I saw a cartoon about a guy that comes in the night called Old Nick. I call the real one that because he comes in the night, but he doesn’t look like the TV guy with a beard and horns and stuff.
“Listen. What we see on TV is... it’s pictures of real things.”
That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.
Ma’s got her hand over her mouth.
“Dora’s real for real?”
She takes her hand away. “No, sorry. Lots of TV is made-up pictures—like, Dora’s just a drawing—but the other people, the ones with faces that look like you and me, they’re real.”
“Actual humans?”
She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities. . . ”
“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”
“He put a blindfold on me—”
“Like Blindman’s Buff?”
“Yeah, but not fun. He drove and drove, I was terrified.”
“Where was I?”
“You hadn’t happened yet, remember?”
I forgot. “Was the dog in the truck too?”
“There was no dog.” Ma’s sounding cranky again. “You have to let me tell this story.”
“Can I pick another?”
“It’s what happened.”
“So, Jack, we mustn’t try and hurt him again. When he came back the next night, he said, number one, nothing would ever make him tell me the code. And number two, if I ever tried a stunt like that again, he’d go away and I’d get hungrier and hungrier till I died.”
She’s stopped I think.
My tummy creaks really loud and I figure it out, why Ma’s telling me the terrible story. She’s telling me that we’re going—
Then I’m blinking and covering my eyes, everything’s all dazzling because Lamp’s come back on.
“Don’t you want to escape?”
“Yeah. Only not really.”
[…]
Ma’s shaking her head. “It’s getting too small.”
“What is?”
“Room.”
“Room’s not small. Look.” I climb up on my chair and jump with my arms out and spin, I don’t bang into anything.
“You don’t even know what it’s doing to you.” Her voice is shaky. “You need to see things, touch things—”
“I do already.”
“More things, other things. You need more room.”
“What’ll the person do with it?”
“Read it, of course.”
“TV persons can read?”
She stares at me. “They’re real people, remember, just like us.”
I still don’t believe that but I don’t say.
Ma does the note on a bit of ruled paper. It’s a story all about us and Room and Please send help a.s.a.p., that means super fast. Near the start, there’s two words I never saw before, Ma says they’re her names like TV persons have, what everybody in Outside used to call her, it’s only me who says Ma.
“I’m too scared,” I shout. “I won’t do it not ever and I hate you.”
Ma’s breathing funny, she sits down on Floor. “That’s all right.”
How is it all right if I hate her?
Her hands are on her tummy. “I brought you into Room, I didn’t mean to but I did it and I’ve never once been sorry.”
I stare at her and she stares back.
“I brought you here, and tonight I’m going to get you out.”
“Intense interest from a number of networks,” Morris is saying, “you might consider doing a book, down the road...”
Ma’s mouth isn’t friendly. “You think we should sell ourselves before somebody else does.”
“You keep talking about separation anxiety,” Ma’s saying to Dr. Clay, “but me and Jack are not going to be separated.”
“Still, it’s not just the two of you anymore, is it?”
“But that’s me, the Bonsai Boy.”
“The bouncy what?” [Ma] looks at the paper again and pushes her hair out of her face, she sort of groans.
“What’s bonsai?”
“A very tiny tree. People keep them in pots indoors and cut them every day so they stay all curled up.”
I’m thinking about Plant. We never cutted her, we let her grow all she liked but she died instead. “I’m not a tree. I’m a boy.”
“It’s just a figure of speech.” She squeezes the paper into the trash.
“He certainly seems to be taking giant steps toward recovery,” says the puffy-hair woman. “Now, you said just now it was ‘easier to control’ Jack when you were in captivity—”
“No, control things."
“You must feel an almost pathological need — understandably — to stand guard between your son and the world.”
“Yeah, it’s called being a mother.” Ma nearly snarls it.
“Is there a sense in which you miss being behind a locked door?”
Ma turns to Morris. “Is she allowed to ask me such stupid questions?”
“Did you play LEGO with your kids?”
“I don’t have any kids.”
“How come?”
Steppa shrugs. “Just never happened.”
I watch his hands, they’re lumpy but clever. “Is there a word for adults when they aren’t parents?”
