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Leaving Certificate Ordinary Level – Excellence in English Language and Literature


to escape. The plan succeeds and then Ma and Jack have to cope with being part of a larger fam ily and a larger world. They fi nd that their story is fascinating to the public and that they are hounded by the media. Things are diffi cult for a time, but Ma’s mother, stepfather and brother do their best to support her and Jack. Jack slowly comes to terms with the fact that somewhere other than Room can be home.


The issues that defi ne the world of the novel therefore are freedom, family and home. Freedom


Ma constantly longs for freedom and detests Room. Unlike Jack, she knows there is a whole world outside and that ‘Room’s only a tiny stinky piece of it’. Jack, on the other hand, doesn’t wish to be free because he doesn’t know he is a prisoner. Ma has to work hard to get him to understand that fact. Even when she succeeds, Jack has mixed feelings about escaping. For him, Room represents security and the only life he has ever known. When Jack manages to escape and bring the police to rescue Ma, she is delighted and tells him they can ‘do anything now’ because they are free. Jack says he wants to go to bed in Room because he has ‘seen the world’ and is tired now. When Ma says they are never going back, Jack cries so much he can’t stop.


Freedom does not bring Ma complete happiness either. She is not as free as she thought she would be. Even a simple walk in the fresh air has to be cut short suddenly when a photographer in a helicopter tries to get footage of her and Jack. Jack fi nds it very diffi cult to adjust to the outside world and when Ma brings him to the canteen for breakfast in the clinic, he is overwhelmed and cannot eat. The nurse suggests bringing the plates to their room and Ma agrees, but she is frustrated. She becomes more and more irritated by Jack’s refusal to go outside and tells him that if they stay indoors all the time, ‘it’s like we never did our Great Escape at all’.


The hardest lesson Ma learns about freedom is when she allows herself to be interviewed for a TV show. The interviewer asks her if she ever considered asking Old Nick to take Jack to a hospital and to leave him there so he could be put up for adoption. She says, ‘Every day he needed a wider world, and the only one you could give him got narrower.’ Ma had never thought that she was the one keeping Jack imprisoned in Room and she is utterly heartbroken at the suggestion that she deprived him of his freedom.


Ultimately, Ma and Jack achieve freedom by returning to Room one last time. Jack, who has at times longed to go back, now sees that Room is a small, dark place and realises that the outside world – with all its diffi culties – is better. He says goodbye to it forever and asks Ma to do the same. They walk out the door together, free at last.


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