Hell of a room

The initial attraction to Emma Donoghue’s Room is because of what appears to be a premise similar to VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic: a mother and her child are locked in a room, 12 feet by 12 feet. A man comes in almost every night to bring them food. The mother keeps the child hidden inside a wardrobe while the man is there, not wanting him to see the child who is, presumably, his son. She is only ever known as Ma ­­— because to the narrator, five-year-old Jack, that is all she is. He has never spoken to another human being and believes that the room they live in is an entire world and they are the only people in it ­­— the people and places they see on TV are other planets altogether.

Room is entirely narrated in the first person by Jack and while a child’s narrative as the only source of information can be stilted (not to mention annoying), this particular narrative bears an odd dichotomy ­­— the child is precocious and yet very limited in his exposure to the world. The reader picks up on clues that the child cannot understand ­­— he is not aware that he is a captive. Of course, it makes Ma an incredible mother ­­— how do you raise a child in a single room and ensure that he is stable, healthy, sane and happy? How do you make sure, for instance, that the child has enough exercise that his muscles don’t atrophy? That his eye muscles are able to see distance, when the furthest thing away is 12 feet? How do you stay cheerful enough to raise a contended child, when you have been trapped for seven years, and are raped almost every night?

The only reason for this could be her glimmer of hope for escape. Unlike Flowers in the Attic, Room is far more realistic ­­— there is no veering off into incestuous young lust under the soft focus glaze of the ‘70s voyeuristic spectator.

A closer inspiration could possibly be the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who fathered seven children by his daughter, keeping her in confinement for a period of 24 years. Three of the surviving six children had never left the basement until their eventual discovery and rescue ­­­— the eldest was 19 and had spent her entire life in three small, sunless rooms. Like Fritzl, Ma’s captor had also installed an automatic electronic door locking system and both rescues are similar, involving hospitals and illnesses, real or otherwise.

And this is what makes Room truly horrific, not just the premise itself, not the sense of confinement and isolation experienced while reading it. What makes it appalling is there’s worse out there than this fictitious hell of a room.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2010.