Theme of Identity in Room
Ma
Ma has shaped her identity around being the best mother to Jack that she can be, considering the circumstances. This gives Ma a sense of purpose. She tells Jack that before he was born she was miserable and cried ‘until she didn’t have any tears left’.
Later in the novel Ma explains in a TV interview that Jack was everything to her during her captivity and that when he was born, she felt alive again because she mattered to someone.
We never learn Ma’s real name because to Jack, for a long time that is all she is, his mother. When Ma and Jack escape Ma struggles to regain a sense of herself and her place in the world.
Although Ma has lived in outside before her time in Room, she finds it difficult to come to terms with who she is when she escapes. She had longed for freedom for seven years, but it proves to be less that she had hoped for. In Room she was just ‘Ma’ but now she is a person in her own right again and must behave in a way that is seen as acceptable by society. For example, she is still breastfeeding Jack, and is angry and upset when others find this unacceptable.
Ma has moments when she finds Jack’s demands too much, telling him, ‘I keep messing up. I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well at the same time’. She is not the same person she was when she was kidnapped, and she cannot simply pick up the pieces of her old life. While in the Cumberland Clinic, she logs onto Facebook and searches her friends. She is taken aback that they look ‘so different’ and that they have moved on with their lives in the seven years that she was unable to move on with hers. Jack says that Ma mutters things like ‘South Korea’ or ‘Divorced already, no way’ as she looks at the pictures of people she knew a long time ago’.
Another challenge to Ma’s identity in the novel is the fact that when she was kidnapped she was a young student. But now she is a 25-year-old mother. Grandma struggles to build a new relationship with her daughter, she doesn’t really know her anymore, and Grandpa cannot deal with the reality that his daughter is the mother of a child conceived through rape.
The biggest blow to Ma’s sense of self is when she is interviewed for a television programme. The interviewer puts Ma on the spot and asks if she ever considered asking Old Nick to take Jack to a hospital and leave him there so that he could be put up for adoption, claiming ‘Every day he needed a wider world, and the only one you could give him got narrower’. Ma had always considered herself to be a good mother and had shaped her identity for five years around the belief that she was doing the best she could for Jack. Until the interview, she had never thought that she was the one keeping Jack imprisoned in Room and she is utterly heartbroken at the suggestion that, far from being a good parent, she was possibly no better that Old Nick in her own way. She is so distressed by this view of herself that she attempts suicide.
When Ma and Jack are reunited, they both learn that they need each other a little less than when they first escaped Room and that is a good thing. If they are to live fulfilling lives they need to have a clear sense of their individuality, they need to pull apart a little. The visit to Room at the very end of the book is a significant (key) moment for Ma and Jack. Ma sees Room from the outside in daylight, and although she is distressed, she goes because she knows that Jack needs this experience. Jack realises that he can let go of his emotional attachment to Room. The leave ready to move on with the next chapter in their lives.
Jack
Escaping Room is not the end of Ma and Jack’s struggles. The confines of the shed have been Jack’s home for so long that the place is an essential part of his identity. He wonders, when he is in the outside world, if he is ‘still me’. He reads a newspaper when they are at the Cumberland Clinic in which he is called ‘BONSAI BOY’, he is astonished to read a sensationalist description of himself as a ‘pint-sized hero’ and a ‘haunting, long-haired Little Prince’. The figurative language confuses Jack and he tells Ma, ‘I’m not a tree, I’m a boy’ and insists that he can’t be ‘haunting’ because ‘that’s what ghosts do’. The newspaper is puzzling to Jack because he cannot understand that others may see him differently to the way he sees himself. Until he gained his freedom, Jack had only ever seen himself reflected in Ma’s loving gaze.
Jack is luckier than Ma in that he is ‘plastic’ as Dr Clay states meaning that he is still young enough to learn and develop a sense of self that is not connected to Room and his over dependent relationship with Ma. Even though this is the case it is not that straightforward, he has been damaged by his time in Room and is behind a typical five year old in many ways. He finds it difficult to interact with other people and the only way that he can cope with them is ‘if they don’t touch me’. He behaves inappropriately at times, staring at a breastfeeding mother and touching Bronwyn’s private parts in the bathroom of the shopping centre. Jack is shocked and upset when his aunt slaps his hand away and is confused when she tells him ‘we don’t touch each other’s private parts, that is not OK’. Jack doesn’t know private parts’ because he has never had to consider anyone but himself and Ma until their escape. Their lives were so closely intertwined and so intimate that there was no such thing as privacy. Now Jack must discover not only who he is but also learn to understand that others are different to him, physically and emotionally.
Unlike most children, Jack has only known one significant person in his life, Ma. Once they reunite with their family, Jack has to come to terms with the fact that he is not just a son, he is also a cousin, nephew and a grandson. He learns that his mother is not just his alone, she is a daughter, sister and an aunt. Jack must accept the complexities of all these relationships all at once. In order to do this he has to develop a strong sense of self far more quickly that a child would normally have to do. This is evident when Grandma minds Jack after Ma’s overdose. Grandma has a no-nonsense but loving approach to childrearing and it helps Jack to find his feet and to cope with separation from Ma for the first time in his life. Grandma allows Jack to make mistakes and learn from them. She helps him to see that he is capable of surviving and growing without being coddled by Ma. Jack finally finds his own place in the world as a result of Ma’s absence.