Room: Presents Summary & Analysis

Jack wakes up on the day of his fifth birthday and begins asking his mother, whom he calls Ma, questions about the day he was born. Ma tells Jack about how she was miserable before he “zoomed down” from Heaven, passed through Skylight, and into Room, where he slid out of her “onto [Rug] with [his] eyes wide open.” Jack looks down at Rug and notices a dark stain—the spot he “spilled by mistake getting born.”

As Jack adjusts to the air in Room, he tries to discern whether “he” came last night to visit Ma—the air is “different” after “he” comes. Ma asks Jack whether he’d like to open his birthday present now or later. Even though it’s early, Jack says he wants his present now. Ma pulls a gift from under her pillow, and Jack unwraps it: it is a pencil drawing of Jack sleeping. Jack isn’t pleased by the gift—he says he doesn’t like it when Ma is “on at the same time [he’s] off.” Jack looks for a place to hang the drawing—he knows Ma will want it somewhere where Old Nick can’t see it. After hanging the sketch inside Wardrobe, Jack asks Ma if he can “have some.” Ma asks if they can stop now that Jack is five, but Jack insists on breastfeeding.

Jack counts out one hundred pieces of cereal into a bowl and carefully pours in the milk. He eats his breakfast with his favorite spoon, Meltedy Spoon, which once got leaned against a boiling pot of pasta and is now “not the same.” Jack strokes Table as he eats, hoping to make the scratches on “her” surface “better.” Ma and Jack play a version of Name That Tune involving humming, and sing each other a mix of nursery rhymes like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and pop songs like Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”

After breakfast, Ma and Jack brush their teeth using Toothbrush, their shared implement. Ma compliments Jack’s “dazzling” teeth. Jack feels bad for Ma, who’s teeth are “pretty rotted” because she didn’t brush them for a long time years ago. As Ma and Jack tidy up Room, Jack laments that he can’t see “God’s yellow face” through Skylight today. Ma and Jack complete the “thousands” of tasks they have to do each morning, including watering Plant. Plant and Spider are the only two things alive in Room—Jack laments that long ago, Ma killed some ants and a mosquito that had come to visit them. 

Jack and Ma take their daily pills. Ma and Jack both take vitamins, but Ma also takes a birth control pill and a “killer” for her pain—she has a bad tooth which Jack calls Bad Tooth, and it hurts her all day every day. Jacks asks Ma why she never takes more than one killer, two in an emergency, and Ma replies that she doesn’t want to “need them all the time.”

At 8:30, Jack turns on TV and watches Dora the Explorer—his favorite cartoon. Jack understands that sometimes Dora speaks in a language called Spanish, but doesn’t think it is a “real” language. After Dora, Jack switches through the channels, which he thinks of as separate “planets.” Ma urges Jack to turn off the TV because it rots his brain, but Jack asks if he can watch a little more because of his birthday, and Ma consents. Jack gets a little scared of SpongeBob SquarePants, and wishes he were unafraid of everything, like Ma. The only thing Ma is afraid of, Jack says, is Old Nick—a man whose real name he and Ma don’t even know. Jack started calling the man Old Nick after he saw “a cartoon [on TV] about a guy that comes in the night.” 

Ma marks Jack’s height on the wall. Jack asks how tall he is, but Ma says she doesn’t know exactly—she says that maybe they can ask Old Nick for a measuring tape for “Sunday treat.” When Jack points out that he didn’t get much taller between his fourth birthday and his fifth, Ma says that’s “normal”—Jack asks what “normal” is. Ma says “normal” means things are okay.

Jack says he plans to get bigger and taller until he smashes “through Skylight into Outer Space” so that he can visit Dora and SpongeBob on their foreign planets. Ma runs a bath, and Jack plays with some homemade toys. They bathe together and then get dressed for “Phys Ed”—they rearrange the furniture in Room and run “Track” between Bed, Wardrobe, and Lamp, timing one another and cheering each other on.

After lunch, Ma and Jack play Orchestra by banging on objects in Room to make different noises. Jack uses a cereal box guitar collaged with pictures from old catalogs to make some twanging noises. As Jack looks at the pictures on the box, he laments that Old Nick no longer brings him and Ma catalogs so that they can pick out their old clothes—Old Nick, Ma says, is “getting meaner.”

After Orchestra, Ma and Jack sit together and read. There are only 10 books in Room—among them are The Runaway Bunny, Alice in Wonderland, Dylan the Digger, Twilight, and The Da Vinci Code. Ma hardly ever reads, but Jack loves his picture books. Reading books, though, confuses Jack, who believes that women, men, boys, and girls aren’t “real” except for himself, Ma, and Old Nick. After reading, Ma and Jack lie down for a nap, and Jack breastfeeds.

After naptime, Ma suggests Jack make his own ruler to measure the heights and lengths of things in Room, and she helps him create a ruler that seems mostly accurate. Jack excitedly runs around “counting the tall” of everything in Room. By the time he’s finished measuring, it’s time for dinner—spaghetti and fresh broccoli, which helps Jack and Ma to be “extra alive.” While Ma cooks, Jack asks why Plant is drooping, and Ma says she needs some special food. Jack suggests Ma ask for it for Sundaytreat, but Ma says she has too much to ask for already.

After dinner, Ma and Jack make a birthday cake. Jack is excited to blow out his candles. He uses the discarded eggshells to lengthen Eggsnake, a project “longer than all around Room” he and Ma have been working on for years. Jack waits “hours and hours” for his cake to finish baking, and then helps Ma ice it and put some chocolates on top. When it’s time for candles, though, Ma tells Jack there aren’t any, and Jack throws a fit. He calls the cake “stinky” and yells at Ma for asking for her painkillers rather than candles last Sundaytreat. Ma tries to calm Jack down and reminds him that they need to ask Old Nick only for things he can get easily and cheaply from the store. Jack retorts that “stores are [only] in TV.” Ma shuts her eyes, and Jack wonders if her “battery [is] used up.”

Jack and Ma make up and enjoy Jack’s birthday cake. Ma has to chew gently, using only the teeth in the front of her mouth. Jack pulls the chocolate pieces off the top and shows Ma the holes they’ve left behind. Ma says the holes are like craters. When Jack asks what craters are, she describes them as “holes where something happened.” After cake, it is 8:33—too late for TV. Jack gets ready for bed while Ma cleans up and writes a list of groceries for Old Nick.

At three minutes before nine, Jack asks Ma if he can breastfeed. She tells him it’s too late and instructs him to get into Wardrobe and lie down on his makeshift bed in there. Jack listens to Ma getting ready for bed, and they play word games through the slats in Wardrobe. Jack asks Ma why he has to get “hided away,” and Ma explains that she doesn’t ever want Old Nick to be able to look at Jack. She urges him to go to sleep quickly as she gets into her own bed and shuts off Lamp. Jack, though, is wired from the cake and excitement of his birthday.

After a long time passes, Jack whispers to Ma and asks if Old Nick is coming. Ma says he must not be. Jack scurries out of Wardrobe and into bed with Ma. He breastfeeds and tries to resist falling asleep—he doesn’t want for it to not be his birthday anymore. In the middle of the night, Jack wakes up to Ma standing beside Lamp, flicking the light on and off. Ma does this often—Jack thinks it “helps her get to sleep.” After a few minutes, Ma stops flicking Lamp, crawls back into bed, and goes to sleep.

In the morning, Ma lets Jack have cake for breakfast. After bath time, Ma helps Jack build a ball to play catch with out of scrunched-up paper. Ma plays happily even though catch “pings her bad wrist sometimes.” For lunch, Ma and Jack eat pancakes, but because there’s not a lot of mix left, the cakes are very thin and tasteless. While “sunbathing” under Skylight, Ma falls asleep. Jack hears a sound and quietly gets up so as not to wake Ma. He follows the sound over to Stove, where he sees a “for really real not TV” a live animal—a mouse. Jack tries to get closer to the mouse, but it scurries beneath the stove.

Jack opens Refrigerator and gets out some bread. He leaves some crumbs on a plate down by the stove, then crouches down and waits for Mouse to return. This time, when Mouse emerges from Stove, Jack stays very still and watches him—but is surprised by a huge whack. He turns around to see that Ma has flung a book at Mouse, breaking the plate on the floor and scaring Mouse away. Ma angrily moves Stove away from the wall and starts shoving aluminum foil in a small crack in the wall, explaining to Jack that mice carry diseases and breed quickly.

To calm Jack down, Ma reads him some nursery rhymes from a book. She changes some of the names in the book to “Jack” to make him laugh. Soon it’s time for dinner, and afterwards, Ma and Jack play chess on a magnetic set and then watch a wildlife program on TV. When Ma shuts TV off, Jack feels like crying. After breastfeeding and listening to some more stories and rhymes, Jack lets Ma carry him into Wardrobe. Once he’s inside, he hears the beeping of Door—Old Nick has arrived.

Jack listens as Old Nick enters Room. He points out the birthday cake and asks how old Jack is now—Ma doesn’t answer, but Jack whispers “five” from inside Wardrobe. Old Nick approaches Wardrobe and asks Jack if he wants to come out, but Ma replies that Jack is almost asleep. Old Nick asks for some cake. Ma tells him that it’s stale. Old Nick grows angry and begins outlining how much he does for Ma and Jack every day. Ma agrees to let him have some cake. After tasting it, Old Nick remarks that it is indeed “pretty stale.” Lamp snaps off and Jack listens as Ma and Old Nick get into Bed. Old Nick begins “creak[ing]” Bed, and Jack counts the number of creaks—217.

In the morning, Jack asks Ma why Old Nick didn’t bring him a birthday present. Ma says that she doesn’t want Old Nick bringing things to Jack. Jack laments that he’s never gotten a present in his whole life, and he says he wants Old Nick to bring him a dog named Lucky. Ma insists there isn’t room for a dog, and begins pointing out all the reasons they can’t have a dog. Ma and Jack argue, and Jack begins sobbing. To calm Jack down, Ma lets him breastfeed.

Ma and Jack begin their “busy morning.” They do laundry in the bathtub, then make lunch and take a nap. After nap, it’s time for “Scream,” a game they play on weekdays—during this game, Ma and Jack climb up onto Table to get closer to Skylight and then scream upwards as loud as they can.

Jack draws and practices writing while Ma sucks on an ice cube to try to dull the pain from Bad Tooth. Jack says he wishes he had a bad tooth, too. Ma chastises him for speaking and thinking that way. It rains all day, and Jack and Ma sing songs about the rain. After a dinner of fish sticks, Ma and Jack watch a cooking program on TV. Ma suggests they move some furniture around Room to switch things up, but the idea upsets Jack, who doesn’t want to move anything from its designated place. Ma puts Jack to bed in Wardrobe, and Jack is sad that he and Ma had so many fights in one day.

In the morning, there are two things on top of Table. Jack is thrilled—one is a remote-control jeep, a “late birthday present” from Old Nick. Jack immediately begins playing with the toy, but Ma warns him to be gentle with it and not to use up all the batteries—once it runs out, there are no more. Jack plays with his jeep while Ma cleans Room with a vinegar solution and vacuums. Jack can tell that Ma’s teeth are bothering her because all day she holds her face and keeps letting out large, long sighs. Jack has to remind Ma to make dinner—but even at mealtime, she doesn’t eat anything.

After dinner, Ma and Jack watch music videos on TV. Jack loves listening to “Rihanna and T.I. and Lady Gaga and Kanye West.” Jack asks why rap stars wear sunglasses all the time, and Ma explains it’s because they’re famous. After videos, Ma tucks Jack into Wardrobe—he insists on sleeping with the jeep. Ma says Jack can sleep with the remote, but she says the jeep itself needs to go up on a shelf over Bed. Jack asks Ma, through Wardrobe’s slats, where the two of them go when they’re asleep. Ma replies that they are “never anywhere but here.” Jack thinks Ma’s voice sounds sad.

Soon, Jack hears Old Nick arrive. He hears Old Nick complain about the “ridiculous price[s]” at the store. Soon, Lamp shuts off and Jack begins counting creaks: tonight, there are 378. Afterwards, everything goes quiet. Jack has the sudden thought that maybe Ma is letting Old Nick “have some”—he gets angry, and turns on his jeep’s remote. He begins pressing buttons and soon hears his jeep “coming alive.”

Old Nick begins screaming and Lamp turns on. Someone forces Wardrobe open, and Jack hides under his blanket. He hears a disoriented Ma ask what’s happening. Old Nick starts shouting at Ma for “try[ing] something.” Ma apologizes profusely and begs Old Nick to come back to bed, but soon Jack hears the sound of Door beeping. Old Nick is gone.

In the dark, Jack feels around for his remote, and realizes it has broken. He tells Ma, but she uses a “scary” voice to tell him to go back to sleep. Jack tries to make himself tired by counting his teeth over and over. Jack wishes Ma would get up and carry him into Bed with her. When she doesn’t, he gets himself up and joins her, but makes sure not to touch her under the covers.