Growing Up Theme Analysis

When Jack turns five, everything in his life changes. Ma begins “unlying” to him, explaining that the way he has conceived of the world—as no bigger than the confines of Room and containing no humans but him, his mother, and occasionally Old Nick—is false. Jack’s coming-of-age tale is an unusual one: it involves an escape from captivity and an intense period of physical and psychological adjustment to the world. Jack misses Room at first, as it was the only home he ever knew, and he even longs to return there, much to Ma’s chagrin. As the novel progresses and Jack learns more about the world around him, however, Donoghue argues that what all children need most is both the physical and emotional space to grow—even when the vastness of the world seems frightening, overwhelming, or even repulsive.

Over the course of Room, Donoghue charts Jack’s transformation as he leaves the world of Room and enters the “real” world. The way Jack understands the world at the start of the novel is rooted in the false belief that outside of Room is outer space—everything Jack sees on TV, Ma tells him, is fake. She brings him up for the first five years of his life to believe that the world consists only of Room and the objects within it—and so Jack never sees Room as too small or not enough. In fact, the objects within Room take on a larger-than-life quality as Jack ascribes special names and qualities to his favorite objects. The wardrobe in Room is not just a wardrobe—it is Wardrobe, and by referring to it (along with Toothbrush, and Blue Crayon, and Meltedy Spoon, and all of the other objects within Room) as a proper noun, Jack imbues it with a sense of humanity. Jack finds infinite space in his tiny world, playing games and using his imagination to make Room seem bigger. Jack doesn’t realize how small his world is—but there is evidence of his desire to grow beyond it in spite of his ignorance of the outside world as he longs for more books, asks more questions about what he sees on TV, and seeks friendships with potentially dangerous creatures like mice. 

Several factors drive Ma to begin her “unlying” and start telling Jack about the real world beyond the confines of Room. First of all, Jack is clearly growing up and becoming more curious—and secondly, Ma learns that Old Nick, their captor, has lost his job. Worried that Old Nick will kill her and Jack if his house goes into foreclosure and moving become necessary, Ma begins signaling for help each night by switching Lamp on and off over and over. She also starts preparing Jack to understand that there is, after all, a world beyond Room—a world they may have to enter very soon. When Ma begins the process of “unlying,” she tells Jack that, now that he’s five, he’s old enough to know certain things. Jack repeatedly states that he wishes he could go back to being four—and, when Ma begins training Jack to execute an escape plan, begs her to wait until he turns six: when he’s six, he assures her, he’ll be ready. The more Jack learns about the real world, the more frightened he becomes of facing it. He wishes he could regress back into ignorance, but when he’s unable to, he tries to bargain for just staying put. Jack resists the demands of growing up, and Donoghue suggests that Jack’s feelings are representative of any child coming to terms with the necessities and responsibilities of growing older, even though Jack’s situation is unique.

Jack and Ma devise a plan to help Jack escape Room. As Jack plays dead, Ma rolls him up inside of Rug and convinces Old Nick that Jack has died of a fever and must be taken far away and buried. The plan is a success, and soon, Jack is free and Ma has been rescued by the police. As Jack begins the process of growing up in the real world, he finds it hard to adjust to life outside of Room—and repeatedly expresses the wish that he could return. Even Ma is forced to admit that life in the real world is “harder.” “When our world was eleven foot square,” she tells one reporter, “it was easier to control.” Jack and Ma’s story is unusual and exceptional—but it provides a profound allegory for the terror of leaving childhood behind and entering the real world. Jack and Ma both experience overwhelming fear out in the real world—Ma even attempts suicide when things become too much for her to bear—but slowly and surely, both she and Jack start to thrive. As Jack experiences “new things every single day,” he and Ma grow “braver” and even make a list of things they want to experience: on it, “Going to the North Pole” and “Going to the moon” sit alongside simple things like “Making new friends” and “Taking swimming lessons.” Jack and Ma—both afraid of the wide world at first, having shrunk themselves physically and emotionally to survive in Room—are expanding due to the space they now have, and their goals for their lives are expanding, too.

At the end of the novel, Ma and Jack visit Room one final time. Jack remarks upon how small it looks and wonders aloud whether it has “got shrunk” since they’ve left. This passage suggests that the amount of emotional growth Jack has been able to accomplish outside of Room has allowed him to recognize, on some level, what a constraining place it really was. As Jack bids goodbye to Room once and for all, he sees it as “a hole where something happened.” He has recognized that he—like all children, Donoghue suggests—must work to feel at home in the world as he grows bigger and older, and that hiding himself away is both fruitless and futile.