In her 2010 psychological novel ROOM, Canadian-Irish author Emma Donoghue utilizes a child narrator to reveal the psychological complexities of trauma and recovery. ROOM tells the story of five-year-old Jack, along with his mother “Ma,” who is being held captive in an outbuilding by a man only referred to as Old Nick. Donoghue considers the role gender in the novel in conjunction with the difference between what Jack learns throughout his journey about life outside of Room and what readers learn through Jack about the duo’s despondent circumstances. Through depth of tragedy and the various elements that allow Jack to flourish but also inhibit his healthy growth, ROOM lends itself to various psychological readings that focus on the process of healing. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Jack’s wide-eyed innocence and curiosity about the outside world he knows nothing about affects his psychological, physical, and emotional development. It will also pinpoint the various characteristics of psychological literature, referencing psychoanalyst Dr. Esther Rashkin and other genre specialists to compare ROOM to texts of similar topics.
