How can we relate to Jack?

            Although Room is told from Jack’s point of view, I often found it difficult to empathize with him. Logically, I knew that Room is his whole universe—he hasn’t experienced anything else, and therefore isn’t particularly interested in Outside, at least at first. For the reader, however, Ma’s stories about how Old Nick “stole” her and her experiences before Jack is born are far more compelling, as they provide the missing information that drives the plot of the book. As a result, when he asked Ma completely impertinent questions and just didn’t seem to care while she’s describing what it’s like to be outside, it almost made me want to strangle him.

            To be honest, though, I don’t think I would have acted differently if I were in Jack’s situation, even as a sixteen-year-old. If someone told me, for example, that all the proper nouns in the universe (e.g. Earth, America, The Eiffel Tower, etc.) were not singular objects, but rather just one of many ordinary things, I would first think they were crazy, and then probably ignore them and get on with my life. Like Jack, I wouldn’t understand what I would be missing out on, and I would be perfectly happy with my restricted, perfectly controlled life.

            This realization, that I may not be that different from Jack than I originally thought, led me to think harder about any other similarities there might be between us, and I noticed that in terms of the mundane aspects of life, we are not that different. One scene that comes to mind, for example, is when Ma doesn’t want Jack to eat his lollipop. She tells him that “it’s garbage” and “it cost him maybe fifty cents,” but for Jack, and for me when I was younger, this would not have been a good enough reason. I can therefore totally sympathize with him when he sneaks out of Bed to eat it at night, and I can imagine myself doing a similar thing when I was five. Another scene that felt very familiar to me was when Jack woke up to find Ma out of bed and hitting the floor. His feeling of helplessness and inability to understand her frustration reminds me of how I used to feel when my parents argued, and although I can’t compare my situation to his, I’m sure the feeling was very similar. Unlike Ma, who knows and misses what she has been deprived of, Jack is just like me or any other kid who doesn’t understand the real world, and thinking of him in this way makes him a much more sympathetic character.