The final step in
Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth is the return home from the unknown, and Donoghue
seems to take this very literally. After overcoming the main obstacle in the
book, taking down Old Nick in the Great Escape, Jack immediately wants to go
back to Room, the home he has known his whole life. At that point, Ma wants to
get as far away as possible, so Jack waits until she is ready before asking to see
it again. She grudgingly calls Officer Oh and arranges for them to go, which
surprised me, as I was afraid that Jack would see this as a return home. However,
his reaction was almost the opposite of this, and I think it aptly brought the
story to a close.
We see the first sign of
Jack’s disillusionment as they arrive at Room. He doesn’t recognize Old Nick’s
house, and when he sees the shed, he doesn’t believe such a small place could
really have been all he knew for the first five years of his life. “We step in
through Door and it’s all wrong. Smaller than Room and emptier and it smells
weird […]. ‘I don’t think this is it, I whisper to Ma.’” Having been exposed to
the vastness of the world, he can’t recognize the old Jack that wanted to come
back to Room after escaping. Even in such a short time outside, he has already outgrown
the marks that were used to measure this old Jack on his birthdays, and he forgets
simple things about his life there, such as where plant was. Somehow, it feels as
though his life in Room was oddly separate from his life in Outside, and that
he is looking back upon his old life with the eyes of a different person. Finally,
he realizes that this is not where he belongs, and decides to say goodnight (or
rather, as Ma suggests, goodbye) to Room, thus concluding his transition into
the real world.
I found this to be a very
satisfying ending, and although it might be more of a coming-of-age than a heroic
return, I think it actually follows Campbell’s paradigm quite nicely. The
reason for this is that Jack’s challenge in the book is not just to escape, but
also to adjust to the real world. Indeed, the fact that his escape comes in the
middle of the book, and that there are two sections after it indicates that the
hardest part for Jack is to come to grips with the colossal nature and
diversity of Outside, the place that will become his home. In this view, Donoghue’s
ending brings us closure, in that Jack says his goodbyes and parts ways with
Room, ready to go to his real home in the outside world.
I agree with you about the ending being satisfying. I like that it's kind of left in the air about the rest of Jack's life, because there are many different possibilities of what could happen. We watched him living in his tiny world in Room, then life in Clinic, a week at Grandma's, and then the tiny glimpse of his and Ma's life in the apartment. In a way, Ma and Jack are kind of back to where they started. I'm not sure how to exactly put it, but Room was home for Jack or a least the way he saw it (less so for Ma). It was mainly just the two of them in Room and now it's just the two of them in the apartment but the way they've changed and grown to be their own individualized selves is what completes the journey "home."
ReplyDeleteCalling this a "coming-of-age return" makes sense, and I hadn't thought of it this way before (in part because Jack is still obviously so far from coming of age!). But I see what you mean: it's got a "you can't go home again" vibe, like a college student returning to her hometown and everything seems smaller and more provincial, and she can't figure out why she used to care so much about everything that went on in this place.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a traditional "return home" because, crucially, Room is not "home" for Jack. The significance of the return is that he is able to *see* that it isn't the same as he remembers it--that it's really this dingy old shed with crappy corkboard flooring. His real home now is in the significantly named Independent Living, and the novel brings him full circle here in order to enable him to move fully into that independent stage. He had to break the imaginative hold Room had on him, and it seems pretty clear that that's what's happening.
It feels to me more like the visit to Room is more the Supreme Ordeal or final battle than a return home because, as you said, Outside is Jack's home now. Wouldn't the real return home then be when Ma and Jack close the door and leave? I just keep thinking about the way Ma didn't want to go back and had to vomit in the bushes before she could face going inside the shed again. That hardly seems like the lead-up to a return home, even to an outgrown one. It seems like facing your worst nightmare.
ReplyDeleteI don't see this quite as the Supreme Ordeal, that I think is the escape itself. The return visit to Room seems more like a return to the "ordinary world" where the hero has changed far too much for this world to every seem "ordinary" again.
DeleteI believe that the ending to this book is very crucial, as before Jack returns to Room, we see hints of him longing to return. The first thing Jack says to Ma after they first escape is that he wants to sleep in Bed back at Room with Ma. Even later when Jack moves into the new apartment with Ma, he wants to keep Rug and other belongings that were in Room. If Jack hadn't gone back to visit Room, then I think it would have taken a very long time for Jack to get over his past and accept the new world that he is living in. Although we recognize Jack's past as a horrifying experience, Jack actually has fond memories of his past in Room because he was sheltered from everything that was going on. Going back and seeing Room for what it really is allowed Jack to abandon thoughts of wanting to return.
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