Exploration of Confinement and Freedom in Emma Donoghue’s Room

Authors

Abhijeet Sharma

Abstract

This paper is an attempt at exploring the themes of freedom and confinement in Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010). The novel tells the story of Ma and her five-year old son Jack who have been held captive inside a garden shed which they both simply call “room”. Thematically, the novel can be bifurcated into two parts: the first half focusing on Ma and Jack’s confinement and the second half dealing with their eventual freedom which comes at a price. The novel shows the reality of life under involuntary confinement and also what happens when one is suddenly given too much freedom to process. It compels the readers to reexamine their preconceived notions about freedom and confinement. Donoghue experiments with the narrator, choosing the narrative perspective of the child instead of his mother, whose stoic and matter-of-fact description of their confined existence is deeply unsettling to the reader. Through this novel, Donoghue also underscores the dichotomy between confinement and freedom as experienced by the mother and her son.

Keywords

Confinement, Freedom, Existence, Narrator, Society

Exploration of Confinement and Freedom in Emma Donoghue’s Room. Abhijeet Sharma. 2021. IJIRCT, Volume 7, Issue 6. Pages 1-4. https://www.ijirct.org/viewPaper.php?paperId=2403070