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In Book vs. Movie, we look at novels of any genre and compare them to their feature-film adaptation. This will usually happen when the film part of this equation is released. This will not be a review of the merits of either version of the story, but an essay on how each version of the story acquits itself within its medium. After analyzing both versions of the story, we’ll arrive at a verdict between which medium is more successful at telling its story, and whether any disparity between the two can be reconciled in a way that doesn’t impeach the winning version. There will be spoilers for both book and movie.

Room

Room is told from the point of view of a five-year-old named Jack, who lives with his Ma in a place he calls simply "Room." Every aspect of their lives is carried out in this place; there is running water and plumbing and food, but not much, and there is no way to leave. A frequent visitor is a man Jack calls Old Nick, who provides them food and has an odd relationship with Ma. We are gradually introduced to the concept that Room, and their placement in it, is less innocuous than it may initially seem; at a certain point, Ma tells Jack the story of how she was kidnapped seven years ago by Old Nick and brought there under anesthesia, and she had him while in Room. This coincides with a plan she has for them to escape…something not easy when Room is soundproofed, locked and unlocked by code, and located somewhere neither of its occupants have ever seen. The novel is told in the first-person, past-tense.

The Book

Given the choice of narrator, Emma Donoghue’s Room has a benefit unique to its medium; this is, of course, assuming you are reading it without having seen a plot description or the trailer for the movie adaptation. The benefit is that we are introduced to five-year-old Jack and his mother, Ma, on a purely isolated basis; we meet them without knowing any of the more sinister details of their life or environment. It’s a good while before we come to realize that the Room the two of them live their entire lives in is in fact a highly-modified garden shed, soundproofed and locked from the outside. “Old Nick,” as Jack calls him, is more than just an occasional provider of groceries and goods; he’s a rapist who kidnapped Ma seven years prior, drugged her, and has kept her inside the shed ever since. Jack has no knowledge of the outside world; to keep the horror of the situation buried, Ma educates him from birth that only what’s inside Room is real, and everything else only exists for their TV shows.

This is bleak material, cushioned only by the guileless way that it’s presented; Jack, after all, knows these surroundings as his entire world, so much of Room is presented in a way that is sometimes positive and comforting, sometimes negative, but always familiar and normal. This also has the effect of expanding the size and scope of Room to the reader’s eyes; we’re told that the space is roughly 10 feet square, sure, but the constant description in the sense of it being a world rather than a confinement gives us a feeling after a point like the space occupied is far bigger than it really is.

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