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This kind of tabula rasa approach is what gives sequences like Jack’s first trip outside of the clinic and his abbreviated trip to a mall the kick that they do. He experiences the sensations of these psychological states in something of a vacuum; we the reader understand what the character is feeling, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know how to communicate the very unique form of affection and homesickness for Room that he has to anyone else. When he tries, they’re uncomprehending. We, then, are the sole other being besides Ma in the story’s universe that knows what’s going on, and we’re powerless to do anything about it on Jack’s behalf.

Much of the emotion of the characters, and most of the conflict in the book, stems from the tendency of Ma and Jack to either attempt to or insist on defining the entirety of the world despite lacking critical, crucial knowledge, and suppressing curiosity about investigating what that missing knowledge is. This is eminently a protective and defensive move by Ma toward Jack as a five-year-old; he’s led to believe not that the outside world is inaccessible, but that there is no such thing at all. TV programs, food and drink, money, toys, furniture - they all exist for the sole purpose of sustaining Ma and Jack’s existence in Room.

What we have here, then, is a story about how intimidating knowledge can be: it indirectly depicts one possible outcome of a person with fundamentally limited knowledge and experience having their parameters of normalcy abruptly challenged (and in many cases, contradicted). This is why the exposure to the larger world affects Ma to the same degree that it does Jack, albeit in a different way; her occasional disappearances into herself are a fairly straightforward manifestation of PTSD, and this part of the book is at pains to establish how illusory the sense of self and self-control is, and how dependent it is on a familiar perspective.

We’ve seen this before in stories that involve complex and corrupted relationships between parent and child; what makes the events in the novel different (and more potent) is the cause of the insularity being something that both participants are consciously aware of, and attempting to overcome. Another major factor that’s present here is the sense of emotional disconnect; it’s there in the first half, mostly from Ma, but it’s pervasive in the second half, and we get that emotional disconnect from Ma’s entire family. The characters of her parents are not merely inserted into the story for support and convenience. Instead, there is the sense that the woman back in their lives is more a stranger than their daughter, and that each individual person here is involved in a complicated unspoken dance where certain things can’t be stated outright, only alluded to. All of this is given to us secondhand via Jack’s narration, but it’s indisputably there. This sense of interpersonal tension and caution gives the payoff of the novel, involving Room itself, an additional heft beyond what we get from the direct impression that Jack gives us.

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