Ma's Control

Looking at Emma Donoghue's Room as a hero's journey, I started to draw some parallels to the classic hero's journey, The Odyssey.  One of the first connections I made was to compare Jack to Odysseus, as they are both the main heroes of their respective journeys. Comparing the innocent 5-year-old to the muscle-bound war hero was amusing, though I did find a comparison I thought fit better.

Much of what happens in The Odyssey is a result of the goddess Athena's will. The story almost seems to be a game for her; she has control over every aspect that she chooses to. While reading Room, I noticed that Ma had a similar sense of control over the hero in that story, Jack.

Jack's entire world in Room is what Ma has made it to be; in that sense, Ma is essentially a goddess. All of Jack's perceptions of reality, as well as all of his actions on a daily basis, are dictated by Ma. The reasoning behind Ma's doing so was most likely necessity rather than desire, but all the same she has a superhuman control over Jack's life. Additionally, such control was most likely a comfort for her in Room, where she had no control over anything but Jack.

After leaving Room, however, Ma no longer has such control over Jack. She is still the boss of him, but she cannot define the world however she pleases like she could in Room. She is only a human, and not a superhuman. Life in the outside world does as it pleases. Jack's pictures being leaked, for example, when there was a contract explicitly stating that he was not to be shown at all, show just how little control Ma has over anything in the world after Room.

Ma's control seems quite obvious, but one part of Room really stuck out to me and made me think about the need for control Ma seems to have. Said part is where Ma tries to commit suicide. Initially, I saw her suicide attempt as losing herself under pressure and wanting everything to be over. However, she had spent 5 years in total control of someone's life. Now being thrust out into the regular world, suddenly Ma has no real control over anything, as evidenced both by the world not listening to her, but also by Jack's ability to disobey her in simple ways, such as taking 6 toys instead of 5. The one thing she has the total Athena-like control over at that point would be her own life. I'm not coming completely out of nowhere from this - I've heard of suicide attempts or self harm as being a way of feeling in control of something when one has lost all control. I find it very interesting how someone put in a position with seemingly no control is somehow able to find a way to control everything and grow accustomed to such control.

Oh my, more heroes?

In Room so far, Jack seems to be the most likely candidate for a hero. He follows a very clear hero's journey path, with most of the elements of a hero's journey present. While not denying that I see him as a hero, and not denying that what he did was very difficult for him and also very brave of him, I still couldn't help but think that Jack didn't really do all that much. All he really did was execute ma's plan, and then get extremely lucky to run into a person after getting spotted so quickly by Nick. Then again, Odysseus really just followed Athena's plan, and he's still seen as a very iconic hero. So, I have no qualms with calling Jack the hero of this story.

However, when I first reflected on my issues with calling Jack a hero, I started to look for other potential candidates for a hero. I ended up finding Officer Oh to be an interesting candidate for a hero. It doesn't fit nearly as smoothly as we discussed with Jack's hero's journey, and yet parts of it still fit.

As a police officer, the refusal of the quest doesn't really fit in at all, but there is a quite literal "call" to adventure with the police being called. From there, Officer Oh is faced with the trials of puzzling out Jack's world. Only Ma and Jack really understand his world, so trying to puzzle through his way of talking would be an ordeal, and also in a sense be in an unknown land. Each answer Jack gives is a different ordeal, until the final ordeal of zoning in on where Room is. I can also see the technology she uses to find Room as Talismen of sorts. Finally, after the job is done, she returns to her ordinary world, though perhaps not as a master of both.

Actually writing this out, it feels like a stretch to call Officer Oh's rescue a hero's journey. However, I still think that it has a lot of elements, and it is interesting to try to look for heroes that aren't the main character. I've been trying to use this hero's journey model on multiple characters, in and out of class, and it's actually interesting how well so many characters, even side characters such as Officer Oh, fit the model of a hero's journey.