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.
I agree that Officer Oh definitely acts as a heroic character, and while her main purpose in the narrative is to be an aid to Jack, I think she performs both of these roles pretty well. Her "task" of translating Jack's almost unintelligible speech is a pretty significant supreme ordeal, and I think you can definitely say she completed said task extremely well. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThis is actually really interesting because I never would have thought of Officer Oh as a hero in the story. I would have categorized her as an ally or maybe supernatural aid but now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of what you said was valid and this was interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteOfficer Oh is indeed a very impressive cop, in particular because of her persistence at trying to understand Jack and her cleverness at putting together the clues so quickly. I would definitely nominate her for promotion to detective.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree with Ellie and Maya that she fits the role of ally or supernatural aid (especially with that satellite technology, which blows Jack's mind) better than the Campbell hero. There's a sense in which, as a police officer (or first responder, EMT, firefighter, etc.), this kind of heroism is built into the job. Which doesn't at all detract from it as genuine heroism, but there isn't the same sense of an ordinary person rising to extraordinary acts under extreme circumstances. She's "just doing her job," and she does it extremely well. But Jack is being thrust outside his familiar world and entrusted with a truly daunting task, and there's definitely more of a "journey" involved for him.
This is a very interesting post because mostly this whole time we've been talking about only Jack and Ma as potential heroes, and we never even considered Officer Oh to be anything other than Supernatural Aid or an Ally or something like that. I agree that we can see a kind of journey that she goes through on her own as she's trying to decipher Jack's answers, but I still think Jack is the main hero here. In my mind, Plan B was a stretch and it was unlikely that Jack could pull everything off without getting caught by Nick, but he did. So I thought that was a really big deal, but that's just my take on it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Nathan! I think applying the hero's journey to supporting characters of a book really reveals how built-in this path is for every character. I think you characterized Officer Oh's, while somewhat short, hero's journey really well and it made me see her in a new light.
ReplyDeleteLooking at secondary characters, I don't think that any of them really closely follow the path of the heroes journey but I would think that Officer Oh would fit least of all because she doesn't change at all, she just shows up and helps. On the other hand, Ajeet has a little bit of swing in what he does, going from normal world where Jack is Old Nick's son and nothing is wrong to heroic panic mode where he calls 911 and rescues Jack to a greater extent than Officer Oh did.
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