“ROOM” By Emma Donoghue
1. Annotate as you read.
2. Analyze the nature of the diction used in this passage, how it builds the persona of the narrator, and how it affects the passage as whole using the 5 questions.
The first pdf is the story
The second pdf is the 5 questions.
I hear a sound so I get up not waking her. Over by Stove, a tiny scritchy scratchy sound.
An alive thing, an animal, for really real not TV. It’s on Floor, eating something, maybe a
crumb of pancake. It’s got a tail, I think what it is is, what it is is a mouse.
I go nearer and whee it’s gone under Stove so I hardly saw it, I never knowed anything
could go so fast. “O Mouse,” I say in a whisper so he won’t be scared. That’s how to talk to a
mouse, it’s in Alice, only she talks about her cat Dinah by mistake and the mouse gets nervous
and swims away. I put my hands praying now, “O Mouse, come on back, please, please,
please…”
I wait for hours but he doesn’t come.
Ma’s definitely asleep.
I open Refrigerator, but she doesn’t have much inside. Mice like cheese, but we haven’t
any left. I get out the bread and crumble a bit on a plate and put it down where Mouse was. I
crouch down small and wait for more hours and hours.
Then the most wonderfulest thing, Mouse puts his mouth out, it’s pointy. I nearly jump in
the air but I don’t, I stay extra still. He comes up to the crumbs and sniffs. I’m only about two feet
away, I wish I had Ruler to measure but he’s tidied in Box in Under Bed and I don’t want to
move and scare Mouse. I watch his hands, his whiskers, his tail all curly. He’s alive for real, he’s
the biggest alive thing I ever saw, millions of times bigger than the ants or Spider.
Then something smashes into Stove, whaaaaaack. I scream and stand on the plate by
accident, Mouse is gone, where’s he gone? Did the book break him? She’s Pop-Up Airport, I
look in all her pages but he’s not there. The Baggage Claim is all ripped and won’t stand up
anymore.
Ma’s got a weird face. “You made him gone,” I shout at her.
She’s got BrushPan, she’s sweeping up the broken bits of plate. “What was this doing on
the floor?
Now we’re down to two big plates and one small, that’s it—”
The cook in Alice throws plates at the baby and a saucepan that almost takes off his
nose.
“Mouse was liking the crumbs.”
“Jack!”
“He was real, I saw him.”
She drags Stove out, there’s a little crack at the bottom of Door Wall, she gets the
bundle of aluminum foil and starts pushing balls of it into the crack.
“Don’t. Please.”
“I’m sorry. But where there’s one there’s ten.”
That’s crazy math.
Ma puts down the foil and holds me hard by my shoulders. “If we let him stay, we’d soon
be overrun with his babies. Stealing our food, bringing in germs on their filthy paws…”
“They could have my food, I’m not hungry.”
Ma’s not listening. She shoves Stove back to Door Wall.
After, we use a little bit of tape to make the Hangar page stand up better in Pop-Up
Airport, but the Baggage Claim is too torn to fix.
Directions:Analyze the nature of the diction used in “Room”, how it builds the
persona of the narrator, and how it affects the passage as a whole by answering
the below analysis questions.
1. Jack capitalizes parts of the room. List some examples. Why do you think the author
capitalizes these words?
2. The use of made-up words, such as “scritchy,” “knowed,” and “wonderfulest.” What is
the effect of this?
3. The passage makes use of many fragments and run-ons. Why?
4. The key portion of this text is “He’s alive for real, he’s the biggest alive thing I ever saw,
millions of times bigger than the ants or Spider.”
Contextual Information: The narrator is Jack, a five-year-old born into captivity by a
woman who was kidnapped as a teenager. Jack was conceived by his mother and the
kidnapper, who continues to abuse her on a nightly basis. To protect him, Jack’s mother
raises Jack with an education of the outside world, but tells him that the things he reads
about or watches on television are not real. The only real things are in their Room,
which he has turned into his universe.
The appearance of the mouse presents a turning point to Jack; it is the first
time a living thing has entered into his Room, with the exception of their
captor each night.
5. This contextual information would not be necessary to discuss the diction of this poem,
but consider it now. How does the interaction between Jack and his mother show this
conflict? Discuss why this line may be significant.