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- Title
Narratological Complexities in Emma Donoghue's Room.
- Authors
Sharma, Khem Raj
- Abstract
The present paper seeks to unravel the narrative complexity in Emma Donoghue's latest novel Room shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. Inspired by a real life incident that took place in the life of Elisabeth, who was incarcerated by her father, Josef Fritzl, for twenty four gruelling years, the novel has an unusual narrative structure. It is built on two intense constraints: a) the limited point of view of the narrator who is a 5-year old boy named Jack; and b) the confines of Jack's physical world comprising an 11'x11' room wherein he is confined with his mother. Donoghue navigates intricately around these limitations. She gently leads us into Jack's world through crisp dialogues alongside careful hints of eavesdropping. The child feels secure with his 'Ma' available to him throughout. Extremely sensitive toward his needs, Ma has created lively regimen of exercise, singing and reading for Jack. The lifeless objects in the room viz., Rug, Bed, Wall, etc. are friends for impressionable Jack. His perception and idiom have been used to challenge readers to view the world from an innocent, sheltered, uniquely fresh perspective. To impart the narrative a complex curve, Donoghue strategically employs relationship between mother and child, family and loss, violence and power to demonstrate her grit to preserve innocence against all odds. Forced to live in a world comprising lifeless objects, Donoghue operates through the voice of the innocent narrator to evoke narrative empathy (a la Suzanne Keen) in the reader to trigger transformation deep within.
- Subjects
NARRATOLOGY; DONOGHUE, Emma, 1969-; NARRATIVES; EMPATHY; SENSORY perception; PRISONS; ROOMS
- Publication
Labyrinth: An International Refereed Journal of Postmodern Studies, 2013, Vol 4, Issue 3, p144
- ISSN
0976-0814
- Publication type
Article