Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
Exclusive: Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue on how her family, her research into autism, her religious background and a real-life abduction all informed her story

Exclusive: Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue on how her family, her research into autism, her religious background and a real-life abduction all informed her story

Last updated on: April 8, 2016 at 10:23 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Exclusive: Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue on how her family, her research into autism, her religious background and a real-life abduction all informed her story 2016-04-08T10:23:27-07:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Audiences and critics alike have been singing the praises of Room — which concerns a five-year-old boy who has spent his entire life inside a garden shed, and the mother who is trapped in there with him — since it premiered at the Telluride film festival last month. I had the privilege of speaking to Emma Donoghue, who wrote both the film and the novel it is based on, when Room came to the Vancouver film festival, where it won the award for most popular Canadian feature. (The film is an Irish-Canadian co-production, and Donoghue herself was born in Ireland but now lives in Canada.) The first part of that (spoiler-filled) interview is here, and the rest of it is below.

–

Now as I understand it, the inspiration for this, if that’s the word, was a true-life case involving a father and his daughter?

Donoghue: Yeah, it’s an Austrian case, the Fritzl case, and really, I made Room as different from it as I could. I made it one child instead of seven, a total stranger instead of her father, seven years locked up instead of I think about 23 years, and I made it an above-ground space with daylight instead of a basement dungeon with no light, and what else did I change–? I just made it less grim, you know, that Jack has enough food, vitamin pills, that he’s not being harmed, because I wanted to focus on the issue of freedom. What if you had everything you needed except freedom? When a baby is still in your arms, they wouldn’t really care or notice, but of course, as we all get bigger, we want more. And so I was trying to find that moment where a mother would decide that actually, my child at this point needs the world more than he needs me, so it’s worth risking cutting that umbilical cord, it’s worth separating. Because in my experience with parenthood, there are so many moments like that where you think, “Do I let them cycle down the road without their helmet on? Do I let them ride in the taxi with no seatbelt? Do I let them go off on holiday for a month without me?” There’s all those moments of letting go. Parenthood is a series of letting go.

One of the fascinating things about this story is that, when they get out, on the one hand the world is more free, but on the other hand Jack becomes aware of limitations he never knew about before. The fact that you don’t touch other people’s privates, and things like that.

Donoghue: Yes! So many rules, so many laws about things like property and theft, so many concepts that are rigorous and stressful for children to learn, and it’s so difficult to explain to a child. When I moved to Canada [in 1998], the Canadian government gave immigrants this book on ‘Life in Canada’ that explained things like, “In a supermarket, you go around taking things and putting them in your trolley and you only pay at the end, but in a shopping mall, that moment where you step over the threshold of each shop, even though there’s no actual door, you have to have paid for the thing by then or it counts as stealing.” This is actually a crucial thing you need to know about life in the developed west, you know, but it’s not usually spelled out. And that’s the kind of thing you have to teach children. Yes, we’re all allowed to take one candy as we leave a restaurant, but in a shop, if you take one candy, that’s stealing. So Jack just has to learn all the rules in a speeded-up way, whereas usually our children learn these rules one at a time. But all these rules are arbitrary, and they’re all quite difficult for our kids to learn, and so Jack’s childhood is just a kind of faster version of everybody else’s.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard anyone say anything quite like this before, but part of my own personal reaction to the film was motivated by the fact that I have two sons who are on the autism spectrum.

Donoghue: So many people have written to me about their autistic children! When I was researching the book– Of course there’s hardly anyone in the world in Jack’s kind of situation, right? Because those who’ve been raised in basements and so on, they’re usually damaged — they didn’t have enough oxygen or they didn’t have enough people talking to them or they were beaten or raped or whatever. So I had no Jack to talk to, obviously, so I looked at every analogous situation I could — like children who have been adopted from an orphanage in Russia, so suddenly they’re in this world of sensory stimulus where they have been stuck in their bed for months on end. But one obvious analogous situation to me was the autism spectrum, because I have a friend in particular who works with autistic kids, and she talked a lot about sensory overload. I remember seeing some BBC documentary which tried to capture visually what an autistic person might experience in a supermarket: the lights and the sound and the product names. So yeah, I don’t see Jack as autistic himself, but I see his experience of the world as a bruising and tormentingly varied place, and as very like what they, as far as I know, must experience.

Well certainly as a parent, watching Jack in the film, I had that same feeling of communication issues and socialization issues and is-he-ready-for-the-world-yet issues.

Donoghue: How much to push them, how much to let them stay as they are, maybe playing with the train in the corner, and how much to say, “Come on, time to meet your uncle!” Yeah, yeah, and of course, with all kids, you can’t help but say to yourself, “Okay, if my child is all clingy, do I let them stay beside me, or do I encourage them to go off in the playhouse.” And every child is different. And one reason I wrote Room is that we’re a two-mother family, right, so we feel normal to ourselves, right? Two kids, two mothers. And yet my children are now, as they get a bit older — they’re eight and eleven now — so they’re starting to meet people who go, “What do you mean, you don’t have a dad? What do you mean, you have two mothers?” So there’s that moment when you realize that the outside world doesn’t see you as a valid family in some cases, that it sees you as stunted or missing. So I tried to give that sense to Ma in the book and the film, that she and Jack were a valid family, but suddenly the outside world is saying, “No, you are a pathetic simulacrum of the real thing.”

Well, in her case, she’s an abductee, and in that interview she explicitly denies that Old Nick is the father because he didn’t have a “relationship” with Jack, and yet, I can imagine scenarios where, on a purely biological level, you know how doctors ask about family histories and things.

Donoghue: Of course, of course. She’ll have to have the conversation, yeah. I was just writing a piece for Harper’s this summer about talking to my kids about their donor, actually, and with all these issues, the earlier you bring things up, the better. Because when you tell a child something that the world considers unusual about them early on, it’s like, not a big deal. With kids who are diabetic or whatever, if it’s just known early on, then to the other kids in their class, it’s just how that kid is. It’s not big and scary. There doesn’t have to be some coming-out moment.

The website I write for, Patheos, is sort of a multifaith website, so I have to get a religion question or two in there.

Donoghue: Cool. It’s all too rare, actually. It’s never discussed, so go for it.

One of my questions had to do with the potentially Gnostic implications of the story — being raised in a sort of artificial world, almost a Truman Show kind of thing, and then eventually breaking free of that — and I noticed that in your book, you do refer to Plato’s Cave, and that did occur to me as well.

Donoghue: Definitely. Actually, in the film, that bit where Jack’s spending the day on his own, and he’s suddenly discovering the shadow of his hand on the wall? Lenny was saying that’s his little Plato’s Cave moment. He’s like, “Oh, that’s a shadow of my hand, so there must be something outside that makes the shadow.”

Also, in the book, I noticed a lot of references to Baby Jesus or things like that, but I don’t remember them being in the film as much.

Donoghue: Well, because Lenny’s a fervent atheist, and I’m a Christian, so we overlapped as best we could, and we both agreed on it being a story of, in a way, placing your faith in love, in parental love. So he dropped the Christian elements completely, but I think the story still works. I mean, it’s not like the Christian elements were needed for our readers to connect with, not a bit. The way I saw it was that Ma would pass on to Jack whatever she had — Kylie Minogue songs, Christmas, anything that made life meaningful — so yeah, she uses that Christian context. But I don’t think all readers have noticed or found that side of things important. So I think the film still works.

It’s not just that there’s the painting on the wall, of Jesus and John I think, but there’s even a reference to The Shack and The Da Vinci Code [in the reading material within Room] — that’s pretty broad.

Donoghue: I actually chose the mainstream bestsellers that I would hate to be stuck in a room with, like The Da Vinci Code! I only read The Da Vinci Code because I was breast-feeding, so, y’know, I needed something that was a page-turner. But yeah, because it’s a mother raising a child who is potentially heroic, I saw it not only as being like Mary and Jesus with Old Nick as the Devil — in Britain, “Old Nick” is a slang phrase for the Devil — so yeah, I saw the Mary and Jesus elements as pretty obvious, but also kind of Adam and Eve elements. To me it was important for Jack to be male. I liked the idea that they act as this kind of microcosm of human civilization, this male and female. And also as a contrast to Old Nick; he’s such a devilish figure, I thought having a really good male figure, in the form of Jack, kept that balance. So to me, the mythology behind Room — and also not just Christian stuff, but storylines like in Rapunzel, or the story of Perseus who is born to a walled-up virgin. Basically there are very ancient archetypes about virginity as a kind of a walled-up fortress, and the idea of this hero child being born out of that, so there are lots of famous virgin births, as it were, not just Jesus. So those elements were really important to me, but funnily enough the film still works without them.

Previous Post

October 21, 2015

Newsbites: Of Kings and Prophets! Like a Virgin! The Young Messiah!

Next Post

October 24, 2015 Listen: Podcast interview with the distributor of Risen

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In what city was Jesus born?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jericho Jerusalem Bethlehem Nazareth