In Room Old Nick is an awful but very smart character. All of his actions are thought out and like a true villain, everything he does adds to the gaslighting and abuse rained down on Ma. We see how smart he is with his construction of Room, making everything perfect so there is no way that his prisoner could escape. But what I would say is his greatest victory and most cruel thing he did in a sense was give Ma Jack.
Although Jack would eventually grow to save Ma's life, he also kept her trapped in that room for 5 years, forced her to keep up a facade with Jack to make sure he never found out the truth of the outside world. And possibly worse than that was that she was forced to pretend that she was okay with being in Room and being with Old Nick in order to protect her son.
The emotional burden of having to play into the games of your captor and abuser seems unimaginable and the way Ma deals with it is truly heroic, and in contrast that is what makes Old Nick so horrible.
The emotional burden of having to play into the games of your captor and abuser seems unimaginable and the way Ma deals with it is truly heroic, and in contrast that is what makes Old Nick so horrible.
I totally agree with this post! I think that Nick didn't necessarily give Jack to Ma on purpose, but for sure it is the biggest obstacle that he gave to Ma. The fact that Ma now had to focus all her energy on Jack and not on escaping, she had to succumb more to Nick and become a lot more selfless because everything she did was now for Jack.
ReplyDeleteWhile Nick seems like a very intelligent character, it seems that he forgot about the threat Jack posed to his operation. At some point or another Jack would be able to grow up and stage some sort of coup to escape and over power Nick. If he was so intelligent, I would have thought he would create some sort of way to get rid of Jack or prevent Ma from having a child in the first place.
ReplyDeleteNick does seem methodical and plotting but I can't help but think he isn't smart because its kind of stupid to kidnap somebody in the first place. It can't be a sustainable thing to keep people in one's back yard, even if he kept it up for 7 years, and they got out now he's in big trouble
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