Language and Communication Quotes in Room

Ma and Jack like to play vocabulary games. It may seem like a childish thing to do, but it actually relies on great vocabulary skills. It shows that Jack knows a bunch of synonyms, and also that he understands that "huge" and "enormous" can be combined into one even bigger word.

Jack might understand a lot of words, but being trapped inside Room limits his ability to understand some of them. He thinks that he and Ma are the only "real" people and that everyone else, even the humans, inside the television are not real. It takes him a while to grasp this concept.

Because Jack only understands things (and people) he has seen in person, and because all his other knowledge comes from TV, he uses the word "TV" to mean "fantasy" or "imaginary." To Jack, anything that he hasn't laid his hands on is imaginary—even bunnies.

This is a pretty good definition of sarcasm, and it's impressive that five-year-old Jack not only understands what sarcasm is, but can pick up when someone is using it. That's more than a lot of adults are able to manage.

It's difficult to tell these two things apart. You can't really pretend without lying, and you can't really lie without pretending it's true. In Jack's mind, they're two distinct concepts. He doesn't understand that to an outside person, like Ma, they look like the same thing sometimes.

With every new concept comes new vocabulary. It's a lot for Jack's little brain to process, this whole the-brother-of-my-mother-is-my-uncle thing, so his brain pretty much shuts off and thinks of something much simpler, like lunch.

This is the first time Jack learns that Ma has a name other than Ma (though we never get to know it). Maybe we never get to know it because Karen Jones, or whatever her name is, is never who she'll be to Jack. To Jack, the only word to describe her is, and always will be, Ma.

Jack has only been known as Jack to Ma. The concept of pet names or nicknames is completely foreign to him, especially when these names are coming from a male stranger he just met.

Now that Jack is in the Outside, he's going to experience lots of euphemisms and idioms that seem strange to him. He doesn't understand that "vulture" is another term for "paparazzi," though it'll make a lot of sense to him once he does get it… he'll understand that the photographers are scavengers.

Jack takes language very seriously. His spelling is good, his pronunciation impeccable. He's a little grammar Nazi in training, seeing these little puns on the crayons as serious offenses against the rules of good grammar.