Freedom And Confinement

The rooms are arranged from east to west with the blue room on the east and the black one on the west. East represents birth because of sunrise and west represents death because of sunset. Also, each of the 7 rooms represents a stage of one’s life, with the black on the very end representing

These specific facts make the story more authentic and leave no space for doubts or ambiguities on the reader’s part. All the events taking place within the chamber, though terrifying, are coherent and in correspondence to the place in which the narrator is placed.

This room represented death or the end of life. Another example of symbolism happens when the clock rings. “And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock” symbolizes the fear that is in the guests and the prince even though they think they are safe from the plague they know they are not.

The seven rooms in the house also conveyed stages in life ending with death. These rooms were set up from east to west. This meaning that the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, and death comes in the darkness. "In this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color." The guest's avoided this room because it was a sign of death.

Over the first five years of Jack’s life, the room is where he finds safety and comfort. Jack was born in that room and lived with his mother there for the first five years of his life. He got accustomed to it and knew everything about it. Furthermore, you can see Jack showing his childish love to his basic belongings in the following quote. “‘Jack, it’s all frayed and stained from seven years…I can smell it from here. I had to watch you learn to crawl on that rug, to walk on it. You pooed on it once, the soup spilled, I could never get it clean.’ ‘Yeah I was born on her and I was dead in her too.’ ‘Yeah, so what I’d really like to do is throw it in the incinerator.’ ‘No!’” (Donoghue, 305). Some of the very few belongings from the room mean a lot to him and are memorable. For example, a rug is utilized in many different ways in his life. He was born on it and escaped from the room in it. It signifies the beginning and the end of his life in the room. Altogether, Jack finds out who he is by forming personal attachments to the room.

“I am self-propelled; fueled from within. I appreciate people’s opinions, but I am not attached to them. I learned a long time ago that if I give them the power to feed me, I also give them the power to starve me.” -Dr. Steve Maraboli. When I read this quote I thought he was describing that no one can hold him back and he is going to be free. My question is what does it mean to be free? Does it mean not caring what others think about you? Or is it being free to accomplish your dreams with no regrets and nothing holding you back? Being free means different things to different people. In the poem “Caged Bird,” by Maya Angelou, she talks about two types of people one being caged and one being free. In his poem “Mother to Son,” Langston Hughes talks about there will bumps in the road of life, but you have to forge your path to be free. In the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost discusses the two roads a person can take, either you can be free and not care about other's opinions, or you can be trapped by everyone’s thoughts about you. You can be free by not caring about others opinion’s on you, but by making your own path. So will you choose to be free or will you choose to be dragged down by other’s opinions about you?

Lastly, the isolated room that the narrator stays in is a symbol. The room symbolizes a safe haven, giving the main character time to write and process many

            The main setting we have to understand would be her room that she is living in and everything that surrounds her in this environment. I believe this room represents her mind and that she is locked in there because she is actually in an insane asylum. We can see that the room has special characteristics that would not be associated with a normal room. I believe this room is part of her subconscious mind and that she goes there to get away from the insane asylum she is currently staying in. “For the windows are barred for little children” (454), “and then that gate at the

In the PBS series, “Freedom: A History of Us,” journalist Katie Couric narrates the story of The United States America. One of the episodes is dedicated to US’s history with slavery, titled, “A Fatal Contradiction.” Couric points out that although the US was founded on the ideal of personal freedom, that at that time in our history that wasn’t the case. Leading to the contradiction which is the inspiration for the title of the episode. The reality is that there were four million slaves in the United States, directly going against the concept of freedom that America was founded on.

In William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”, Jack Merridew possesses multiple qualities that would cause him to be an exemplary leader; however, there are negative traits about Jack that demotes his leadership. Jack Merridew is considerably stubborn when it comes to his ideas, and he contains an impulsive attitude in the decision­making, or lack thereof, process. Jack emits violence similar to that of a wild animal, along with looking down upon at anybody who has even the slightest handicap, including the “littluns”. Jack tells a fair amount of lies in the story, contributing to his extreme thirst of power. Merridew is a hideous, evil young man who is stranded on an island with a multitude of other British boys, including Ralph, Piggy, and Simon.

With that being said the previous quotation allows readers to see the room as a symbol for a prison or mental institution. This symbol is further enforced when John does not permit her to reside somewhere else. Ultimately the literal symbol for the nursery as a prison or mental institution is significant because during the conformist era that the story takes place in, curing mental illnesses was done through barbaric and inhumane practices. The fact that

The child stated that both he and his father believe that there are many things that his mother has done. Jack indicated that he does not remember them, but his father “reminds me” about these things.

They show the continuous growth of life and the progression of a person, from a baby to the old person they will eventually become. These phases of our life are symbolised by the clock in the black room, it represents just how people view time. To many people time is a basic concept, an hour is just an hour; yet, do you ever notice all the seconds that go by? Before anyone notices, years go by and they are left wondering where it all went. The mask man travels through the rooms at a fast pace, showing just how fast life can go by. Death will always catch up to everyone, no one can hide from

Every object that exists in the room starts with a capital letter as the idea of millions of objects existing in the world is inconceivable to Jack. It is evident that the capitalization of each word signifies Jack’s intimate relationship with the objects and even refers to them as ‘he’ and ‘she’. Lise Eliot describes Genie, a child who grew up in captivity, to “Barely be able to walk, could not focus her eyes and was incapable of speaking or understanding language” (Eliot). This is a more severe case of what Jack experiences, but describes how Jack’s confinement and non-existent relationship with society impact his development. Jack’s naïve mind interprets wrongful meanings of inanimate objects deterring his ability to form proper sentences or identify pronouns, just as Genie. In a like manner, since Jack identifies the room as the universe, he is unable to comprehend the difference between reality and television. The television in their room is the only identification of real life but Jack questions, “How can TV be pictures of real things?” (Donoghue 61). He only believes that things inside the room are real as he thinks, “Trees are TV but Plant is real” (Donoghue 63). This exhibits Jack’s uneducated and clueless mindset as he cannot grasp the idea that a television projects images of real things. His absence from society reflects the senseless behavior he possesses. He states that the

At the beginning of the novel, Jack believes that Room is his home, but he slowly learns to let go of his past and move