Room

Ordinary Level · 2028 Leaving Cert

Emma Donoghue’s Room is your 2028 Ordinary Level Single Text, and it hands you one of the most gripping narrators on the whole course: a five year old boy called Jack.

Jack has spent his entire life inside a locked garden shed he calls Room, and to him those eleven square feet are the whole world. His Ma was taken at nineteen and has raised him there in secret, shielding him from the man they call Old Nick. Because Jack was born in Room, he believes it is the entire universe and that the world on the television is only make believe, and his innocence gives the whole story its strange power. The novel follows their daring plan to get out, and then the far harder task of learning to live in a world Jack never knew was real, from the glare of the media to Ma’s slow and painful recovery.

Room Study Guides

Work through the three guides below in order, then return to them when you are revising for the Paper 2 Single Text question. Each one keeps to plain, exam ready points and names the exact moments you can lean on, so you can build a full answer without reading the whole novel again.