Jack's Language: Mini-blog 3

In the following passage Jack, the main character, is describing the outside world that he is seeing for the first time.

"Another light is whizzing by over. Things sliding in the sky that I think they’re trees. And houses and lights on giant poles and some cars everything zooming. It's like a cartoon I'm inside but messier. I'm holding on to the edge of the truck, it's all hard and cold. The sky is the most enormous, over there's a pink orange bit but the rest is gray. When I look down, the street is black and a long long way. I know to jump good but not when everything's roaring and bumping and the lights all blurry and the air so strange smells like apple or something. My eyes aren't working right, I'm too scared to be scave" (Donoghue, 139-140).

How does this shape meaning and influence understanding?

Jack is only a five year old boy, so I thought his description of the things may be warped by what he does not understand. I couldn't be more wrong… Jack's perception of things is very keen and I've found myself used to the language he uses while narrating. In this passage Jack is riding in the back of Old Nick's truck, pretending to be dead so he can get help from the police. It is his first time outside of Room, and he is experiencing all the things he is describing for pretty much the first time. The only view of the world outside of Room that Jack has gotten has been through the skylight in Room. His description is compared to a cartoon because that is the only way he has perceived things like telephone poles, cars, roads, and trees. The truck is described as "hard and cold" because of the low temperatures outside. By describing his perceptions in the way he does, Jack is still able to convey where he is to the reader as he develops understanding of what is around him. His child-like descriptions worded with incorrect grammar show not only his age but his fear as well. When Jack exits Room he realizes how different the world outside is, and this scares him too much to be "scave" (not a real word, but I think he means brave in this context).