He is a criminal who kidnapped and raped Joy "Ma" Newsome in captivity and is the biological father of her son, Jack. Old Nick lures year-old Joy Newsome by pretending that his dog was lost, and kidnaps her and holds her captive in his garden shed. He repeatedly rapes her, which eventually results in her getting pregnant and giving birth to a son, Jack. For the next seven years, Old Nick holds them both as prisoners, occasionally bringing them food and supplies. One night, Old Nick tells Joy that he has lost his job and says that he may not be able to afford their supplies in the future; it is implied that he plans to kill them.
To save Jack and herself, Joy trains him to pretend to be dead so Old Nick will take him out of the room to bury him. Old Nick is fooled, and wraps the boy up in a carpet and puts him in the bed of his truck.
Jack escapes, and rushes to a group of passersby, yelling for help. Old Nick panics and drives away, but he is arrested later that night. Joy, meanwhile, is reunited with her son and her parents. Old Nick is found guilty of kidnapping and raping Joy and is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Old Nick's behavior notably matches up with a description of someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
He is cruel and manipulative, and also has control issues, as seen in his cruel manipulation of Ma, such as when he bought Jack the toy truck knowing that this would deeply upset Ma , and turning off the power in Room. Old Nick is also shown to be very methodical and calculating, as demonstrated in the complex and clever setup of Room, considering all possibilities as demonstrated with the steel door and code.
Old Nick is also very cautious and values himself over everyone else. The best example of this is when Ma and Jack try to trick him into taking Jack to the hospital. Donoghue adapted her own work, but those who have read the book and see the film will notice she was not precious about making changes. Things are added and subtracted; characters change, as do settings.
It's a stripped-down self-edit that will please book loyalists, but also immediately grip people who know nothing about Room 's plot and its twists. Donoghue talked to BuzzFeed News about her close involvement with making the film, working with Abrahamson, the cast, and how her own life did and did not help create the novel and movie.
There are many, many spoilers below, about both large and microscopic plot points. So stop reading now and go see Room if you don't want to be spoiled! Donoghue had written novels, short stories, and plays before, but until Room , she said, "I never felt I had quite such a filmable story. Though Room 's story was inherently dramatic, if not cinematic, its structure posed some challenges. The novel is told entirely from Jack's 5-year-old perspective, which would not be the case in a film.
Though Abrahamson's direction often allowed the audience to share Jack's gaze, Donoghue embraced the difference in medium as she wrote the screenplay. But often you're looking at Jack's face and you don't quite know what he's feeling in that moment — where in the book, you know exactly what he's feeling. In the film, often these big beautiful faces of the actors, they're kind of a blank screen, and we project ourselves onto them. Plot-wise, Room 's story cleaves into two halves: the story of Jack and Ma's imprisonment in room, and then the aftermath of their escape.
The screenplay was a living document throughout the whole process, even in editing. Room was released in after a bidding war , and the novel not only became a best-seller, but it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Which is to say that Donoghue and Room received a good amount of publicity back then. She was honest at the time that the story was in part inspired by Elisabeth Fritzl, who had been held in a basement by her father, Josef, for 24 years and had seven children throughout her years of being raped and imprisoned.
But, she said, "any one true crime case kind of sticks to works based on it," and she watched with dismay as "the novel was often reviewed as the 'Fritzl novel. The crime is just a really useful frame — it's a way of putting family in the spotlight. Donoghue, who had wanted to be as involved as she could be in the making of the movie, was persuaded by Abrahamson's writing her a page letter about his passion for Room.
Like Donoghue, Abrahamson — the director of the esoteric alt-music comedy Frank , among others — is from Dublin. And he has a son and a daughter, as does Donoghue. He picked up references to Plato's Cave, and that kind of thing. He had an intellectual level that won me over, and just a gleeful enthusiasm for the book.
And then there was the letter itself. Room could have been told very differently — there could have been flashbacks to the kidnapping, or to Ma's life before her captivity. The room itself could have been different, or more emphasis could have been put on Old Nick, the name Jack and Ma have made up for their nameless captor. But Abrahamson stuck faithfully to the novel's architecture and its ideas about parenting as world building. For instance, many of my scenes, I went in late and got out early, with crisp edges," Donoghue said.
Give me lots of material and then I'll do the cutting. Once the two characters get free, Donoghue said, "It was really important not to lose that focus on Jack and Ma in the bigger world. The story of Ma's stillbirth before Jack was born was also eliminated.
Donoghue lamented that loss, but said: "A book can stop, and have lots of little pauses, and extra bits of backstory and information. Film has kind of a forward momentum. I quite see why that one went. Ma, whose name we find out is Joy Newsome, was also aged down from 19 to 17 in the film, because if she had been above 18, the FBI would not have investigated her kidnapping. And the characters became less religious. The interesting thing is we clearly overlap, we both utterly believe in the love of the parent for a child, so that's the faith the story relies on.
On the whole, though, Donoghue worried more than necessary about how much she might need to change. Lenny was not bothered by that. He kept saying, 'Let's go back to the book, let's go back to the book. Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Room can help. Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive.
Not much is known about Old Nick other than he is a white man in his forties or fifties, and that he abducted Ma off her college campus when she was 19 by luring her towards his truck with a fake story about having a sick dog.
Old Nick is cruel, temperamental, and unfeeling—and yet in spite of his absolute power over Ma and Jack, Ma senses a part of him that seems to be growing increasingly fearful and uncertain. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:. Presents Quotes. Related Symbols: TV. Related Themes: Isolation. Page Number and Citation : 12 Cite this Quote.
Explanation and Analysis:. Unlying Quotes. Related Symbols: Teeth. Page Number and Citation : 69 Cite this Quote. He drove and drove, I was terrified. Page Number and Citation : 94 Cite this Quote. Page Number and Citation : 97 Cite this Quote.
The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. After hanging the sketch inside Wardrobe, Jack asks Ma if he can Jack started calling the As Jack looks at the pictures on the box, he laments that Old Nick no longer brings him and Ma catalogs so that they can pick out their old After reading, Ma and Jack lie down for a nap, and Jack breastfeeds.
Ma tries to calm Jack down and reminds him that they need to ask Old Nick only for things he can get easily and cheaply from the store. Jack retorts that She urges him to go to sleep quickly After a long time passes, Jack whispers to Ma and asks if Old Nick is coming. Ma says he must not be.
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