Macon's Leadership on the Day of Apology

Simply put, the Day of Apology has been an absolute disaster for Macon. The majority of the day's failure simply has to do with the fact that Macon's not really as great of a leader of the masses as he believes himself to be. What he's been doing throughout the entire Day of Apology is going out expecting the world of his followers with expectations high as the moon, ultimately having to conclude with, "I was wrong to think that you've got what it takes to change. Forget apologizing. It'll only make things worse." Macon's definitely beginning to lose faith in his followers by the end of this major event because he wanted and expected "erudite, die-for-the-cause radicals." What he got instead were moderates of the cause, and he honestly has no idea how to speak to them.

Macon is decidedly on the far end of the bell-curve, and he thrives there. His radicalism and strive to be different are what make him a good leader to those who are passionate about his cause because he brims with confidence about what he's doing. People who aren't hellbent on Macon's agenda, however, are easily disturbed by his personality and methods or are simply following him for the wrong reasons. This is largely why the media picked up on him, he made a very good story. Unfortunately for him, with his appearance on television, his target audience seems to have gone from very niche to very widespread, and his radical ideology isn't really tailored to that crowd.

Macon is really counting on his followers people to use their own brains on the Day of Apology instead of blindly following him to the letter, which ironically enough, is largely what he's been doing with previous civil rights leaders. "Malcolm never said what black people's response should be when white folks started apologizing." He forms a lot of his own ideas, but for the most part, he just set the Day of Apology in motion and hoped it would go in roughly the right direction, not wanting to craft it to his agenda at all. Whether this is laziness on his part of just a massive level overconfidence in his followers, I can't really tell. He really just wanted people to begin thinking about day-to-day racial issues within the context of the modern day and instead got violent and somewhat misguided riots in the streets with no real enlightenment occurring for either party involved. To me, Macon's hard fall definitely seems to be inevitable.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

Except not really. Presumably Jack and Ma will continue to live fairly happy lives together. Unfortunately, they don't get to just sit back and instantly assimilate themselves straight back into society. They'll face some serious challenges and continue to to have some very rough spots, especially for Jack. Their journey is very much not over, and due to the nature of the relationship between a mother and her son, never will be. So what exactly does the end of Room represent, if clearly not Jack and Ma's heroic adventure with each other?

To me, it looks like the ending of Room represents the end of Jack and Ma's relationship to Room itself. Throughout the entire second act of the novel both Ma and Jack have been doing their best to detach themselves completely from Room; Ma because she desperately wants to, Jack because he slowly understands that he has to. Since his escape, he had been looking at the entire world through the lens of Room, and the detachment to it in his language and behavior in the final scenes highly suggests that Room has finally transitioned into more of a memory for him than a limitation. Their final goodbyes really indicate to me how much they've come from the beginning of the book and provide the reader with some nice closure by bringing the whole story around full circle.

Personally, I thought it was one of the best endings the book could have done.