It’s very cold out, I can tell you. It’s murder.
Rose delivers this line—the first words spoken in The Room—to her husband, Bert, as she finishes cooking for him before he sets out in his van. On the surface, Rose is using a common turn of phrase ("It's murder") to emphasize how frightfully cold it is outside. But within the greater context of the play, the line speaks to Rose's existential need to stay within the couple's warm bedsit, apart from the dark and cold world she fears. For Rose, to leave the safe confines of the room is tantamount to death.
No, this room’s all right for me. I mean, you know where you are. When it’s cold, for instance.
As the first scene goes on, it becomes clear that the unresponsive Bert may not be listening to Rose's ramblings. Akin to a theatrical aside for the audience's benefit, Rose lets her thoughts flow freely as she contrasts the cruel outside world with the secure room in which they live. Pinter has Rose repeatedly talk about her appreciation for their room to emphasize how attached to the place she is. In doing so, Pinter establishes emotional stakes, making it sting when Rose fears her landlord is planning to evict her, and making it an existential threat when Riley asks her to "come home," which would mean leaving the room.
Oh, I used to count them, once. Never got tired of it. I used to keep a tack on everything in this house. I had a lot to keep my eye on, then. I was able for it too. That was when my sister was alive. But I lost track a bit, after she died. She’s been dead some time now, my sister. It was a good house then. She was a capable woman. Yes. Fine size of a woman too. I think she took after my mum. Yes, I think she took after my old mum, from what I can recollect. I think my mum was a Jewess. Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she was a Jewess. She didn’t have many babies.
In the second scene, the old landlord, Mr. Kidd, drops by Bert and Rose's bedsit claiming he is checking the pipes (in reality, he is seeing whether Bert has left for work yet so he can deliver his message to Rose from the man in the basement). In this passage, Kidd admits he no longer knows how many floors his rooming house contains and laments the loss of his sister, who used to help him keep the house in good shape. The strange monologue seems even more bizarre when Kidd exits and Rose comments on how she thinks Kidd never had a sister, suggesting that his memory has gotten so bad that he is inventing relatives. By establishing Mr. Kidd's tenuous grip on reality, Pinter contributes to the growing mood of unease and unreality in the play.
ROSE. You won’t find any rooms vacant in this house.
MR SANDS. Why not?
ROSE. Mr Kidd told me. He told me.
MR SANDS. Mr Kidd?
ROSE. He told me he was full up.
MR SANDS. The man in the basement said there was one. One room. Number seven he said.
Pause.
ROSE. That’s this room.
After politely inviting the Sands into her home to warm up, Rose discovers something unsettling: Having come to the house in search of a room to rent, they went to the pitch-black basement and happened across a man who informed them that room seven was going vacant. In this exchange, Rose is unnerved to hear that the room she has spent so much of the play appreciating may be taken from her.
The man. He’s downstairs now. He’s been there the whole week-end. He said that when Mr Hudd went out I was to tell him. That’s why I came up before. But he hadn’t gone yet. So I told him. I said he hasn’t gone yet. I said, well when he goes, I said, you can go up, go up, have done with it. No, he says, you must ask her if she’ll see me. So I came up again, to ask you if you’ll see him.
Believing Mr. Kidd plans to evict her, Rose confronts her landlord about what the Sands said about room seven going vacant. Kidd knows nothing about what she is saying, however, and anxiously explains that a man has waited all weekend in the basement to speak alone with her. In this ironic twist, Rose's concern over her housing security is quickly displaced by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious visitor.
MR KIDD goes out. She sits in the rocking-chair. After a few moments the door opens. Enter a blind Negro. He closes the door behind him, walks further, and feels with a stick till he reaches the armchair. He stops.
Although reluctant to see the basement man, Rose tells Kidd to fetch him before Bert comes home, worried about what might happen if the man were to visit while Bert was there. When Riley finally arrives, he is a blind Black man navigating his way around obstacles with a cane. With these physical attributes and the fact Riley has come from the purgatory-like space of the basement to ask Rose to "come home," Pinter associates Riley with the Grim Reaper, suggesting he may be an otherworldly figure who is there to claim Rose's soul. However, Riley is simultaneously vulnerable, unable to see and having a racial background that means he is subjected to discrimination in mid-20th-century Britain.
You’ve got what? How could you have a message for me, Mister Riley, when I don’t know you and nobody knows I’m here and I don’t know anybody anyway. You think I’m an easy touch, don’t you? Well, why don’t you give it up as a bad job? Get off out of it. I’ve had enough of this. You’re not only a nut, you’re a blind nut and you can get out the way you came.
While Riley claims to know Rose, Rose insists she does not know who he is and that it is impossible for him to know her, claiming "nobody knows I’m here and I don’t know anybody anyway." This claim, when coupled with Riley referring to her by a different name, suggests that Rose may be living under an assumed identity. Although he leaves the play open to interpretation, Pinter provides context clues that could point to Rose having abandoned her former life to be with Bert, and now Riley has come as an emissary to request that she return to her father.
RILEY. Your father wants you to come home.
Pause.
ROSE. Home?
RILEY. Yes.
ROSE. Home? Go now. Come on. It’s late. It’s late.
RILEY. To come home.
ROSE. Stop it. I can’t take it. What do you want? What do you want?
RILEY. Come home, Sal.
Pause.
ROSE. What did you call me?
RILEY. Come home, Sal.
ROSE. Don’t call me that.[...]
RILEY. I want you to come home.
ROSE. No.
RILEY. With me.
ROSE. I can’t.
In this exchange, Riley reveals his message. While Rose doesn't balk at the word "father," she does question "home." She also is thrown off by Riley calling her Sal, which suggests either the name she used in her former life or a childhood nickname her father might have used. As the dialogue goes on, Riley switches from saying her father wants her to come home to saying "I want you to come home." This shift adds to the building sense of eeriness while suggesting Riley may be trying to bring Rose not literally to her home but into the afterlife. While it is implausible for him to be her literal father, Riley seems capable of channeling the God-like authority of Rose's father, assuming this other identity to deliver the message.
She touches his eyes, the back of his head and his temples with her hands. Enter BERT. He stops at the door, then goes to the window and draws the curtains. It is dark. He comes to the centre of the room and regards the woman.
BERT. I got back all right.
ROSE (going towards him). Yes.
Although Rose tries many times to reject Riley's request, she suddenly moves to touch his eyes and head in the way a blind person would to get an understanding of what someone looks like. This action suggests she has given in to his request, and if Riley is a Grim Reaper stand-in, the fact of their bodies touching confirms his claiming of Rose's soul. However, the intimate moment is interrupted by Bert arriving home. Rose quickly seems to forget Riley, moving toward her husband to hear about his day on the road.
He strikes the NEGRO, knocking him down, and then kicks his head against the gas-stove several times. The NEGRO lies still. BERT walks away.
Silence.
ROSE stands clutching her eyes.
ROSE. Can’t see. I can’t see. I can’t see.
While Bert initially ignores Riley's presence in his home, not questioning why Rose is touching the man, Bert suddenly lashes out, attacking Riley until he lies still, possibly dead. The unexpected burst of violence coincides with Rose losing her eyesight. While the play's abrupt ending is open to interpretation, it may suggest that Rose has to take Riley's place as a blind, Grim Reaper-like messenger from the underworld.
