The Enigma that is Old Nick

When we're first introduced to the riveting novel Room, there are initially three main characters: Ma, Jack, and Old Nick. Old Nick doesn't make an actual appearances early on, remaining more of a scary name or concept than a tangible person until page 35. There's an ominous Beep Beep on Door, a rush of cold air, and voila, a wild Old Nick appears. But even though he's now a legitimate character, how much do we actually even know about him?

Lets start from the top. First off, we don't even know his actual name. It might as well be Old Nick, but it's never established that his legal name is Nick. We later learn that Old Nick abducted Ma when she was only 19 years old. He ran up to Ma saying his "dog was having a fit and might be dying." It turned out to just be a trick to get Ma into his pickup truck. Old nick blindfolded Ma and took her away, and has kept her captive in Room for the last eight years. He now brings Ma and Jack food and material needs, making the bed "creak" with Ma most nights he comes around. He's said to have an "extra deep" voice, and from the dialogue we've had, he's also a really sarcastic/ cynical person when he's not busy losing his temper and beating Ma. We also learn that he has recently been laid off.

He's very cautious and borderline paranoid, but evidently very good with his hands and very calculating. When Ma is describing her past attempts to escape the Room, we see a lot of this. Originally, Room was just a "garden shed to begin with. Just a basic twelve-by-twelve, vinyl coated steel. But [Old Nick] added a sound-proofed skylight, and lots of insulating foam inside the walls, plus a layer of sheet lead, because lead kills all sound. Oh, and a security door with a code. He boasts about what a neat job he made of it." Old Nick seems to know exactly what he's doing, and has put in a lot of forethought into making this shed an actual prison. What particularly strikes me about his setup is the chain-link fence underground and all through the floors and roof. This is a serious operation, very clearly premeditated. The fact that he decides to brag to his victim about the room he designed makes Old Nick all the more despicable. He's portrayed as a very twisted man, with this perverse fantasy of kidnapping a woman and "keeping her safe" as what is basically a sex slave. Maybe he was hoping for a Stockholm syndrome kind of scenario. 

In the end he's a despisable human being. But there's not much back story to him, and I personally would like to see some. Who is he in actuality? Did he choose to capture Ma, or did she simply have some really shitty luck? There was a study I once read that said that most kidnapping victims actually knew their captor, but who knows if that applies to this story? What got Old Nick to this kind of state in the first place? It takes a really sick person to even think about doing something as horrible as what is shown in Room, let alone execute it. Its clear to the reader that Old Nick isn't a character to sympathize with. He's a violent manipulative kidnapper and rapist. But I really do wonder: what made him like this? Alas, we're just going to have to wait and see if the story divulges this information.