The finite-volume energy levels corresponding to the Roper resonance based on a two-flavor chiral effective Lagrangian at leading one-loop order are investigated. It is shown that the Roper mass can be extracted from these levels for not too large lattice volumes. Further, to include three-body $N \pi \pi$ dynamics, a non-relativistic effective field theory for the Roper resonance within a covariant particle-dimer picture is introduced. This particle-dimer approach is a suitable framework to investigate three-particle scattering relevant for the Roper channel. The appearing dimer fields are analyzed, the energy levels of the Roper resonance in a finite volume are calculated and compared to the results from the chiral effective Lagrangian.