As you read
The Road for Tuesday's class, think about the stylistic texture of this novel. How would you describe McCarthy's prose? What do you make of the opening images that McCarthy delivers of the world post-apocalypse? Do we get a moral voice here? A neutrally descriptive voice? Why does McCarthy center his novel on the relationship between father and son? Would you consider this to be a novel influenced by 9/11? Why or why not?
Please use the space below to write on any aspect of the novel. You might also want to check out
The Road movie trailer and website
here. (It opens November 25th!)
I've read a good bit of the book so far. I must admit though, that rapist cannibals really freak me out so it's been a bit unpleasant. I am intrigued by the man and boy's relationship to "the road" though. It is both a source of life and death. They must follow it to reach the coast, but it is also used by the 'bad guys' that want to eat and rape them. The father must put his son in danger in order to save him.
ReplyDeleteIt is curious to me, although I recognize the hopeful desire to keep living, that the father places so much importance on the way he and his son die. It is clear that he would rather kill his son and himself than be killed and eaten. He is still clinging to something higher than himself in his hopeless world. If he stops caring how he dies and desiring to live on (without being a cannibal) he will lose this slight faith.
I cannot seem to stop reading this book; I've read it through three times since I picked it up. The labeling of the characters really echoes Doctorow's Ragtime. I felt as if the relative anonymity of the man and the boy, like that of Father or Mother's Younger Brother, was meant to open the reader's empathy. Also, it becomes abundantly clear very quickly in the novel (and McCarthy's language reaffirms this) that it really is of no consequence who the man and boy specifically are. Without the framework of society, how do we identify ourselves? Without licenses, social security numbers, postal codes, telephone numbers, etc, how do we differentiate ourselves from one another? Without society, though, why would we NEED to?
ReplyDeleteI think Sarah hit upon a really important image in the book: that of the road itself. McCarthy's prose reads like a stream of conscious thought, more specifically like that of the man, with only occasional and vague statements in the reader's general direction (only seldomly does the author mention the catastrophe which brought on the dissolution of mankind or the early details of the collapse). The man views the road as their last anchor to civilization as well as their last shred of hope to recover some form of higher existence beyond the animalistic one he and the boy have managed to carve out for themselves.
The book raises so many intense questions about what it really means to be human and about our ideas of what distinguishes us from other living species. There is no way you can read this book and not consequently examine your own relationships and familial connections. "When the time comes, can you do it?"
As many dark, disturbing images as there are in the book, the very first paragraph still haunts me the most. The father's dream is the opening scene, the first image McCarthy greets the reader with, and in some ways, this creature that dwells inside of the dream cave is so much more terrifying to me than the idea of roaming cannibals. McCarthy really delivers with this image, and (had I not already read this book before/had to read it for this class) I'm not sure how much more I would have read. The reader is met with a sense of blindness ("nights dark beyond darkness", "the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world") at the very beginning of this first paragraph, which soon becomes understandable as we reach further into the post-apocalyptic scenery. On this note, however, it seems strange, and extremely creepy, that the first real description McCarthy gives us is of the dream cave, which is not so scary or different from a normal cave until the focus is turned upon the monster. Before any of the main characters are described, and even before the reader entirely understands what sort of world they are dealing with, there is the dream. I'm not much into philosophy or dream interpretation, but I am extremely curious what McCarthy was trying to say with this creature. Is it some sort of deamon or devil? Is it a reflection of what men have become in this post-apocalyptic landscape? Or is McCarthy just trying to freak out his readers before the action really begins? This novel is obviously being used by McCarthy as a commentary on the world, whether the world that already exists or what he is afraid it will become, and it's extremely interesting that he chooses to begin this commentary with a scene so riveting, and frankly, so disturbing.
ReplyDelete-Megan Lawson
I must admit to reading the entire novel last night. Prof. Hinrichsen was right when she said it was hard to find good "stopping points" in the book. Like a road, the novel continues down a steady line until we're finally at the end. This one linear path style contrasts with the converging roads style of Ragtime, but that there are only two main characters should not discredit that linear style as simplistic or "easy." We don't even get another living being until around page 50 in my text, and it's just a shuffling survivor barely deserving of that "living" title. Isolation is obviously a huge concept in the text.
ReplyDeleteBut also consider the aspect of time. I noticed this: time flies in this novel. Minutes turn into hours which turn into days. Though you wouldn't know it since the book isn't separated by chapters, it actually spans quite a time period. The days seem to run together; almost all of them seem to be rainy with the same gray sky and desolate surroundings. Time seems to have lost meaning in the post-apocalypse, and days run together like their footsteps on the road. Days are separated into daylight and night with seemingly little to no gray area between them. Time has become "uncalandared," as McCarthy writes, and its passage is merely existent in the rising and setting of the sun.
Another recurring theme I noticed: the issue of not knowing. "I dont know" seems to be by far the most uttered phrase between the man and the boy. It's a testament to perhaps the biggest fear of the apocalypse: nobody knows how, when, and why it will happen, nor do most of us even think about what we're going to do if it hits in our lifetime. They don't know, the other survivors don't know, and we don't know. The book is constantly sending the characters into risky situations where the outcome is unknown. They don't know how they'll survive each passing day. At the end, we don't know what's going to happen to the boy. This is a world where survival is anything but certain; everything is a "maybe" or an "I dont know." That's why the novel is hard to put down: the suspense simply can't be ignored, and we have to keep trying to reach that point where we can say "I know." But we don't.
A friend recommended this book to me last semester, but I never did read it. Now I'm glad I did. Apocalypse stories are always good stories. Just look at Fallout 3.
I have really enoyed this novel so far and am finding it hard to put down. It's probably my favorite thing wr've read in this class. I think the father/son relationship is very important to the story. It's a man who is responsible for taking care of his son when he can barely find the means to keep himself and his son alive. I think the novel is very much centered around a moral voice. Starting when we find out thst the mother killed herself and wanted to take the boy with her. It's only natural to think one might consider taking their own life after an apocolypse, having nothing and no hope. But is that a moral decision? the wife thought so yet the husband would not think of it. He spends his his entire life moving down a road, trying to survive, not really knowing if he will ever reach anything better.
ReplyDeleteThis book is really interesting. I haven't been able to stop reading it. the images of father's dream are absolutely haunting. The relationship of of the father and son is a key role throughout this book. The man can barely fend for himself let alone his son too. The road plays a role in the father and son's lives. The fathers main focus is to just keep moving down the road and to keep surviving, but he isn't sure if he will ever reach anythig better or anything that will make him better. When the novel start we find out that the mother has committed suicide and wanted the boy to die along with her. This book so far is aout the father coping with the loss and trying to take of the son, just one day at a time.
ReplyDeleteI love this book. Like everyone else is saying, it's hard to put down-- wish I wasn't so busy so I could read it all the way through!! It's amazing how someone can write a novel with this stype of style, and it be a good one. I loved how their were flashbacks and bits and pieces of information about the disaster that would filter into the text at random times. Its keeping me on edge. I'm always wondering what's going to happen next and how it will end! My favorite part about the book is that Cormac McCarthy can keep me so interested, while describing a landscape almost 60% of the time. It's eerie, and intriguing, and I have managed to create a clear picture of this desolate "road" that McCarthy is painting for us.
ReplyDeleteI may be looking too far into this, but did anyone catch earlier in the book on page 29 a foreshadowing of the cannibalism we say later? The line, "He watched the boy sleeping. Can yuo do it? When the time comes? Can you?" I took this as the father struggling with the idea that if and when his son passes, that he will be forced to eat him in order to survive... may be a long stretch, but I wondered about it!
P.S. Sorry about all the typos! I typed it way too fast ha!
ReplyDeleteI cannot wait to finish reading this book! I agree with Kristanya, this is my personal favorite of the novels we have read for class.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I immediately saw in the description of the post-apocalyptic world was similarities to Lord Byron's poem "Darkness". I love this poem and every time I read a description of the world, the poem is the first thing I think of. If anyone has not read it, or would like to re-read it here is a link to the poem: http://www.online-literature.com/byron/685/
I haven't had much time to devote to this book, so this is probably not going to be very good. I have about 15 minutes right now before I have to start drawing a phylogenetic tree, so here it goes: McCarthy's prose annoys me. He inconsistently uses punctuation for contractions. Example: wasnt, no apostrophe, there'd, apostrophe. He seems to neglect punctuation for standard contractions and use it only for those that are less widely accepted. I just don't understand why he ignores the rules selectively in this situation. McCarthy seems more decisive in his other omissions, for instance the fact that he doesn't use quotation marks when characters are speaking (at least not in these first 70 pages, I haven't had time to read to the end yet).
ReplyDeleteThe Road is the best writing that we have read this semester. McCarthy's writing style is simple and yet successful at conveying a powerful message about faith, perseverance, and refusing temptation. The cave dream in the introduction seems significant to setting the tone for the challenge that has been pressing on the man and the boy since the time before their journey. The cave could be functioning as a metaphor for the psyche or mind of the father and the beast as the beastly element that has turned other people into cannibals. It is definitely significant that the beast flees after he and the boy approach it because it alludes to the ends of process we go through in understanding that the boy embodies the most compassionate and righteous elements of humanity. This intro conveys that the soul of this story is taking place on a mental plane rather than the physical.
ReplyDeleteWhen Oprah asked McCarthy what he wanted the reader to take away from the book, he said appreciation for what we have. I can say I have reflected on this concept while reading the book. There is such a dark and cold atmosphere in the book that it makes you take a look around and think about the things that would be lost in the same situation. But there is a little light at the end of the tunnel to think that uncondtional love could still survive in such a desolate situation and that a human connection can exist when nothing else does.
ReplyDeleteI think that the relationship between the father and son could be symbolic to the situation that they are in. So far, they speak to each other in very short sentences and neither of them questions each other as much. Nor do they talk about what happened, just about what they are going to do to survive. Their environment is also very simply and primitive so there is not a lot to speak about because there is nothing left but dirt and ash. I thought it was interesting that the book does not disclose what happened but then does it really matter? When one is placed in a desperate situation, he or she does not dwell on what happened but only of how they can overcome the aftermath of it. I think if they did discuss of what happened then it would only lead to confusion and depression. I feel like they are trying to suppress all emotion for the time being in order to try to move on and survive.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting the McCarthy uses words such as gray, black, cold, dark repetively in order to emphasize the scenery and their desolate situation. As I said in class today, he gives lots of color and vivid descriptions for a colorless and bleak world.
Like I said in class, I don't think I've read anything more enjoyable than this in years. Ragtime was close, but this is far beyond it. The dialog strikes me not just as realistic, but as hopeless. Everything that is said is spoken with a tinge of darkness, of failure, of possible death. The boy is always aware that at any moment, someone may eat or rape him. The father actively instructs his child how to commit suicide. This is not normal dialog: this is a bleak but truthful assessment of their situation. It pervades everything they do, from living in a basement to realizing there are no cows. And I love it.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, this is not a fun book to read right before going to sleep. The first day I got it I was reading it in bed, and I was pretty much freaking out before I went to sleep. Cannibals is not a pleasant thing to think about before sleep.
ReplyDeleteWhat I noticed most about the book was how many allusions he uses. I only noticed a few while reading, but yesterday in class 3 more were brought up that I hadn't noticed. He uses so many! The one that really caught my attention was the biblical reference to the book of Job. I cannot remember what page it is on, but it is talking about the son and whether or not when the time comes he'll be able to do it, and it says "Curse God and die". That line is straight out of the book of Job. I thought it was interesting because in the Bible Job is a man who loses everything, because Satan is trying to test his faith. Throughout the book Job remains faithful to God, even though he loses everything he ever had, including his family. The father and the son in The Road can relate to this I think. They lost their family, their home, everything except for eachother and the clothes on their back. But even though they are starving and freezing, they still have faith that there can be a better life.
--Bethany Greiving
As I was reading The Road, it struck me that the man seems to think of his son as something of a god. There are two or three passages, one I recall at the very beginning of the book and another when the man is talking to the old man they encounter on the road. This is odd because as the book goes on, the man seems to have lost any faith he may have had, while the little boy believes in something, at least. It may be that the man has nothing to place his hope in but the boy, and that hope has become the only kind of faith the man can have. Or maybe he really does think his son has a certain divinity, since he was born after the apocalypse and still is so pure.
ReplyDeleteThere was one part very near the end of the book that stood out probably the most to me. It is after they reclaim their belongings from the thief on the beach and the boy is crying because they have left him to die. The man says something along the lines of, "You're not the one who has to worry about everything," and the boy says, "Yes, I am. I am the one." This is first of all very sad because the boy, while he never loses faith in his father, loses some faith in goodness. To me, this line was a beautiful blend of naivete and awareness; the boy knows what's going on and why his father behaves as he does, but he doesn't quite accept that they should have to change as the world has changed. I guess that's the central question of the book.
The post above was mine, Megan Blankenship's. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteI have totally enjoyed this book. It makes me think about something one of my old professors once said about the only thing seperating humans from animals is our ability to feel compassion for one another. I've never really pondered on that thought too much, but when I read "The Road," I couldn't help but mull over that thought. I mean, you can't say that language sets us apart because McCarthy shows us the complete breaking down of that. As we mentioned in class there is a lack of puncutaion and stylistic elements. You also can't argue that it is advanced behavior that makes us different because we see humanity revert to cannibalism. You can't say it is our advanced society because instead of banding together after the apocalypse, people take on an "every man for himself" mentality and whatever civilization we once had is ruined.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the compassion the boy feels for the other little boy and the thief at the end, seems totally miraculous given the world he has given up in. The human population has, for the most part, given up all feelings of compassion and love in order to survive. They basically act like animals. But it is the little boy, and his ability to feel for others regardless of who they are and what they've done that seems strange in this alien earth. It sets him apart from the others.
Note* I am a firm believer that animals have feelings. I am not condoning the torture of animals. :) This was just a thought I had on the novel.
The Road is simply amazing. McCarthy weaves a stunning novel out of such a stark, desolate landscape. I pretty much agree with what has been said on the blog about his language, imagery and dialogue.
ReplyDeleteHis dialogue should get a standing ovation because he handles it so well. The parring down of speaking and how the words of the father and son blend is so intention as the class discussed. Words like 'okay' and 'alright' that are repeated even as it seems absurd to use them in the apocalypse are hard words to use in writing. 'Okay' can be vastly abused and overused if not done with a subtle hand, turning into a filler phrase used by the author when nothing else is working. But McCarthy makes good use of it as a mantra to keep from going crazy.
As I said in class, this book instantly reminded me of Lord Byron's poem "Darkness" which I love.
"I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went -and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light;
And they did live by watchfires -and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings -the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed"
Sorry that's a really long excerpt but it's all about this dead, black "lump of death" earth where there is nothing left and people are burning everything for light. "A dream, which was not a dream at all" really reminds me of the father and his concepts of dreams. What has happened is so surreal, but he has to own up to the reality and face it. The father knows as soon as he slips off into the dreamland of the past, their ability to survive is over because they have succumbed to fantasy.
McCarthy's concept of "good guys" and "bad guys" is really interesting especially how the dad creates this dichotomy in order for his son and himself to function in the new world. As long as they are carrying the torch and they are the good guys, there is this something more to hold on to, but without it they can turn into anyone else, cannibals. We see the dad not sticking to this and constantly enter a gray area like when he tells the robber to take off his clothes and they leave the robber naked. Would a good guy do that? The little boy who believes so much in this good guy myth and is so filled with compassion does not condone these actions by his dad. Carrying the light is one of those little things we tell ourselves to keep sane and to sense of the world.
I think that the title of this novel is incredibly enigmantic and pregnant with meaning. It's incredibly significant that this road is never given a name...it's just "the road," and it meanders endlessly through the ashes of a dead world. In this way, it is not only the literal path of the father and son, but it is also the symbol of their own existence--one which has lost its symbolic or societal meaning, as these patterns of meaning and association are gone. Pondering the question of where this road might lead also brings up the question of where the lives of the father and son (and even civilization as we know it) are headed--a question which isn't ever clearly answered.
ReplyDeleteAlso a powerful thing to think about pertaining to the road: think of the sound of their feet on the asphalt. The road is stripped of its purpose, there being basically no cars anymore to drive on it. Think of how lonely this experience would be. Have any of you ever taken a walk around your neighborhood very late at night, when no one was out driving around? Did you ever just quietly listen to the rhythm of your footsteps on the road and feel calmed by that sound after the rush of the daily grind? Well think of how this must sound to them. There's nothing but the sound of their footsteps and their breathing, no matter what time of day it is. Nothing but silence and ash sifting through the air and the dead trees. In this case, it would not be calming at all--it would be maddening.
Having spent this past week thinking about my reading of "The Road," I came to view the work in an artistic context, as if it were a painting. I think I came to this realization because the "The Road" is so holistic, I feel as if I can view the piece as a whole, envisioning beginning and end like two edges of a painting. It reminded me of Pieter Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" in the book's atmospheric perspective via the quasi-anthropomorphism of the landscape and the fact that, like Icarus, the Father and Son are of absolutely no consequence to the landscape they inhabit. While Brueghel's portrayal of the indifference of earth to the suffering of mankind seems to be less dismal (perhaps ironically), the link between the painting and "The Road" was instrumental in my holistic visualization of the book.
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