The Road in the Novel….

      Traditionally, the road has often been used as a metaphor for a journey that pushes society forward, shown as a microcosm through the lives of significant characters. ‘The Road’ is true to this; through the boy’s discovery of another good family, his father’s death marks the end of the pessimistic childhood he has been subject to and the idea of hope is conveyed via his character to which the reader takes as a sign that the world putting itself back together, starting with its people. Constantly referred to as ‘the word of God’, the boy symbolises the creator of our world, his existence itself is meant to prove the presence of God and suggest that if God’s word has survived the nuclear holocaust, then so can his power. This gives the reader cause to believe that the world can be recreated and man can once again be in the image of God, a feeling that comes about through the man’s death. His struggle on earth has lead him off the ‘correct’ path in life and his mind has been corrupted by the loneliness of the situation; the boy in his ignorance has never known anything more than this solitude and so has nothing to compare the new world to. His lack of expectations is what the reader sees as the hope for the future as he can create a world that thinks similarly to himself and reform Earth.
     The portrayal of the road in many texts can be a metaphor for the journey from birth to death, in ‘The Road’ however, these two aspects have been reversed; the man’s death can be seen as the boy’s birth as when the man dies, his son’s spirit is set free and he manages to escape from the bubble of isolation his father has trapped him in for so long. When the two are travelling down ‘the road’ they both seem to be waiting for death, their struggle is apparently meaningless, especially as the reader hears the gradual descent of the man’s health; it isn’t until he finally dies at the end of the book that the boy comes to life and seems to have been born out of his father’s death. It could be argued that the book begins when it ends, at the death of the man; although the his life comes to a close, the hope for the boy is stronger and his character begins to become more explicit. It could be seen as trust or possibly naivety that causes the boy to talk to and agree to leave his father and join the other man and his family, but the hope is that the journey of discovery on the road has lead him to be the ‘good’ guy he has frequently talks about and he can now move on with, not only his life, but ‘carry the fire’ to other people on the road, similarly to Jesus, once again making him ‘the word or God’.
      During the course of the book, the boy is portrayed in several different ways to be carrying God’s message through the nuclear holocaust; occasionally McCarthy includes scenes where the boy is washing in order to resemble him being baptised. Ironically, whenever we see the boy washing, it is usually after his father has sinned; he is described to ‘wipe the gore’ of his son’s face after he shoots the roadrat and inadvertently covers his son in the man’s brains. At this point the boy washes himself as if to wash away the sins of his father along with the remains of the roadrat. McCarthy seems to find it important to include references to religion in the novel; the man’s wife dies and McCarthy states that ‘her coldness was her final gift’, however she only feels the need to kill herself because of her husband’s actions; his carelessness with the pistol or with circumstances in general lead him to have only two bullets left and she knew that she must die, once again, for the man’s sins. After all the sacrifices that his family have made for him, he finally dies to free his son who manages to find a new family, possibly a better one, who can take care of him while he continues passing on ‘the word of God’.

The Road Rat Questions....

On page 62, McCarthy talks about the boy playing with his truck and drawing trails in the road with a stick and ash. This at first seems out of place in the novel, as previously the boy acts like the product of the disintegrating world, he shows no resemblance to what we associate a child to be so the reader wonders why this is. It is only then later in the book when the roadrat appears in a truck that the relevance is shown that the boy was acting as a foreshadowing element of the book. It is symbolic of the fact that everything good which happens in the book is a minor representation of something bad that either has or is going to happen. The part where the boy is drawing lines in the sand is later shown to mirror the cracks in the road that they come across, the point being that it is man who have ruined the world and deserve to suffer for it; in the bible God floods the world, in the road, he has blown it up and completely killed it. The time they are in could just be part of God’s cycle of cleansing the world before starting afresh.

The description of the men tells us that they possibly used to be members of the government; they each wear a ‘biohazard suit’ which initially gives the impression that they are significant members of a society, a collective group who are scouring the road as a job for a purpose. Then the reader learns that the suits are ‘stained and filthy’ suggesting that their humanity is also stained and the reader realises that the men have no purpose to be cleaning up the road and the disintegration of the world has been mirrored by the corruption of their humanity. This is backed up by the way that they are carrying ‘lengths of pipe’, in our society, those wearing biohazard suits are the ones trying to stop those which weapons; the fact that they are now combined shows that there is no distinction between good and bad any more, all men are equal and all are living in an ‘every man for himself world’ even the man who seems to be trying to do everything right by his son is carrying a pistol showing that to survive, even good guys have to become murders. The men also have ‘hooded heads’ showing that they resemble the grim reaper and death in every way possible, they are very intimidating to the man and the boy who’s efforts to stay alive seem to have all been for no reason at this point. Finally, when the men are first seen, ‘the first of them were already coming into view’; the way that they are described collectively as ‘them’ shows that the man didn’t even need to stop and look to see who it was, it shows the reader that to the man and the boy, any other human being is a threat and a bad guy; there is no need for them to stop and check and have faith in people as they know almost for certain that all other people are bad. It also suggests that the man knew that they were coming; he seems to know who is bad as he has had an image of the men in his head, when he saw them he didn’t go into great detail about them, just skimmed over their general appearance to show the reader that he has possibly encountered them before and they could be the reason he has only two bullets left.

McCarthy makes a biblical reference when describing the truck as ‘lumbering and creaking like a ship’; he ties in the references to the bible in this part of the book, the fact that the man and the boy are following the birds south to be by the sea and the roadrat’s truck sounds like a ship links in with the story of Noah’s ark. God used this story to restart the world and only kept very few people alive to do so. It could be interpreted though, that this time, God is killing the world; unlike last time where he wrecked the planet, this time mankind have done it for him, so rather than giving them another chance, he is letting the bad people ride the ship and rule the place, and even though the good people try to listen to the birds, there’s never going to be a rainbow waiting for them when they get to the coast, just a thief who steals all of their belongings and turns the man into a murderer after he leaves him naked in the road. This could symbolise God giving up on humanity all together, and to justify this, he is turning all the good people into murderers in order to not feel bad about doing it.

On page 65, the roadrat is described in great detail; McCarthy does this for several reasons, he needs the reader to understand that in the post apocalyptic world, the good guys are very complex and rare beings and can’t be pinpointed to a specific description as there is no definition of a good person in this world as they are so few and far between that no one can justify one man being better than another. The bad guys however, are a common occurrence; due to the way that the reader see’s the world through an omniscient narrator, we assume that the world is how it has been described and that most of the people still alive are bad so there is a lot to be known about them. It is symbolising that, like the bible, the story is supposed to be very black and white: the good people are good and the bad people are bad. This is why the reader never has time when encountering the bad people to reflect on them as we are supposed to see them as bad and never think about their circumstances, they are the bad people and we should see them as such. Interestingly thought, the good people aren’t described as being all good; the way that the atmosphere is literally always grey, shows us that there is room for interpretation as far as the good people are concerned and that the good characters are in fact just human beings, not biblical characters.

The roadrat is particularly explicit when he talks to the man. He doesn’t seem to care who knows what about his life and what he’s doing as he has nothing to live for; if the man kills him then it may be a blessing to him. It also seems to be a statement about education; the roadrat uses simple language and swears when talking as if it is just an average thing which he says, suggesting that all forms of humanity have been removed from the world, people don’t even speak correctly anymore and the world seems to be going forwards in time, yet backwards in development. It also backs up the earlier paragraphs about the stereotypical bad guy who we know so much about because there are so many. Another reason for this use of language could be to show that the roadrat feels no threat from the man; he has friends with him and totally outnumbers the man and his two bullets so feels confident enough to be as casual in his language as he wants as he feels no harm can come from it. This is a contrast to the man whose implicit language creates a sense of mystery around his character and backs up the idea that you can’t put a mark on a good guy. If we learnt too much about the man then we would learn a definition of a supposed good guy and the point of the book would be lost. We would also then have to learn about how he really feels and cares for his son, which would again, totally dismiss the caged creation of a good man on the road.

We learn from the experience with the roadrat how educated the man is; although McCarthy never gives any details away, we learn that he knows words such as ‘frontal lobe’ and other words relating to the brain, suggesting that at some point he must have had some form of education and to quite a high level. This scene also teaches the reader, more worryingly, that the man knows how to kill. In a few seconds he manages to pull the pistol out of his belt, kneel in the correct position, aim, pull the trigger, hit the roadrat and miss his son despite the two being inches away from each other. This shows the reader that he has done it before and provides an explanation to why the wife had to leave the two of them and why the man started with so many bullets and now only has two, and after this scene, one. It shows the reader that he has had practice in killing and from this moment on, there is always a question in the reader’s mind as to whether he is actually a good guy; the biblical reference to the world being ‘gray’ is proven hear as the reader can’t work out whether the man is good or bad. He is doing his best to look after his son, but at the same time is a murderer.

‘A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.’ This quote from the man’s wife can be interpreted in two different ways; it can either be read as the wife getting mad at the man for not accepting the truth and being angry that he can’t face what is eventually going to happen. She is clearly terrified and the way that her husband would rather live in a state of ignorance than accept the truth frustrates her. The alternative however, is that she is begging him not to see the truth, as if he does, he will have to kill his son and then turn  the pistol on himself; if he realises the truth then he will lose all hope and spirit and his son will suffer for it. For this reason, the woman could be interpreted to be begging for her husband never to accept what has happened to the world, and to never give up.

The other men don’t chase after the man and the boy after they shoot the roadrat as they eat their friend. This shows the serious decline in humanity; people are acting like animals. The man who was once their friend and only a few hours previously was alive and looking for food with them, is now the end to their starvation. It also shows just how hungry these people are. They could have had the opportunity to gain three bodies to eat, yet they were so hungry that they didn’t have the energy to chase after the other two, just saw food and sat down to eat it like animals.

It takes the man along time after the shooting to wipe the ‘gore’ off of the boy’s face for the simple reason that it isn’t life threatening to be covered in someone’s guts. However horrific it may seem, the man kept the boy warm, he fed him and found a safe place for them to set up camp, but didn’t wash his son’s face and hair until all the essential things were taken care of as there is no point, in the apocalyptic world of worrying over anything that isn’t completely life threatening.

The Ending in 25 Words....

There’s hope for the boy; he leaves behind his father who’s kept up a state of depression and goes off with, ironically, a ‘nuclear family’. 

Handling of Time (Page 176-196)

‘When did you eat last?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You don’t remember.’

This shows the reader that there is no reason for people on the road to remember when they have eaten as they have no reason to plan meals. We only plan meals today because our day follows a set routine and we eat to keep up with this. On the road however, day and night have almost become one due to the ash and dust that falls, blocking out the sun. They have no concept of time and no reason for it so all they can really distinguish between is day and night so it is easy to imagine how a person could lose track of the days as they are all the same; as long as they are alive, they have no reason to remember when or what they eat.

‘How old are you?’

Similarly to the food, the old man is unable to truthfully recall his age as there is no reason for him to know it and no reminder of the date. Time and day are hypothetical things created by humans to gain a routine in life. However, mankind is dying out and everybody lives in the moment and has no cause to plan ahead, unless people meticulously count each day then it would be impossible to tell precisely when a year has passed and even if someone did work it out, what would be the point? It’s hardly like they’re going to celebrate.  McCarthy uses the old man as an example to show that in the novel, the reader can never be certain as to how much time has passed, as the characters have no idea either.

‘How long have you been on the road?’ ‘I’ve always been on the road.’

Once again, in this section, McCarthy uses the dialogue between two characters to make the reader question the necessity of time; the fact that the man can’t actually remember how long he has been on the road for suggests that time is insignificant. The way that the man says he has always been on the road would suggest that time is standing still for these people. McCarthy handles time simply by putting a halt to it to show that it is just another thing on the road which is dying.

‘People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them.’

This quote is suggesting that for all the care we take over time, it doesn’t care about us. It is telling the reader that all the worry we have over keeping to a schedule is ridiculous because time is a made up thing and isn’t going to alter itself to suit us. All the people who worried and invested plans in the future, ironically, weren’t actually as prepared for the next day as they could have been where as those who take each day as it comes are surviving still as they had no expectations and don’t need time to rule their lives.

‘In the morning the stood in the road’

McCarthy gives the reader absolutely no idea what time in the morning they are talking about to once again highlight the lack of importance time holds for people on the road. All they have to go by is the road; they walk along it when it is light enough and sleep when it isn’t, to them it is completely irrelevant what time it is as they have no goals in life other than to get to the sea as quickly as possible with no real aim when they get there, meaning that they can take as long as they need to.

‘In the early afternoon’

McCarthy uses slightly more detail in this section. This could be because this is the first time phrase used since they left the old man alone in the road so the man and they boy are paying more attention to time as they are feeling guilty, wondering where the old man is and how long he has been left on his own for.

‘In the night he woke in the cold dark’

McCarthy uses this phrase to lead onto ‘coughing and he coughed till his chest was raw’ to fit in with the image that cold dark night quite often symbolise death, something that we know is imminent for the man but the way the author associates it with time suggests that his time is running out quickly.

‘You said it would last a few weeks’ ‘I know.’ ‘But it’s just been a few days.’

This back up the previous quote in suggesting that time is speeding up and things are going a lot quicker than the man and the boy expected them to.

‘He’d slept little in weeks.’

This shows McCarthy skipping through time to move the novel on but also showing the rapid declination of the man’s health, he gets several weeks worse in the few seconds it takes the reader to read it, to emphasize the point. 

The Little Mermaid....The Seaweed is always Greener........

When he found her she was sat on a rock amongst the sharp corals of the earths floor motionless. The lank seaweed straggling through her hair in unison with the waves which circled round like a net, isolating their world from the suns warm heart and encasing the merpeople in one cold and translucent bubble. The crab swam closer. He crossed the mass graveyard of deserted shells which littered the sea bed carelessly scattered in all directions, crumbling at a touch, dissolving into nothing.
The Mermaids face was still alabaster pale as her fathers words danced around her head like taunting ghosts. Her glare flitted briefly from the sky above to the crab and back again, resting there until a passing ship covered the gap in the rocks, finishing the seal between her and the land. The crab sat beside her.
The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake. Ok.
Ok.
Still perched on the rock the mermaid listened as the crab pumped a heavy tune from the organ placed in the centre of the cave. His desperate attempts to glorify living under the sea became lost and buried in the ruins of the ship wreck from the night before. In a world of his own deep thoughts the crab disappeared only stopping to take breath, ranting at the mermaids contradictions. Oh Christ.  His scarlet face drained of all colour and his sudden silence shot the atmosphere dead. She was gone.
He searched for days, the trail long and never ending. Visiting the far corners of the sea bed he saw no other fish or turtle or mollusc and spent the time dodging falling fragments of casually disregarded filth sent from the shore above. When he woke in the morning from yet another restless night he walked out into the ocean and sat on a pile of rubble looking at the corroding landscape unable to see the life the ocean once held for him. At that moment he heard the mermaids voice, so distinguished yet muffled by the waters torrent. The crab put his things in his bag threw his bag over his shoulder and ran faster than he had breath enough to do so.
On coming closer, the sound getting clearer he stopped dead. Oh Christ he repeated. Oh Christ, as he followed the mermaid into the cave of the sea witch. He crept through a rock at the side of the cave and plunged into the blanket of darkness only to be greeted by the witches eels, their illuminating eyes piercing the dark haze.
Run, he whispered. But his words we lost to the Mermaid. She acknowledged him with a spiteful glance then turned her attentions back to the sea witch and carelessly bargained her voice for as if it a broken instrument. Unable to stop her, restrained by the guards the crab looked on.
The sharp air spat water in disgust at their appearance on the surface. Grainy sand. Dull clouds. Silence. What had she done?  

Theft of the Belongings........
      This section of the book is hugely significant as it see’s the man and the boy working together to find the thief of their belongings. This shows that after all the terrible things that have happened to the pair, something good has come out of it, the boy has learnt to be independent and brave. This is shown when he finds the trail of sand; as opposed to the father finding the clues and running off while the son follows, the boy is now the one making the decisions and acting on his own accord, rather than timidly standing in the background while his father runs off. Typically of the book though, this has to be ruined somehow and this happens when the two of them find the thief. Before they get to him though, pathetic fallacy is used as a foreshadowing element to the section of the book; they were in the ‘long dusk’ when they overtook the thief. In poetry and books, night time is often used as a way to symbolize death, the end of a day equating to the end of a life. In this part of the road though, it is only nearly dark which makes the reader expect a near death experience which is ultimately what happens. When they find the man he is wearing ‘stinking rags’ which represent the fact that in the world, the outside appearance is all that anyone takes into consideration; his rotting clothes resemble his rotting soul which caused him to steal the cart in the first place, the thief himself is the epitome of an apocalyptic world; rotten on the outside and on the inside and with the ability to ruin life for everyone else. What happens next could be seen to be the most sickening thing in the entire book; the reader, who has become attached to the man and his son, watches in horror as the father effectively kills an innocent man while he begs for forgiveness. Not only does he do this, he strips him physically of all his clothes, but mentally of all his dignity and treats him like an animal which until this point he has been horrified by the way people treat other people. It is at this point where the reader sees the turn of events, the boy who was before this, beginning to reassure the reader that if his father should die then he would be able to take care of himself, stands hiding behind his father crying like a baby. This section shows the reader that their hope of the boy’s independence has failed as they probably figured it would, but at the same time, the boy is still innocent, and in the apocalyptic world, this is more valuable than anything else. In a world where lives are ruined, there is an innocence within the boy that just can’t be corrupted. This is something which is so significant and powerful that it changes the man’s mind and he agrees to leave the clothes by the side of the road for the thief to find. 

Getting to Shore........

      The beginning of this section starts out as being fairly positive; the man and they boy are well fed, they have ‘new blankets and jars of canned goods’ and the language is quite positive. The problem is that, through the manipulation of McCarthy, the reader has been trained to get into the mindset of the characters and so naturally expects something to go wrong. The man admits to this feeling as the narrator tells the reader that, ‘he knew that he was placing hopes where he’d no reason to’ which shows the reader that he knows that all remotely good things must come to an end. This feeling is continued in the next paragraph as the man talks about things such as a torch that he hoped to fin batteries for....but didn’t, and, the hope that the world would get lighter....but it but gets darker, to show that there is no point in having any hope as it just ends in despair, something which he can’t afford to expose his son to. There are also a lot of links to McCarthy’s influences in this section, he mentions ‘men walking around in their graves’ which is something associated with horror stories and zombies, something which is a relevant subject of the author’s interests. The idea of zombies is also conveyed through the structure of some of the paragraphs; the methodical way by which McCarthy lists everything that he does is symbolic of the thought process of a zombie, they have no time for outside thoughts and like the man and the boy, can only focus on what they are currently doing on a very basic thought process. The final part of this section which shows the reader the terrible state they are in is ‘the grey beach’. The beach normally symbolizes a place where children go and play, build sandcastles and is quite a memorable experience, yet for the boy, his father has to apologise to him for the fact that the sea isn’t blue. This is also quite a sad moment as the reader feels the struggle for the man; he clearly sees that he is the person who is supposed to make his son’s life perfect, yet he apologises to him because the sea isn’t blue enough and shows the reader that he truly feels like the weight of the world is resting on his shoulders.