The Road: Week 3
Post your second response by Tuesday, February 20. Throughout the week, engage in discussion by replying to a combination of six posts and replies.
The Road: Week 1
Post your first response by Tuesday, February 6. Throughout the week, engage in discussion by replying to a combination of six posts and replies.
The third section of the “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy was definitely the most action packed, in my opinion. There were many different things happening, such as them finding the boat or the father being shot with an arrow. Even in the end, them both getting sick.
ReplyDeleteMy suspicions of the father becoming sick came true. He had showed symptoms in part two, coughing and having trouble breathing. It was clear to me that although there’s natural symptoms that they’re going to have from being malnourished and dehydrated, there felt like there was something a bit more to it. The boy was the first one to get sick, and things didn’t look good for him. In the end, it was the father who truly got sick enough that he ended up dying - he had just hid it as well as he could. “He slept close to his father that night and held him but when he woke in the morning his father was cold and stiff” (281). He had a severe cough. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was pneumonia or some other type of sickness. We were never told what type of illnesses they had - it seemed as though it had to be common knowledge or that the reader expected us to know.
I can’t help but wonder the purpose behind the scene with the boat. I understand that they were looking for more supplies, but it seemed to go on for longer than other scenes. The man kept looking back to the shore looking for the boy, and I can’t help but wonder if that was symbolic. It felt as if he had moved on (died) and kept looking back for his son to see if he were still there. I couldn’t help but compare it to the father dying, wondering if it was foreshadowing the distance between them that the boy couldn’t cross to get to his father. “When he went back up on deck again to look for the boy the boy was not there” ( 228).
It was so powerful and terrifying when the father and son were robbed. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them, right until the father took everything from the robber. I couldn’t help but resent him for his actions. I understand that it’s a life and death situation, but he basically condemned that man to death. “Come on, man. I’ll die” (257). He didn’t leave him with anything. “Take them off. Every goddamned stitch” (256). I thought better of the father right until this moment. I believe that’s when I lost respect for him. You do what you need to to survive, but don’t condemn others to death in order to do that. “I’m starving, man. You’d have done the same” (257).
I thought the ending was very fitting. It shows that in apocalyptic situations, things don’t always end with the protagonists winning and surviving against the world. I was surprised when another family came along and took in the little boy. If they hadn’t of taken in this boy, he surely would have died without his father. It’s also surprising since food is clearly hard to come by, and he’s going to be another mouth to feed for that family, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a move that the father himself would have made - taking in another person. Times are clearly tough, and I wonder how well that family is doing that they can afford to take him in. “The woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you” (286).
Although this isn’t the usual type of book that I would choose to read, I found that I was fascinated by the way the writer did dialogue. There were no quotation marks and I found that I’ve never seen this in writing before. It was an excellent strategy for this book and I think the author did well in this particular situation with writing an apocalyptic scene book.
I also found it strange in how the author lacked in the usage of quotation marks and I felt it would have been easier to go along with the dialog, and I also thought how strong could that boy honestly be? He moved on from the death of his father but I felt like the boy had a moment of reassurance one the other family took him in knowing the situation going on around them.
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ReplyDeleteThe last section of “The Road” seemed to be the strangest for me. It was very good, but the relationship seemed strange between the boy and the man. The boy seems to have more ideas and comments about the world. “I think they’ve gone, he whispered. What? I think they’re gone. They probably had a lookout. It could be a trap, Papa. Okay. Let’s wait a while.” (197) The boy seems a little less scared when it comes to the outside world, but more scared when he sees his Father is sick. There were multiple signs of this in the second section. The man would often cough, feel tired and hurt, fearing he was getting sick. He promises the boy he will be better, but it is the boy who gets sick first. I thought he might be the one to perish and the rest of the book would be the man remembering everything before perhaps killing himself. “He pressed his hand to his forehead, conjuring up a coolness that would not come. He wiped his white mouth while he slept. I will do what I promised, he whispered. No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.” (247-248) The way the author wrote this, I thought the opposite of what really happened. We see the Father struggling to keep the boy alive and to keep himself alive. He gets shot, which I definitely wasn’t expecting. I was a little confused with the woman who seemed to let the man go, since she was cradling the man. The ending was fitting, but I almost found it too convenient that right after the man died, the boy found someone who was good and was accepted into their care. If it had been more time it would’ve been more believable to me, but that’s just an opinion.
Hearing that this book was the inspiration for one of my favorite games, I was very interested in it. It took me a while to read since the format was so different, but I ended up loving it. It was so different and made me think, really pay attention to every sentence, and relate to characters whose name I didn’t even know. I would love to read more books by this author, if they had anymore.
The Road ended quite sadly for my hopeful mind, but the two did finally reach the coast. Of course, some unlikeable things happened as they explored the coastline and port towns that surrounded it. One night, the man dreamed of things in the sea, “He thought there could be deathships out there yet, drifting with their lolling rgs of sail. Or life in the deep. Great squid propelling themselves over the floor of the sea. Shuttling past like trains, eyes the size of saucers.” (219). Then, things went a bit downhill. Things from their cart were stolen, and soon they got it back after chasing the thief who took the items. They explored a port town where the man got shot in the back of the leg with an arrow, only to lose too much blood. The man was also getting sicker by the days, coughing up blood and becoming weak and slow for their journey. Indeed, the man dies near the end of the book, the perspective of the story switching to the boy where we read that he found a new group to be apart of.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, had a little bit of hope that the two would survive together just a little longer, at least through winter and into whatever spring this world conjured. Before the man passed, he did say one last thing to the boy. “I want to be with you. You can’t. Please. You can’t. You have to carry the fire. I don’t know how to. Yes you do. Is it real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I don’t know where it is. Yes you do. It’s inside you. It’s was always there. I can see it.” (278-279). That probably inspired something within the kid to keep going, what got the kid to leave and find that group.
This was a tough read for me, I’ll admit that. But the fact that it was an inspiration for the relationship of Joel and Ellie in the zombie apocalypse video game, The Last of Us, I had to finish it to see if there was any similar themes. Joel and Ellie are quite the opposite of the man and the boy, not being related in any way and was kinda forced to be together and survive in a world of the undead. The writer of the game, Neil Druckmann was inspired by both “The Road” and “City of Thieves” by David Benioff for the relationship of the two characters. Although City of Thieves was the inspiration for the main points of Ellie and Joel’s constant-at-odds relationship, the atmosphere of their bond was completed through how The Road told of the man and the boy living in a world differing The Last of Us. The themes between the two stories involved the fulfilling purpose of both the man and Joel finding someone to protect, making sure they continue to live in a dangerous land. There’s of course family-like relationships, familial love, trust and doubt in surviving such a world. This book was just as action-packed, wistful, and mysterious like the video game it co-inspired.
First of all, love your analyzing of how this inspired the last of us in a way, very good and looking into it. If the man didn't die when he did, how long do you think he would have had left? And how would he have died? I think it was interesting at how willing the boy was to go with the others. What about you?
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ReplyDeleteThe last part of “The Road” was the most heart wrenching part of this book. It really caught me by surprise when in the end both the son and the father turned out to be sick. The son had been scared quite a bit but once he seen that his dad was really struggling with his sickness that he caught he was way more terrified I felt. “I will do what I promised, he whispered. No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.” (247-248) This really hit me hard. The father ended up getting shot and it was horrible. But what i still wonder is how right after all of this happened the boy suddenly had another family to turn to and have no worries. They took him in as one of their own, the times are extremely tough and now they have another person to take care of and to worry about. I guess i'm just wondering why? Why would the other people do this? Do they see something in it or what? I do gotta say though that without the other people finding this boy he probably would've had a hard time taking care of himself without a father.