The Road was by far my favorite novel we read all year. I fell in love with Cormac McCarthy's style of writing. Although the majority of the book was quite depressing, I still quite enjoyed reading it. One of the main questions that I thought about while reading(this also became the topic for my paper) is the idea of keeping compassion in times of suffering. There is evidence for both keeping and losing this compassion in the book. The father and the son are juxtaposed in this respect. The father survives entirely by instinct and in some cases ruthlessness, but I would not say he is bereft of joy. He still finds happiness in his beloved son. His acute awareness of what they must do to survive could stem from his imminent condition of death that he tried to keep from his son, or his desire to see his son safe before he passes away. The son is not as aware of these troubles, so perhaps he can more afford to be lenient and merciful. He has never even known a better world than this, so it may come as a surprise that he can still attempt to save others when in his world people are always the enemy. Both ways of dealing with their circumstance can be defended because boht are necessary. Without the compassion that the boy still has, life ceases to be worth living, but without the father's necessary cruelty in some cases there would be no living. Their struggle for survival is the main plot point of the book.
Another interesting aspect of the book was the interaction between the father and his son. The father seems to want to hide many of the cruelties of the world from his young son, but his ability to do this slowly declines throughout the book as his belief in their eventual triumph fades and his illness worsens. He stops providing as much encouragement and faces him with the bare truth that, yes, the men are coming to kill them and sometimes they must kill or be killed.
The father feels as if he must show the boy the horrors of the world in order for him to survive, and this is not altogether a false conception.
I too LOVED this book:) I noticed, and loved, the relationship between the father and the son and the contrast that existed between those two personalities.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that the son was able to remain full of compassion and love in a world that was void of it. He was constantly asking his father to justify that actions they were having to take to survive and even thanked the dead for the food they had left behind.
For me the father's character was definitely the more complex of the two and the most interesting.It is rare that an author is able to create a character that the reader really feels for, and a character that conveys humanity. I feel that McCarthy created a character that encompasses so many aspects of a human. The father is stripped of his humanity and yet, as mentioned above, he tries to protect his son from the atrocities that surround him, despite the fact that those atrocities are what is 'normal' considering the times. I just loved the father as a character and actually cried when he died....:(
I actually enjoyed this book a lot more than I did some of the other books despite the fact that it kept me in a state of depression throughout. The characters in this book were so profound that they left an impact on me and made me think about myself in retrospect. It really made me wonder “what if this had been me.” Usually when I read books we always put myself in the book, but this book evoked more feelings than normal just because the plot line was so intense.
ReplyDeleteFirst off the thought of the world ending is so mind boggling and something that nobody wants to ponder on; but I felt as if the book captured the essences of what an apocalypse could be like to a T including the emotions and the destruction. There was always an intense feeling of dread and impending death but always hope along with it. A lot of the times they were starving and cold but there was this hope of “we have the fire” and the journey to the coast. I kind of feel as if the book reiterates the fact that through the worst things that could happen, there is always a glimmer of hope somewhere and in this case in somebody. The father, himself is the epitome of what it is to be a good father. Self-sacrifice is not even a precise enough phrase to describe what he did for his son. He constantly put his life on the line and went out just so that his son can survive. More importantly he also maintains a stable mind set; he stays truthful with the child. He doesn’t try to dwell on how bad life is, but tries to make the most out of it and their situation. He is very attentive to the child and this is something to be admired for because at one point somebody kills the newborn and eats it, and his wife kills herself and refuses to try.
This was a great story because it kind of made me evaluate and question myself and how I would react in a similar situation, which is the making of a great novel.
This was a great book but I don’t know how I feel about going to go see it at the movies, I’m afraid that it will be even more somber than the book!
Like you mentioned, I found it very interesting that the son was so compassionate and loving, even though this dreadful world was all he ever knew. On one hand, maybe that made it easier for him--he didn't have any other world to compare it to. But on the other hand, it is surprising to me that he did not easily succumb to the evils that have taken over the world, since that is basically all he knows (even his father commits acts that seem pretty "evil").
ReplyDeleteI think this speaks to the "nature vs. nurture" argument--it makes me think that humans are inherently good, and that bad things can turn us bad. At the same time, I feel that the father's loving nature towards the son probably helps him to stay "good". So, I guess (from what's given to us in this novel, anyway) I believe in a little bit of nature, and a little bit of nurture as the cause of human goodness/evil.