Baffled

I can only imagine McCarthy sitting somewhere desolate, isolated, feeling very proud of himself for creating one of the most baffling endings of all time.

By the end of The Road, we know someone has died. By normal clues, you are led to believe that the man has died, but my spidey senses are tingling. I suspect the boy might have actually died. After all, one does not simply walk into mordoor, nor does one simply walk away from weeks of high fever and malnutrition.

As was earlier stated, the boy was incredibly sick just before the death. The author failed to explain how or why he got miraculously better, and I refuse to believe it, honestly.

In addition, the man talks about not being able to go with the boy, which sounds like the boy is dying and leaving him, to me. Granted that he might have been talking about not being able to walk down the road with him anymore, but considering what happens next, I'm led to think that the man is actually saying he can't die with the boy. Or at least that he can't go to the same sort of afterlife.

When whoever dies, the boy is sort of "collected" by another man. Explain to me, though, how out of all the people we've met on the road, all the scoundrels, cannibals, cadavers, thieves, and cutthroats, we have at last one man and an entire family able to survive and willing to take him in. Isn't this what the boy has been dreaming of the entire time? Wouldn't that serve as HIS heaven??

Mostly I can't get past the fact that, once he is dead and with this family, he is told about God. And what's funny is that if he's in heaven like I suspect, he doesn't believe in God traditionally. And that's cool, I'm good with that. But now he's come to worship his "father" and pray to him as if he were a lost God. In a child's eyes, totally understandable.

Not quite sure what McCarthy was trying to say about the rest of society, there. I'm gonna go with something along the lines of "God is dead if you perceive him to be. God is perceivable through each one of us".

Themes from American Literature... Try 2

Themes from American Literature

My lack of creativity astounds even me.

My inability to think far enough ahead to post a video I made weeks ago, also astounds even me.

And then there's that moment when Blogger refuses to upload your video. And youtube says it's estimating about 70 minutes to upload.

A Rant From A Creator

          As a writer, I was intrigued and impressed. As a reader, I was confused beyond any help. The majority of my experience with The Road can be summed up with a single expression, which, for the my future's sake, shall not be displayed on the internet. I CAN tell you, however, that it is a look of deep consternation, which is often mistaken for pain or diarrhea. 
          Mostly the trouble came from something my AP Lang teacher taught me to think of: which is that no good writer will put something in a novel of this caliber for fun. Everything written is written with a purpose, and they have a goal in mind every time they decide to type. Which is pretty troubling, honestly. Because a lot of my time, with my expression, was spend pondering that very thing.
          I couldn't quite grasp every purpose in The Road. I couldn't quite understand the importance of every part. I know there must've been a deeper level to the footprints on the sand, a deeper meaning to the thief stealing their food. There must have been a point to the old man's skepticism, but either it all pointed towards the same earlier easily accessible truths, or I'm challenged in some way. Most of the road's parts seemed to be pointing me towards the same thing: the boy is slowly losing the innocence his father so desperately clings to. Which is all well and good, and makes for excellent story-telling, obviously, but doesn't necessarily warrant 287 pages of small print.
          I guess my point is that I genuinely tried to enjoy reading The Road. I feel like McCarthy had some important things to say, and I understood some of them. But I'm not sure that the three things I was able to discern really deserved a Pulitzer.
          I have no problem with The Road. I just felt like I was on one nearly as torturous while reading it.

Rhetoric Study

You'd be astonished at how much one can pull from a paragraph.

Page 54, Cormac McCarthy's The Road:

"No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you."

If "whoa" was not the first thing that popped into your head, I pity you.

First of all, please take note of the grammatical structure of the sentences. In my eyes, this is direct representation of a train of thought. A lot of fractures, a lot of pauses, a lot of things that don't technically flow, but seem right because they're representative of the same dysfunctionality we experience in each syntactical lapse within our own patterns.

Secondly, take note of the way each phrase builds on the preceding phrases, in three segments. The first segment starts with "no" and ends with the second "later". The second segment begins with "all" and ends with "ashes", and the third is the remainder. Each segment displays a flowing process, and is then cut rather harshly by the next segment. Overall they form a complete point, each SEGMENT building onto the next, like the individual sentences or phrases build within the segment. So each segment builds up a partial point, and the entire paragraph contains the entirety of his point.

The point, by the way, is that nothing of this life matters anymore. Beautiful things are born within pain and despair, and the father judges that this level of pain and despair (you know, apocalypse and whatnot) was great enough to warrant the birth of something equal in magnitude but opposite in nature: his son.

Character Study

          It took about a two hours for me to gather my thoughts on this particular post, which, if you know me at all, is incredibly rare. Usually if I'm given about five minutes, I have formulated a game plan for how I want to present the information, and a rough outline of the information I think it particularly pertinent. That being said, I make no guarantees that this post genuinely captures everything that needs to be said, or even all that I want to say about it. It's also not a good sign that I give a disclaimer, in light of the too-high standards I set for myself and the arrogance with which I approach writing.
          THAT being said, I think of these two character as archetypal representations. In dreams and in songs have I heard this book, which says to me that these two characters are actually everywhere in life now. With that, I am reminded of my brother's favorite hobby: Tarot Readings. I've learned that each card represents an archetype, which by Dictionary.com's definition is, "a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches". I''m sure you're familiar with the concept. 
          In any event, I see these two as present in all things. They are more ideas than they are people, to me. Enforcing this notion is the fact that the characters are never described in greater detail than their dirtiness and the man's unshaven face. They are never given names, nor ages.
The Man:
          Hopefully, I didn't get your hopes up by referencing the tarot, because I honestly know very little else about it. I can't cite a specific archetype the man represents to me, but rather a collection. Then man is knightly, in my eyes. He's a representative of justice in a corrupt world, but also of judgement itself in that he is forced to make decisions that directly effect the entirety of his view. He is the scale on which things are weighed and measured, but also the purveyor of justice once weight has been determined. Not terribly democratic, if you ask me.
          Otherwise, he is also a protector of his child. This is mostly why he reminds me of knighthood. He does the dirty-work, so to speak. When anyone threatens their livelihood, the man instantly steps in and does not hesitate to use force. He stops at nothing to protect his child. There's even a scene near the end of the book, where he gets shot in the leg with an arrow, proceeds to throw himself on the child to protect him, and then fires into the general direction of the arrow's owner. He doesn't stop there, though. He covers the child in protective blankets, and then rushes the archer's perch (arrow still in tact), with the intent to kill. He has, at this point, completely lost all "Blood Innocence", if you believe in such a thing. But he's also strong enough of a force to protect something he believes in, but does not have. That's honor, if ever I saw it.
The Boy:
         Dying hope encompasses what I feel for this little boy. He starts the novel an innocent creature, and ends it having lost a father and the innocence the man tried to preserve. He's sheltered physically and mentally for as long as the man can keep him, but he still manages to keep some of the most encouraging qualities of any of the humans we encounter in the novel. He doesn't want to kill anyone. He doesn't want to take anyone's food unless they've already died. He doesn't want to steal. He doesn't want to leave anyone without, when he has none left to give. This is the one worth fighting for. This is the one that a man would endure hell for.
          He is inspiration, more than anything. The boy strikes hope in everyone he meets. Every beggar, every lost sole, every thief they encounter is touched by this boy in some way. Mostly because he is the last human left who would die before seeing another perish. He is the last of a dying thing, and it's not just hope. It's compassion. It's love. It's the need to put another over oneself. Cormac McCarthy isn't just saying that for this post-apocalyptic world, either. He's saying that this boy is rare today, now. This boy is a dying archetype, present in all times and all psyches. Or rather, not present any more.

Fifth Post

I’m starting to feel like there isn’t a destination on this road. The book is, of course, titled The Road, but I’m wondering if maybe the point is that they never find where they’re trying to go. It seems the little boy is trying to go to heaven, or hell, or whatever, but the man just wants to wander as long as he’s somewhere with his son. The place he’s trying to get to probably doesn’t exist anymore, honestly. He’s probably trying to get somewhere safe.

This is probably something important to keep in mind, honestly. We spend a lot of time in this life trying to get from point A to point B. I don’t blame them. I do this too. We live in a fast paced community, at least I do, and it is natural for us to miss the things we pass by on the way. Which sucks. I actually like smelling roses, if you know what I mean.

But it’s not just smelling the roses, taking in the scenery. It’s actually being a part of it. It’s feeling the people you’re with and accepting who you are in the moment. It’s understanding the direction you’re heading corresponds to the direction your life is heading. Is that where you really want to go? That’s something you can find out. That’s something you can thank McCarthy for.

I know this is a short post, and I don’t have much of an excuse other than the fact that I believe in these statements more than any of the others I have posted. I feel they are more true.

Fourth Post

I’ve never felt worse for a child in my entire life. I feel absolutely horrible for the child in The Road. He is subjected to more hardship than I could have possibly imagined in all of my years. It wouldn’t have been as surprisingly horrid to me if he had simply had to migrate to the south with his father, but the encounters with the dead that he has along the way are absolutely abhorrent and disturbing in their depth.

From the beginning of the novel we are bombarded with images of bodies hanging from ceilings, clustered in trucks, obstructing the roads. These are bad enough with vivid details, but one can only imagine the psychological effects they would have had up close and personal. This young boy had to see a man shot in the head. He saw a man’s soul obliterated.

What’s worse than seeing someone die, though, is knowing they died for you. Your father just shot a man square in the face because he thought it would be best for you. How does that make you feel? Like a nuisance. It’s no wonder the kid keeps telling his father he wants to die. I think if his father ever told him the truth and said “yes, son, our chances of living are next to none” the boy would be relieved. He doesn’t WANT to live anymore.

I also don’t blame the father, though. I can put myself in his shoes more easily than I can the child’s. He loves something so much that he cannot fathom having to let it go. He will do whatever it takes, no matter what he believes, to keep his only son safe in this god forsaken place.

This is a story about a hero. This is a story about a savior come for a people who don’t want to be saved. This father is the example to the rest of the world, that there is still possibility for love. There is still possibility for the old values we once held dear. There is still hope. Maybe it’s cliché, and maybe I’m just wrong, but I feel like McCarthy is trying to tell me that children bring can bring hope with them, if only because they are children.

Third Post

If there were ever a more dedicated father than the main character of The Road, I do not know him. It’s sad to think that I don’t know a father that I truly believe would go so far as to kill a man for his child. This man is beyond careful and beyond protective. He absolutely gives of himself for his child. His love knows no bounds.

In many ways I feel that the narrator is being made into an example of the lasting effects of true love. He is a pundit of love and loyalty in a world of viciousness and raw relations. He is the last of a dying race. He is the last, and he knows it. Earlier I referenced a quote where he says that he is the last one on the road. That he is the last of the men associated with God and abounding love.

He’s the survivor. And it is his sole mission to protect this last bit of innocence in the world. I feel that he is very much like Gatsby in this way. He is the last, in a God forsaken land, to have any sort of morals or feeling left. Everyone else has become like the land they’re trying to walk on and from, barren of anything resembling life and beauty. They are wastelands. They are without any of the things that make humanity human, or nature natural, as the case may be.

I think it is imperative, then, that we make the distinction between those who travel the road, and those who become a part of the road. Bandits and other dangers are sometimes described as road hazards, because they have become a part of the road. They are static and unchanging in their position. Travelers are just the opposite, though. It is important to note that the main characters are struggling between becoming a part of something easier, something less morally righteous.

The main characters are dynamic, they change their position and their lives by not becoming one with the road. They become one with travel and possibility in their seemingly endless search for a different life.

Second Post

It’s really hard for me to glean some sort of life lesson from this book. I really enjoy McCarthy’s writing, but not only is the point of the book in relationship to my life lost on me, but I find it incredibly annoying whenever he doesn’t use normal technique for dialogue. As you can obviously see from my earlier posts, McCarthy tends to use run-on sentences to increase the sense of hopelessness and being lost.

                I’m not sure, however, why all this is necessary. What do we have to gain from being so lost? Obviously the main characters are completely lost and alone, and the writing style reflects that feeling, but I don’t understand what that says about the human condition. Is McCarthy saying that we are all lost and alone, even if the physical world doesn’t reflect that to date? Is McCarthy saying that the world we live in today may just as well be post-apocalyptic because the way we treat each other wouldn’t change very much?

                On the one hand I have absolute respect for his writing style and the way he’s able to create a mood through rhetoric, but on the other hand I don’t feel that his style is completely adaptable to the everyday American. Sometimes it detracts from the fluidity of the novel, as it becomes difficult for me to tell who is talking when. It also becomes difficult to tell times apart from each other since the book contains no chapters or time indicators.

                On the other hand, I suppose that is the point. McCarthy succeeds in his use of rhetoric and the structural differences he has devised are incredibly effective. They put you right in the mind of the main characters, making you feel just as alone and lost as you’re sure they are.

Image Study

Ash:

                Ashes, I've learned, are an effective use of imagery. We just finished reading the Great Gatsby, which uses ashes as well. This made me realize that ash is kind of an iconic image for the fall of America.

                Ash is the result of flames. Some people describe flames in relation to passion, to victory. These are the things I believe we have built our children with. The things we have been trying to impress upon them. They must be impressed upon the youth at a young age, and I know I'm not the only one who feels they've been saturated in other people's values.

                Ash coats every line in McCarthy's novel, The Road. It breezes from the lungs of the narator. It stains every page. Cormac McCarthy has taken great pains to include it, as on page 16:

                "It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy                said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand                 and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom."

                Whoa, right? You can clearly see how desolate and barren the land is. No life, none at all, save the flickering heartbeats of a young boy and his father. Ash has coated the land, suffocating all. But not just ash, ash is whatever it was that stifled the people of the world here. That smothered them. Ash is whatever it was that makes this boy fearful for his existence.

Road:

                Obviously this is a vital image to the text. It's the title. Duh. Most importantly, though, it signifies the entire journey. Almost every paragraph (there are no chapters) ends with a description of the road and how they are in relationship to it. For the majority of the book, they are as devoid of hope as the road is devoid of life.

                The image of the road is the image that describes their lives in the novel. Tragically cracked, winding, cold, seemingly endless. They continue on this journey, this terrifyingly lonesome and icey journey without choice. The road was built on in a line, and so they must travel. One direction. One step at a time.

McCarthy describes the road here on page 32:

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

                While it is true that this does not physically describe the road, I feel this actually describes the nature of the road and how it relates to the book in a better, more envelopes the ideas professed. It is barren. It is God forsaken. It is empty.

Water:

                As the two travel, it is apparent that they are living on a prayer. Haha. Just kidding. It is apparent that they are living on bare minimum resources. Water signifies life here, and the fact that it is scarce and difficult to obtain only serves to further the point that we have become a wasteland. I feel that we are all extremely fortunate for having such ready access to clean water. It is a blessing, and like so many others things, has been taken for granted.

                Throughout the novel, we constantly see the narrator trying to encourage his son. He tries to tell him that they will live, that things will get better. Water is one of the main things that encourage him. When they are going without food, washing themselves, or trying to relax, water is what the narrator turns to. They find power and the will to go on through water.

Cormac McCarthy describes water here on page 74

They moved down the gravel to find fresh water and he washed his hair again as well as he could and finally stopped because the boy was moaning with the cold of it. He dried him with the blanket, kneeling there in the glow of the light with the shadow of the bridge’s understructure broken across the palisade of tree trunks beyond the creek. This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.

Now, while I realize that Cormac McCarthy wasn’t exactly describing water here, I also realize that this is Cormac talking about how absolutely vital water is. It is imperative to our survival, not only physically, but mentally. He has to wash out the stains of dirty survival from his soul. Which is super cool. Good job McCarthy.

Huddling:

                While I’m not entirely sure this is really an image as much as the others are, I feel that when I read about the many times the father embraces his son in this manner, an image is engraved into my mind. The father spends the majority of his nights curled around his son, keeping him warm and protecting him from harm. This is exactly how their relationship works. The father is desperate to keep his son away from any dangers the world may inflict upon him.

                The entirety of the father’s being is wrapped up around his son and the protection of him. He even goes as far as to kill a man who endangers his son. Their relationship is that of love and hope because they find that in each other. They find those things only in each other, but in no others.

                The image produced is one of compassion. I imagine a very loving pair, trying to keep each other from the horrors of the world.