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.