Cannibalism! Well sort of...

Tom's Voice is Better

As the title suggests, I think I’ve reached the cannibalism part of the novel. Unfortunately, it was rather anticlimactic, as I was expecting for the man to be actually captured by cannibals. Then, as he woke from a daze he would be like, “Oh hey what’s going on?” And the cannibals would turn to him, whilst eating something, and they wouldn’t reply. Then he would realize that they were eating his leg and it would be a clever twist. Actually, I stole that from The Walking Dead, but I was nearly positive that’s how the cannibalism would of went down. I’m not completely sure how the boy would factor in though.

Instead, The Road disappointed me once again. Now, to be fair, there could be more cannibalism on the way, but, nevertheless, it was quite anticlimactic. Basically, both of our characters are exploring this home and they find this hatch in the middle of the floor. Despite the boy advising that they should leave, the man opens up the hatch and goes down the stairs. Then, there’s just a large amount of random naked people running around. Well, crawling actually. One guy was lying on a bed and didn’t even have any legs, so that’s certainly a tough time. It’s revealed, later in the novel, that the people keeping those people down there were cannibals.

Yeah, so that was a splendid read.

Anyway, in this blog post I wanted to talk about our main characters. We have two characters in our book: a father and his son. They are travelling to the South to beat the snow in a post-apocalyptic world. We follow these two characters through a third-person omniscient narrator that occasionally shifts to first person. Completely randomly in fact.

So most of our time is spent describing the actions of the man. Considering this, we have a great deal of time to learn some interesting things about him. What’s especially evident, for the majority of the reading so far, is that the man is very compassionate towards his son. Everything he does is to ensure his protection, and he even tells the boy at one point, “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God,” (McCarthy 70). And the man’s struggle with religion is something that returns time and time again in the novel. At the beginning of the novel he curses at God, which I suppose is justified, considering the scorched earth and stuff.

Another time, he is telling his son that he has to kill himself if the men see him: “When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die,” (McCarthy 120). The man’s belief in a higher power, despite hardship, shows that he is persistent in believing in a benevolent power. This could be an important aspect of his character, but at the same time I don’t think there are many religious people that randomly decide to radically change their views in times of hardship, so maybe this point is only minor.

And this idea of the father taking care of his son is not only seen in more important scenes, but also in these small displays of compassion. For instance, a man straight tries taking the boy hostage in one scene and the father murders him. Afterwards, he scoops the boy up, and carries him away: “He wiped the blood from his face and held him. It's okay, he said. It's okay,” (McCarthy 61). The man constantly has to calm the boy down in scenes involving emotional distress. He clearly cares deeply about his son’s survival, and it’s probably the only thing keeping him going. The man shows his compassion to his son in little ways too: giving him a coke, carrying him when he’s tired, and leaving the lamp on to keep him warm.

More importantly, the man is aware of when he is crossing a line. In a scene where the boy thinks he spots another kid, the man calms himself despite a tense situation: “ Do you want to die? Is that what you want? I don't care, the boy said, sobbing. I don't care. The man stopped. He stopped and squatted and held him. I'm sorry, he said. Don't say that,” (McCarthy 79).

A little bit on the son here. He’s not a particularly complex character, considering how young he is. However, what is evident is a compassion for helping other people. At some points this transcends the boundaries of being naive. Every character the boy meets he wants to help. Whether it’s the kid that he sees in the woods, the man struck by lightning, or the random naked people they find that are probably going to be eaten, the boy asks his father if they can help them, or at least is particularly silent after an emotional scene with death.  The boy is naive however in  suggesting that they can help the man that was struck by lightning, or offering nonexistent food to a boy he’d just met: “And I'd give that little boy half of my food,” (McCarthy 79).

One center of tension between our two main characters is surrounding death. Tension was clearly visible between our two characters in the scene with the mysterious boy. When asked if he wanted to the die the boy replied that “[He] didn’t care.” This clearly struck a nerve for the father, not only because he does everything in his power to ensure his son's survival, but also because that type of talk might resemble the man’s relationship with his wife.

In a dream the man had we see harsh dialogue being exchanged between the man and his wife: “What in God's name are you talking about? We're not survivors. We're the walking dead in a horror film,” (McCarthy 48). The idea is that his wife was tired of surviving in this post-apocalyptic world, and there’s no desire for protecting her son because she knows the cruelty of this new world. She didn’t value her survival any longer, and this is paralleled, in part, by the son’s dialogue in the scene with the boy. This theme of giving up when times are rough is of particular emotional value to the man, but he is still able to control himself, and shift his tone to calming down the boy, rather than yelling.

Overall, I predict the idea of giving up due to the constant mandate that the setting facilitates as a major conflict for the remainder of the novel. Possibly, even the climax of the novel itself. Who knows, we’ll have to find out. Also, Tom's better.