Spice up your Valentine's Day with "The Road"

Whiplash is the Best

If you’ve never seen the movie Whiplash, your life is not complete. Objectively the most spectacular and engaging film ever produced, and with marvellous characters, Whiplash stomps all competition, and that’s not up for debate. Watch it tonight if you haven’t seen it.

Anyway, there’s a small dialogue scene in the film in which the main character, Andrew Neiman, explains his progress towards pursuing a career in music. He explains this while having dinner with his family:

“I’m part of Shaffer's top jazz orchestra, which means… well it’s the best in the country. And i’m a core member, so I’ll start playing in competitions.”

His brother replies: “How do you know who wins a music competition? Isn’t it subjective?”

Andrew replies with a staunch “No.”

Again, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the best film ever made. This scene in particular got me thinking, though, about how one judges things are subjective. Naturally, people hold different opinions, and no single person’s opinion has absolute autonomy. Except mine; Whiplash is the best film. However, it is possible to breakdown these subjective opinions to certain objectives sub-parts, and make conclusions from there. For example, in music, the ability to follow rhythm and to keep tempo can objectively judged. So, in light of this, I thought I'd make a post on The Road’s merits as novel.

Just as in music, there are certain concepts in literature that can be judged objectively. The concepts are more elaborate, and more difficult to build an argument for, but nevertheless objective conclusions exist. The Road earns its merit as an AP novel through its consistency in demonstrating a larger thematic idea through various literary devices.

The largest consistency in demonstrating the larger theme of the novel is its style. Some of its more obvious demonstrations of style is its lack of chapters, noticeably short sentences, and nameless characters. All of these things contribute to an overall mundane, burdensome, and matter-of-fact tone for the novel. The lack of chapters in particular drives home this concept of continuous, mundane qualities of survival in the apocalypse.

Despite arguing with another student about this, I think the nameless characters serve to provide a bleak perspective about identity in The Road. Identity matters in our daily life to communicate to one another to highlight who we’re referring to. In The Road, there’s no need to use names because there are only two characters. Even when the man dreams of his wife, he doesn’t mention her name, keeping this consistency, and also demonstrating the eradication for the need for names. I admit that it might be typical for a boy to refer to his father as “Papa” regardless of the situation, but even when our characters stumble upon an old man, they don’t ask for his name.

Also, in the scene with the old man, the dialogue between all three characters is consistent with the theme.

“You dont want to go.

I wouldnt have even come this far but I was hungry.

The people that gave you food. Where are they?

There's not any people. I just made that up.

What else did you make up?” (McCarthy 168).

The dialogue is repetitive and does not seem to be accomplishing anything in terms of gathering information. The conversation runs in a circle, and is confusing for both men. The purpose of the conversation is becoming increasingly distant, and this demonstrates a consistency for the novel itself. Sure, the purpose of their journey is to stay alive and make it to the South, but the purpose of surviving, and their desire to continue fighting, as with the conversation, is dwindling.

The short sentences are not just short, but also lack use of the commas. In one scene the boy swims in a cold lake: “He squatted and scooped up a handful of stones and smelled them and let them fall clattering. Polished round and smooth as marbles or lozenges of stone veined and striped. Black disclets and bits of polished quartz all bright from the mist off the river. The boy walked out and squatted and laved up the dark water,” (McCarthy 33). Two things are clear here, and for a majority of the novel. The sentences are drawn-out and seem robotic due to lack of commas. Additionally, the statements in this paragraph are limited to actions alone, and steer clear of emotions or thoughts. Both of these contribute to an awkward and matter-of-fact tone consistent with a larger theme of the novel; is it worth it to keep surviving?

Apart from style, the novel is straight-forward in exploring the a dwindling desire to keep surviving. Despite discovering a massive supply of food in a cellar, the man suggests that he still thinks about death:

“Even now some part of him wished they'd never found this refuge. Some part of him always wished it to be over,” (146).

This demonstrates that the man’s struggle with the value of survival is not limited to dire conditions. Even in times of positivity he still, in part, desires death. This conflict of death is also evident in his relationship with his son. As I pointed out in my last post, the man gets angry when his son says he doesn’t care anymore. He is empathetic of his son’s struggle in this scene: “ 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). Although angry at first, the man becomes empathetic of the boy because he also struggles with the desire to end it all. Despite the desire to survive intense scenes where the man and the boy are threatened by other characters, the mundane daily life of both of our characters are their ultimate threat. This is, again, in line with the larger theme of the novel surrounding the value of continuing on the road.

I think that this consistency in both character conflicts, and different aspects of style, definitely secure this novel some AP merit. Not as objective as judging music in a competition, but I think the novel’s ability to develop the theme around both subtle and obvious concepts has been consistent with all other novels read in our AP Literature class.