jacobmorton2016-blog

[jacobmorton2016-blog]

Last Section Pgs:234-287

First off lets start with a recap. In the last section the two had made it to the beach and had found a boat that they looted and found loads of stuff. Soon enough they are struck with a bad blow when the son turns for the worst and becomes ill and is vomiting and has a fever. So the father takes care of the boy but makes him a promise “Of course I wont go away” (247) while the boy is sick. This is one of the overarching themes throughout the novel which is that the man doesn’t want to leave the boy unless he is walking away from camp to get firewood or something. This unbreaking bond between the two is sadly going to be cut to short in this post-apocalyptic world. After a couple of nights the boy finally gets better.

One particular item they found from the boat was a flare gun. One night the boy asks his father if they can shoot him and the conversation that follows them shooting turns into a meaning of what the flare gun could signal. So the father asks who the boy is talking about when he says “They couldnt see it very far, could they, Papa?” (246) then the boy goes on to say maybe God as if he is hoping the almighty flare gun can contact God in hopes to save them from their misery in this dying world. But the father discourages this because putting hopes in the boy that won’t happen is cruel.

After all this is over one day they leave their camp for a while to walk down the beach until they leave the beach for good and continue on the road. The curious thing is that the two had their sights set on hitting the ocean for the entire novel but once they get there they want to go back on the road it is as if the road is their driving force to keep going. Besides that little tangent as the two walk down the beach and come back all their stuff has been stolen at their camp nothing is left so they set off onto the road to find the thief. McCarthy again has entered another character for the two to interact with. Long story short they find the guy on the road and they get their stuff back because they hold the man at gunpoint.

After this incident they head on the road to leave anybody that has been on their trail. So on their journey on the road they are going through town after town then, WOOOOOSH! an arrow flies right by the father's head. They were under attack by a man with a bow and arrow on the outskirts of a town. So the father and son duck behind the cart but sadly the father’s leg got behind the cart too late. So to retaliate the father fires a flare straight into the room of the man. after hearing screaming they quickly going into a store and bunker up the store. After they hear nothing they slowly settle down and the father gets out the first-aid kit from the boat and sutured himself up. Once they fell asleep and woke the next morning they went off onto the road.

Not knowing what was about to happen next is the crazy part. On the road they came to a river in which the bridge was torn down. So they slept off the road for the night, not knowing that would be his father’s last night. Being that the father was not in good condition and he knew he was going to die these were his final words to his son “I know. I’m sorry. You have my whole heart. You always did. You’re the best guy. You always were. If I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you. You’ll see.”(279)

The boy wakes the next morning to his dead father. He knows he must go on in honor of his father but he gets out to the road and sees a man. They talk and agrees to go with the man and his family…

Word Count: 710

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Fourth Section Pgs:175-233

The fourth section of this novel starts off with the father waking in the middle of the night coughing. This is troubling to the father’s mentality but also to the son too because there is no modern medicine to keep him from getting sick it is as if they were sent back to early colonial times where if you got sick you prayed to get better or if it was so bad you prayed that the misery would end. This is just like all the other sections when the two are faced with an uphill battle and McCarthy exploits this to develop the themes of fear and also to show character growth.

During this section the dialogue between the father and son is more common and the things they talk about have deeper meanings that shows that the characters are growing. So in the novel the phrase “the good guys” has been referenced a lot and this is thought to be the father and son and people like them. In one of the father and son’s conversations they are talking about “the good guys” that are out in the world and basically the son is asking questions like “So where are they?” “Are there lots of them?” and as his father is answering these endless questions, like a child growing up would ask, the son goes on to ask if all what the father is saying true as if hesitant to believe his father. So the father goes on the talk to the boy and assure him and lastly the boys says “Yes I do [believe you]. I have to.” (185) This shows that the boy’s belief system in what is right or wrong, real or fake, good or bad is all based of the father showing how influential the father is to the boy.

Segway past their conversation and they are back on the road. As they are traveling down the dark, soot filled road they stumble upon three men armed with lengths of metal pipes. The boy is shuddering with fear but the father keeps his composure and slowly pulls the gun from his belt and shows the men and the men disperse from the road and the two slowly make their way on the road. One thing that should be noted is that the gun only has one round left but with the father's intuition made the rest of the bullets in the revolver out of wood and covered them in soot so that they look like real bullets and anybody looking to hurt them would think they had multiple bullets.

The next time they stop something weird happens to the boy character wise. As they are eating and the boy is licking the insides of a metal can the father, like a father should do, warns the son if he should do that and not be careful he will cut himself but the boy responds back that he understands and then he goes on to tell his father you do not have to watch me 24/7. It is as if the boy is growing and trying to say that he can start to take care of himself. But soon enough on their travels they come across a small campfire that had been abandoned but in the fire roasting was the dead remains of an infant with it’s entrails pulled out. Then the boy quickly reverts back to being taken care of his father.

Word Count: 578

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Third Section Pgs:117-174

Starting in the third section of the novel McCarthy takes the father and son on their journey on the road but the two will face the biggest obstacle so far starvation. In doing this he also is able to speak about the father and boy’s situation and makes the reader sympathize for the father and his situation but also you feel for the boy because of the was McCarthy describes him. On the first page of this section McCarthy describes their situation perfectly in this quote, “He [the father] carried him [the son] across the field, stopping to rest each fifty counted steps...He [the son] looked like something out of a deathcamp. Starved, exhausted, sick with fear.” (117) I think this quote sums up their situation perfectly because it shows how hard the dad is trying to save the boy but also it shows how bad of a situation the boy is in. So as they go on their journey they keep trudging along till they stumble upon an old run down barn with a used to be apple orchard that had been burned down. So as the father is rummaging around the house/barn he stumbles upon a few odd and in things that may be useful so he grabs then. As he walks out he stepped on something an old dry apple. After his struck of luck hit the jackpot and noticed a pipe on the outside of the house. So he follows to where it goes into the ground and to his lucky surprise it is a water container that filter rain water. “He [the father] lay there for a long time, lifting up the water to his mouth a palmful at a time. Nothing in his memory anywhere of anything so good.” (123) This point in the novel is extremely special because in a dire time like they were in water can be between life or death. So the father and son thus continue their journey on the road with revitalized spirits from the apples and water.

In this section of the novel the human interaction is very slim and I think that McCarthy did this because he focused on the people in the last section and now he is trying to show how the characters react when their life is in danger due to scarcity of resources. So as you can expect once they get on the road they surely again run out of food and water and they are slowly deteriorating. Also on their journey they lose a vital resource which is their lighter. As McCarthy is telling the story just as before the duo finds an abandoned house. Now this house does not have fresh water or apples but something special that is hidden. As the duo are rummaging through the house they find nothing and head into the bad yard to look at the old shed. They find motor oil and some rancid gasoline. Then again just out of luck the father feels that the ground is squishy where he is stepping so he investigates to see what it is and low and behold it is a bunker that the former owners of the house had. So now faith or luck has saved the two from death. One peculiar thing that McCarthy does is that when the father and son are about to eat the son pipes up and says we should thank the people who lived here before us. “Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didn’t get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with God.” (146) I believe he added this to the novel to show that even though the world is going to poop there is still humanity and sensibility.

Word Count: 658

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Second Section Pgs: 59-116

During the second section of this novel Cormac McCarthy gives more vivid details while sending the father and son onto an exhilarating roller coaster of fear starting with “them” the marauders and ending with the father and son racing away due to the boys mistake.

So in the beginning of the section the father and son are sleeping in the woods off the road and then suddenly the father woke to the sound of a diesel truck. It was the marauders. This is like when McCarthy made the father and son face the guy on the road that got struck by lightning. The thought is that through these situations the character’s traits are shown and in this one like the last, the father shows a tremendous amount of protection over the boy. So as the marauders pull up in their convoy the father and son dart through the forest to the opposite road that is parallel to the other road. As they sit in the ditch they hear nothing till suddenly a man walks near them as if he is on his way to the bathroom. Just to point out McCarthy’s magic with description this is the man that walked up on the father and son, “Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes… he had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance. He was lean, wiry, rachitic.” (63). So as this man approaches the father and son the father pulls out his pistol, knowing there is only one bullet and threatens the man's life if he screams for his people. So as they are talking, well negotiating, the man suddenly pulls out a knife and grabs the boy and without hesitation the father pulls the trigger and shoots the man point blank in the forehead. This shows his commitment to protecting the boy because even though he only had one bullet and there was a slew of marauders just in the distance. So after he shot the man he grabbed the boy and ran like crazy.

After this incident/run in with the marauders they finally escape them and head off down the road. As they are on their journey food becomes their number one priority and so they head into a small town on their map. While they are in this small town there is no one, nothing it is barren as the sahara desert in the middle of summer. So they start to leave the town but they stop and loot the houses on the outskirts of town. Then suddenly through the window the son sees a boy looking at them. The son then makes a mistake because he suddenly bolts after the little boy screaming “I won’t hurt you!” and then just like before the father instantly hits protective mode and grabs the boy and runs off into the distance hoping nobody saw them or let alone hear the boy. This encounter shows a hidden need of the son which is to interact with someone besides his father.

Word Count: 524

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First Section- The Road pgs. 1-58

In the beginning of the novel McCarthy introduces us to a father and son that are trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. On their journey to survive McCarthy illuminates the reader's imagination with stunning descriptions and impeccable imagery. “Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened light poles whining thinly in the wind.” (8) in this description McCarthy delivers us a sullen view of this post-apocalyptic world.

Another art that McCarthy has perfect in the novel is his use of symbolism in what “The Road” really means. Figuratively the road is the lifeline to the father and the son because that is what they are following “south.” The feeling that comes across throughout the first section is that the thought that they have to follow the road to get to their destination is one of the bigger driving forces for them to keep going. On the more literal side of “The Road” it is indeed easier to travel on than trying to travel on alternate terrain that is not mostly flat and stable to step on. Also, traveling on the road is more likely to bring them to old building that may have valuable resources that they need, for example on pages 6-7 they found an abandoned garage that they looted through to only get a half quart of motor oil for their lamp.

So as the novel progresses the father and son slowly make their way south down the road they encounter different situations that McCarthy has taken advantage of to show different character traits. So in this post-apocalyptic world the land is ladened with soot from country, if not worldwide, fires. With all this soot and ash the world is lifeless with the exception of the father and the son. During the first half of the section the father takes on the typical protection role over the son. The first instance of this is when the two are going through the mountains and they have to seek shelter under a rock ledge because of the rain and the blistering cold temperatures and the father watches the boy as he sleeps to ensure that he is still breathing because he is a frail little boy. This shows that the father cares for the boy and shows that he is willing to risk his well-being to make sure the boy is okay. So as they go on there journey they finally see signs of life, it is a man who as the father tells the boy “He’s been struck by lightning.” (50). In this case the father shows his drive to save the boy because they did not help the man he let him die. Also, this shows something about the boy because the boy was insistently telling his father that they needed to help him showing that even though he did not know the man he still cared for his well-being thus illustrating his caring attitude.

In the later portion of the section McCarthy changes the scene into a flashback of the wife/mother. In this flashback it goes back to the day when the mother left them and this earth. During this post-apocalyptic world the mother indeed had the boy after the the world went into dismay and in doing so the mother had many concerns and fears that led to her suicide. In this flashback it gives more insight into why the father cares so much for the boy and also why he is so driven to protect the boy. So the mother approaches the father and tells that she wants to kill herself for the inevitable fact that they will be found by “they” (I suppose marauders) and they will be raped and killed and this looming fear sent her into a mad mental state and thus concluded with her committing suicide.

Word Count: 647