The Road Journal I

Questions:

— In the orderless world in which The Road takes place, what role does faith play in the protagonist's will to survive?
— Why are the father and son so skeptical of their surroundings, and afraid to be seen at night (with the fires)? Are there other people who would wish to harm them?
— When the father says on page 11 that he would want to die if his son died so he could be with him, does he really mean what he says? Or does he want to preserve his son's life over his own, i.e. he does not believe that there is any hope for himself?
— How long has it been since the world's alleged end, and what has allowed the father and son to persevere over the many who died? (It doesn't seem that this question will be answered in the book, but one can potentially speculate based on some details provided.)
— Why does the father choose to stop and show his son the house where he used to live, despite the risk? What is significant about this moment/memory that makes him go out of his way to do this?
— With the excessive use of imagery of grey and black and (rarely) white, which descriptions use color and how are they significant?
— On page 34, the boy says "if you break little promises you'll break big ones. That's what you said." What is the significance of this statement and what might it suggest about the father and his past?
— Oftentimes McCarthy compares "dreams of vivid color" to the presence of death. What is meant by this correlation? How and where does a dreamful sleep represent death in this novel?
— On page 13 the narrator depicts the protagonist's daydream about his perfect day of childhood. In comparison to the empty and grey world that they currently inhabit, why might the father think back upon the perfect day? Given this memory of his childhood what does he hope to achieve for his son?
— How do the relationships of the father's past affect him in their quest for survival? (Think of the flashback with the mother and his later conversation with his son on page 59 about his former friends.)
— To what extent is the man's alleged sense of morality (referenced after he shoots the man from the truck) self-fulfilling, and to what extent is it based on his faith? (That is, is he acting in pure self interest and in the interest of the boy, or is there some greater purpose to his delineation between right and wrong?)
— After all that they have been through and all the challenges they continue to face, what precisely drives the father and son to continue their journey down this tortuous road? They clearly have a will to survive, but on what basis considering the entire world is devoid of life sustaining resources?

Parallels/Contrasts:

Parallel: "There were fires still burning high in the mountains and at night they could see the light from them deep orange in the sootfall" (30). || "Slogging to the edge of the road with his back to the child where he stood bent with his hands on his knees, coughing. He raised up and stood with weeping eyes. On the gray snow a fine mist of blood" (30). One of the things I watch for in McCarthy's descriptions of the man's surroundings is his sparse use of colorful imagery. Considering how often things are black and gray, dead and downtrodden, flashes of color are meant to stick out in the reader's mind. Both of these images are foreboding and concerning to the reader: the impending forest fire that could ultimately kill them, and the blood that the man coughed up falling on the snow that suggests a serious (radiation-induced?) respiratory disease. Both of these images made me feel a sense of urgency on the behalf of the father and his son more so than the dull and depressing landscapes they cross.

Contrast: "Like the dying the world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory" (18).
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget" (12).
The essence of memory in the context of this novel is usually quite significant and I thought that these quotes only a few pages apart exemplified a contrast within this theme. The latter quote is an interesting aphorism that calls to mind the searing prevalence of bad and traumatizing memories, whereas the former quote to the contrary discusses the gradual fading of all memories good or bad. The simile used in the first quote is very precise, with the "newly blind"; their world does not offer  new memories or experiences—rather all they have is the remains of what is fading away.

Parallel: "they set off down the hills, guiding the cart on the curves with their bodies in the manner of bobsledders. It was the first that he'd seen the boy smile in a long time" (19). "He looked at his father and then tilted the can and drank. He sat there thinking about it. It's really good, he said" (23). (The second quote is more or less referring to the entire Coca-Cola passage.)
Both of these scenes are strange moments of relief in an otherwise desolate plot. I considered both significant because they are the few glimpses of the old world that the father is able to give his son even amidst pure ruin. Overall they attest to the sparks of resilience in the two characters; traits that must have aided them in making it this far.

Contrast: "He shielded the glare of it with his hand and when he did he could see almost to the rear of the box. Human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their rotted clothes" (47).
"The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose" (47).
These two passages are back-by-back on page 47 and yet I think they are of immense contrast both structurally and literally. The first quote ends with three very short sentences that are jarring and disturbing to the reader — I was shocked by the descriptions even as they leave much up to the reader's imagination. In contrast, the sentence immediately following returns to the normal pacing and even includes a strangely out of place simile about the "shape of a flower."

Contrast: "He pitched the sweatblackened piece of leather into the woods and sat holding the photograph. Then he laid it down in the road also and then he stood and they went on" (51).
"I wouldn't leave you. / I don't care, it's meaningless" (56). The first quote shows the man leaving his last former belonging (the picture of his wife) in the road and walking on. Via this gesture he accepts his loss and that he must forget her. However, the flashback referenced by the second quotation shows that the man really has not forgotten his wife and rather he cannot forget how he longed for her to attempt to survive.

Parallel: "He woke toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road. Everything was alight. As if the lost sun were returning at last. The snow orange and quivering."
"The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp" (32). Both of these descriptions use light and color, and these aspects of illustration are used very sparingly in the book so far. While the imagery and the situation remains largely desolate these glimpses of light (not dissimilar to the moments of relief with the Coca-Cola and riding the cart on the hills) suggest that the man and his son may have some righteous purpose for attempting to survive; they suggest a potential hope.

Contrast: "...set off up the old roadway at a dead run, holding the boy's knees, the boy clutching his forehead, covered with gore and mute as a stone" (66). "He held the boy close. There was a cough in his throat that never left. The boy so frail and thin through his coat, shivering like a dog" (67). These conflicting descriptions of the boy just a page apart highlight the rigid intensity of the post-apocalyptic world. The first description "mute as a stone" makes the boy sound almost dead, or at least unresponsive, silent and dumbfounded. Whereas on page 67 the man holds the boy close and describes how frail and skinny he is and the moment is much more intimate and alive than the ending of the previous scene.

Theme: McCarthy's created world in The Road:

McCarthy's literal description of the setting is impeccably vivid through his use of sentences of varying lengths and precisely peculiar vocabulary. Between paragraphs of plot development McCarthy includes descriptions of their surroundings that uniquely emphasize the barren, rotten shell of a world that once existed. "A lake down there. Cold and gray and heavy in the scavenged bowl of the countryside" (19) is a typical description. Almost all of the world is cold and gray --- there is this constant reminder of the absolutely emotionless landscape that fosters no life at all. ("The long gray dusks, the long gray dawns" (7).) Words with harsh consonants accent this type of description (i.e., "scavenged bowl"). There is also an emphasis on ash and dust and cold: "Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life" (14). The first section of this book is really rich with such descriptions that establish a vague and mystical yet utterly hopeless atmosphere.

Furthermore, McCarthy's lack of indentation and dialogue punctuation add to this sense of an orderless world. He also intentionally does not use apostrophes in contractions. This at first confused and bothered me but ultimately it brings the reader further into the world where one has to create their own rules of what is important and what is not—and the remains of the world have no rules.

The world of the father:

I think the world of the father is completely at odds with the world that surrounds him. Whenever possible, he finds ways to reflect on the past and particularly his childhood; he reminisces about the world as it used to be. On occasion he finds ways to create a relatively tolerable environment for his son—after all his son's survival is the sole reason for his own. He acts out of necessity when they are in danger, and yet he tries to bring joy to his child when he can. I think the most prominent example of a conflict between the father's world and the son's is when they visit the father's old house. "We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didnt. ... He pushed open the closet door half expecting to find his childhood things. Raw cold daylight fell through from the roof. Gray as his heart" (26-27). The entire scene really brings out the father's inability to let go of his past and his drive and desire to recreate his own past in any way he can. (This is possibly a slight parallel to earlier when he attempts to use the phone at the gas station to dial his father's number.) His son does not have the same tendencies, as he is merely a child, and this is the most marked contrast between the worlds from the father and the son.

The world of the son:

Generally when the father tries to bring a sense of hope into the son's perspective, he understands and accepts it. However, the narrator does not often focus on the boy's perspective relative to the father's and the boy typically accepts the chaos as it is—in fact he perseveres better than the father does. If anything it seems like the father is the voice of reason for the son's occasional childishness — an example being the earthquake scene on page 28. "The boy clung to him crying, his head buried against his chest. Shh. It's all right. I'm so scared. I know. It's all right. It's gone" (28). This is where the father has to reassure the boy that even while the world is entirely inhospitable, that he must keep some hope of survival. Another prominent example of the boy's naivete is on page 77 when the father explains his concept of good and bad.

"Is it bad guys?
Yes. I’m afraid so.
They could be good guys. Couldnt they?
He didnt answer. He looked at the sky out of old habit but there was nothing to see" (77).

This is where the son wants to create a world of "good guys" (a childish term in and of itself) where there is at least some hope of collaboration, of a collective will to survive. And yet the father has to reassure him that everyone acts in self-interest and that there are in fact no "good guys" but themselves.