In the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Several references to the past are made throughout the way, as are numerous memories of the father. The son is too little to recall and views the new world through totally different eyes than his father. The father attempts to dial home at the beginning of the novel: “he picked up the phone and dialed the number of his father’s house that long ago” (p.5) This is a desperate and fruitless act. The youngster has no idea what his father is doing. The father never justifies his behavior, as though he is ashamed of wanting to reconnect with his old life. The father is unable to describe the old world to his son: “He couldn’t construct for the child’s enjoyment the world he’d lost without also constructing the loss…” He couldn’t spark in the child’s heart what was ashes in his own.” (p. 163) The past is out of grasp. It exists only in the father’s memory, which is erratic in its recall. The ashes of the world have migrated into his heart, suffocating his own spirit until he is nothing more than a shell pretending to be human for the sake of his son’s survival. The father’s recollection is scattered and hazy, making it impossible for even the reader to comprehend what life was like in the past: “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (p.11) This reflects the father’s and the novel’s despair. He is being honest with his youngster about life rather than filling him with the uplifting optimism that we are accustomed to feeding our own children when they are young. This is followed by a flashback to the father’s childhood with his uncle. Despite the fact that the recollection is supposed to be found, there is a sense of loss. The attention sharply returns to the dismal grey of the present world, and they are on the move. There are clues of a collapsed society as they go through the various towns and locations: “The billboards had been whited out with thin coats of paint in order to write on them, and through the paint could be seen a faint palimpsest of adverts for commodities which no longer existed.” (p. 135) Billboards depict a civilization in which media, marketing, and sales dominated television, publications, and, more recently, the internet. Materialism has all but evaporated on this post-apocalyptic planet. With civilization disassembled, only the essentials are desired: safety and edible food. McCarthy emphasizes our reliance on things that are unnecessary…

There are no names in the road. The two main characters are simply referred to by their age and gender, the child, the boy, the man, and sometimes their relationship to each other, papa. This invites us to think about them less as individuals and more as archetypes existing in relation to each other and the world around them. It is interesting that the boy is sometimes referred to as the child. Both are young, both are innocent, but a child is more innocent, more full of possibility and wonder than a boy. A boy will eventually become a man. Unlike a child, a boy’s path is laid out. His innocence is finite because one day he will outgrow it. One of the first times the man’s relationship to his traveling companion is described McCarthy writes: “He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5). He man views the child as having some quality of divinity that must be preserved. The man must survive so he can make sure the child and his naive absolute goodness servive. This is what gives both of them hope, “The child had his own fantasies. How things would be in the south. Other children.” (32). Their goal is the south and so their goal is to find a place where innocent morality can thrive. The point of survival is to reach a place where they can no longer worry about surviving. However, this innocence is shown to give the child morality and kindness which the man is often at odds with. “Cant we help him? Papa? No. We cant help him. The boy kept pulling at his coat. Papa? he said. Stop it.” (27). The man is trying to keep the child alive, but in making the choices necessary to keep both of them alive the man is killing the morality of nievity by teaching him what is necessary to survive. That brings the child closer to the man which makes him a boy. This change reaches a turning point where the man starts to listen to the boy’s advise. This change begins after they raid an apple orchard. Biblically apples are the fruit of knowledge. The timing of this shift reinforced the idea that knowledge and goodness are antithetical. This chang marks the moment the child becomes a boy. If a boy must become a man then a man must become an old man. This gives an interesting context to the man’s conversation with Ely. “There is no God and we are his prophets. I dont understand how you’re still alive. How do you eat? I dont know. You dont know? People give you things. People give you things. Yes. To eat. To eat. Yes. No they dont. You did. No I didnt. The boy did.” (170). The man believes in god to motivate his own survival. The old man, if he is to be believed, does not care about goodness but benefits from it anyway. What does it mean that he names them both prophets of a none existent god? It is because would not share what they have. They are not kind. They follow the teachings of survival. God is humans better nature that does more than survive.

For this lit log assignment I emulated Cormac McCarthy’s writing style and added a short scene where the man and the boy discover something on the beach.

I decided to write a poem about the kid describing how he feels. So it talks about how he is frightened because it’s so dark and quiet but his dad tells him he will be ok and that everything will turn out to be good.

This is my English 3 Lit log for the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Last Lit Log!!!