Scene

The scene below is what I imagined could have gone into page 174 of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The boy looked back at the old man. Slouched down on the ground. Like theyd found him. He was not looking at the boy.

Why did he call himself Eli if thats not his name?

His real name is all he has left. Its why no one else weve met has told us their

name.

I like the way it sounds.

The way what sounds.

Eli.

Eli.

Yes.

Okay.

Does it mean anything?

The name?

Yes. Eli. Or is it just a nice sound?

A long time ago there was someone named Eli. He was pure and good in every

way, but in the end he got in trouble.

He was a good guy?

Yes. He was a good guy.

Then why did he get in trouble?

He didnt discipline his sons enough.

What does that mean?

He didnt punish them enough when they did the wrong thing.

Do you think youre like Eli?

What? How.

Because when I get into trouble or do the wrong thing you dont punish me.

No. I dont think Im like Eli. Im not as pure and good as he was.

But what about me?

What about you.

You dont. . .discipline. . .me.

The boy tested the word, worried to use it incorrectly.

No. I guess not. But the guy who got mad at Eli isnt around anymore.

Who was it?

It doesn’t matter.

The boy couldnt see the old man anymore. The man remembered a time when he might have been stricter with the boy. In his past life. Maybe he should be a stronger parent. The boys curiosity and compassion would kill him when the man was gone. But he couldnt bear it. The boy was the only good in the world and disciplining him would taint that. The boy was the last remainder of the one who got mad at Eli.

The passage below is a continuation of what happens on and after page 27 of Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road.

(The Road 27) “We should go, Papa. Can we go?

Yes. We can go.

I’m scared.

I know. I’m sorry.

I’m really scared.

It’s all right. We shouldn’t have come.”

One night later, they trudged along the dark Eastern Mountain, hoping to find somewhere to sleep that covered themselves from the wet cacophony that had suddenly come.

How about here, Papa?

Okay. We will stay here. You hungry?

No.

After the boy had shown no interest in eating, the man devoured half of what they had to eat. As the man ate, the boy made himself a place to lay and began to drift off.

Good night Papa, stay close.

Stayclose?

Yes. StayClose.

Okay, good night.

The boy had fallen into a heavy sleep, though his sleep seemed to be a restless one. The man wondered if the boy was still on edge about visiting his old home.

Trying to sleep, the boy thought of his home, living with both parents. He remembered them bickering and never being content. Every time they would fight, the mother threatened to leave them. The man would beg her to not, but in the end, she did.

Mom don't leave, said the boy in his sleep.

What?

Mom.....mom...

Just then, after hearing his son say the word "Mom", he knew why the boy was acting the way he was. The boy didn't want to lose anyone else. He didn't want the man to leave him like his mother did. The boy told him to stay close before he went into his slumber, he was terrified of the house, and wanted to leave. The boy is always paranoid. The man now understood.

Rationale:

Throughout the whole novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, they boy seemed to be very scared, on edge, and paranoid wherever he and his father went. In the very beginning of the novel, one specific scene stood out to me. This was on page 27, when the boy and the man took a visit to the man’s childhood home. I wanted to make the plot a continuation of the boy’s and the man’s conversation and an explanation of the boy’s feelings.  

For this, I wanted to develop the boy’s character, and why he was always so scared, and attached to the man. I decided on making up the reason the boy feel so terrified at the man’s old house, because of his past experiences at his home when he lived with both his mother and his father. So I added that the boy just didn’t want to loose any one else, and obviously until the end of the novel, the man is all the boy had.

I added another short conversation, and more dialogue to page 27’s writing. I placed my writing here because the man and the boy were just having a conversation about leaving, and they did. So this was the perfect place to expand on the boy’s feelings at the house, and just throughout the novel. Creating a motif was very hard for me. I decided on “I’m scared”, which is what the boy would always say, everywhere they went.

I focused on two themes for my “made up” part of the book, and  I chose the short and to the point conversations the boy and the man always had, and the boy’s paranoid feelings. With these themes, i answered the questions of “Why is the boy always so anxious and very...aware?”, and “Why were all the conversations between the boy and the man so short?”. Basically, I wanted to have the answers to both be, again, the boy is always like this because of the way he was previously living with both the man and his mother before she left. The boy doesn’t want to lose his father like he lost his mom...so he is very cautious and on edge about everything. The conversations between him and his father are keep so short because they both don’t want to “mess things up” I guess you could say. What i’m trying to say here is they just don’t want to say the wrong thing that makes each other mad, or have bad feelings towards each other because they never knew the next time they would see each other. That’s why they were so close.

This is a segment McCarthy may have written for his novel The Road, before final editing. This is a segment to be inserted after the alteraction between the man and the boy on page 211.

Creative Piece

Playing baseball or maybe fishing. The man would wheel him to friend’s houses and school events. The man would help the boy with his school work. In the time before the man knew math but now he only knows how to add and subtract cans from the ever lightening load of the cart.

The boy wouldn’t ever have to eat his food out of a can again. The man would cook fresh meals every night and he and the boy would discuss their day over their dinner.

Maybe the boy wouldn’t want to talk. He trusted the man fully now but maybe the boy would be resentful as some children often were. The world lacked normalcy yet the boy was showing signs of the mindset common in children who’ve begun to grow weary of their guardians. The boy would have grown up eventually, the man knew, but growing up isn’t something people did anymore. People were just grown.

The man was tired but if he became too tired, the boy would realize and his independence would grow. The man could not decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

Regardless of what awaited upstairs, the man had to go up and take a look. Regardless of the what the boy said, he expected it. And the man needed it.

Rational

A scene like this, a scene where the man reflects on what could have been, never occurs in McCarthy’s The Road. The man seems very in the moment, almost like he’s done all of his thinking in the years before this story takes place. This post apocalyptic world, as we know by the assumed age of the boy, has been around for a good amount of years. It’s very possible the man considered these types of things earlier on. However, I believe that if McCarthy had written a scene like this one, a whole different dimension could have been added onto the man’s character. The man would become an even more complex character, who was struggling with the guilt of the life he was forced to provide for his son opposed to the one he was planning on providing. The man’s character would struggle with his feelings on the boy’s inevitable independence and whether it made him feel worried that the boy no longer needed him or free to succumb to death and the ultimate freedom inherent with it.

The interaction preceding this inserted scene is simple enough, something common in today’s parent and child interactions. The man tells the boy they are doing something and the boy disagrees, protesting that the father never listens to him. To a modern parent, this is normal and probably unnoteworthy. To the man, this interaction meant the boy was passing into a realm the man was unfamiliar with. The boy had never questioned his father before and, if he did, he’d always concede to the father’s correctness. In this situation, the boy is unhappy with the decisions the man is making and calls him out for not taking his own opinions into consideration. The boy is showing signs of wanting to run his own life.

The motifs I used in my creative piece, the mention of cans and the phrase “Take a look”, are there to help the passage flow naturally with the story. I think it’s important to include the frequently occurring motifs in order for the passage to sound like it belongs. The motifs also add to the mood of the passage, creating the same dark and somber feeling present throughout the rest of the novel. The mention of the grey and hollow cans reiterates the coldness of the world the man and boy live in. The phrase “Take a look” adds to the complete uncertainty of the situation.

The following passage is a scene from one of McCarthy's earlier manuscripts of The Road that was originally titled The Path. *SVU Sound effect*

Are you hungry?

I dont know.

I think that you do know.

Papa can I ask something?

Yeah.

Can we sit down and eat?

Sit down?

Yeah sit down?

The man gave the boy a wide-eyed stare. His eyes were piercing into the boys soul. He began to daydream about the old world. He envisioned people laughing, and drinking wine intimately at a table. Suddenly, the room began to shake, the lights blew, and the people once laughing and drinking wine begin to look terrified.

Papa! Papa! Papa!

The man heard the boys call and was mortified. He instantaneously rushed over to the boy and hugged him squeezing him harder than he ever had before. There was a cold draft blowing through the room. The boy looked up at his father and they began to grin at one another. The man picked the boy up and put him on his shoulders. The man scanned the room in hope of finding table settings. Eventually, he spotted a candle surrounding pyroclastic residue. With his eyes locked on the candle the man took the boy off of his shoulders and placed him onto the ground.

I think we may be able to work something out.

When reading Cormac Mccarthy’s ‘The Road’ there was a recurring motif of darkness that was essential to the reader’s vision of the setting, characters, and suchlike. However, that darkness stops in one scene in particular; on page 207 the man and the boy are in a house that they end up having a candlelit dinner in. In this novel, eating and having fire/heat are separate luxuries, but to have the intertwined creates an ultimate one. I found it incredibly ironic that they were on the road, living in obscurity at one moment, and then having a candlelit dinner the next. We associate dinners, (esp. Candlelit one’s) with normality and practical luxury; McCarthy never explains as to how this idea comes about in this text and this left me with a myriad of questions. The goal of my creative piece was to answer those questions.

For this specific scene, I wanted to focus on the theme of humanity. Throughout the text, we see various aspects of humanity. These aspects include Ely, who has lost his faith in humanity, the cannibals who have the smallest sense of humanity imaginable, and the boy who is incredibly humane and moral in all of his thought processes and decision making.

When reading ‘The Road’ you cannot help but constantly reevaluate the circumstances and question where they stem from. A major question that came to mind was “Do extenuating circumstances diminish fragments of our humanity.” We see that the circumstances for some characters have in fact diminished fragments of their humanity but the boy has faith in such humanity, and as a result the father does as well.. While they may be living in the same society they do not have identical circumstances. The boy has never experienced something that is so normal and humane. A candlelit dinner is a faction of humanity he had never known before. His circumstances hindered him from experiencing a fragment of humanity and normality.

I decided to go with the motif of luxuries because they recur rather frequently in the novel. Whether it be fire, food, or candlelit dinners the boy and the man always end up having the luxury of being well nourished, warm, and safe. While this may appear to be practical for us, it is something that most characters have no access to.

For the plot, I wanted a scene with significance that could provide reasoning for having such a dinner occur as well as to provide a gradual shift into the next scene. There is such a stark juxtaposition between the previous scene when they are on the road and the scene of the calm, luxurious candlelit dinner. The man having that daydream is a logical explanation for such, which is why I chose to go with it, (esp. since dreams recur in the novel as well)

The placement of this passage on page 251 is because this is the first time in the book that the boy’s body mirrors that of the the father’s. When the boy is sick the reader is informed of the boy’s first dream. The content of that dream is not specified. Keeping it that way is essential to the mystery of the boy, but by giving the boy a memory before the dream he doesn’t want to talk about strips away at some of the mystery for the reader but not for the father.

The characters in this scene bring a new light to the boy. By giving the boy a reason behind the hiding of his dream with this memory of his mother creates a depth to the boy for the reader without taking away the mystery he is to the father.

There is one sentence in the section that plays at the vocabulary that McCarthy has throughout the book. “Ephemeral caliginousness jolted the boy from his thoughts” Caliginousness is used instead of simply darkness and ephemeral is used as a replacement for brief. The more advanced vocabulary here suggests that the reader is no longer in the boy’s head.

The essential question that is prominent here is, how dangerous are memories? Why like the question isn't answered completely it is hinted at that they are very dangerous. Through the ending when the father pulls the boy out of his mind it draws upon the parallel that the boy has been doing for a lot of the book. This also plays at that role reversal that the reader sees shift in the second half of the book.

The memory is very prominent in this section of the story using the motif of dreams in a way that the reader has seen before but only with the father. The carrying of the fire is hinted at with the flaregun being a recurring symbol throughout this section. Themes that were in this section are survival using a clue from another part of the book when the father says that they have had this discussion many times before to the mother. The conversation itself however was never played out in the book therefore this section was created to fulfill that. The overwhelming theme of what is the point comes back into play in this section, as it does whenever the mother is in play.

Creative:

The passage below is what I think was cut from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road while he was writing the book.

The group passed through abandoned cities and towns and looked for things to eat and drink. Everyday the boy would talk to his papa so he didn’t forget about him. He would tell him about the things he was experiencing and the things he was learning. He would tell him about the different animals that he learned. He would tell him that he is still carrying the fire and that they would find the good guys.

After traveling for a while the group reached a submontane. They decided to climb for a while before making camp. The mountain was burned like a fire had happened. The man looked around to find anything they could use. There used to be many animals that would live in these mountains he said. The little girl was startled by something in a dried up stream.

Whats over there?

Its the remains of a deer.

Why is it there?

It must have tried to get away from the fire but got trapped.

The man then went over and searched to see if there was anything there. When he searched it he found that it had rotted down to the bone. He then turned and went back and they continued climbing the mountain.

Rationale:

The following passage is what I have imagined would be included in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: Collector’s Edition.

The boy resembles her vastly. But his eyes were the man’s. Dark and sullen. When he asks him questions the man is often reminded of her. He gives the same inquisitive expression that could only come from her. The night she left he fell asleep rather quickly, and to the man’s surprise he did not cry. It was the first time the man felt that the boy was starting to outgrow their relationship. He couldn’t help but think about where she went as the boy slept. He knew he would never see her again but could not help but wonder if she was trekking the same bleak road as they were. Walking and surviving. He’d taught her that much at least.

.     .     .

In his dreams he felt her. He was alone and walking toward a stark gray house with its door slung open. The beads of sweat rolled down his temples as he approached. Cautiously. As he stepped past the porch, he knew something was bizarre. Everything in the house was completely untouched. As if everything that happened hit everywhere on Earth except here. Opening the door to the basement he heard her. The wooden steps creaking with every shift as he came closer. She called to him. When he reached the bottom, he turned around anxiously, searching for her. But waiting for him was the boy.

The following is my in depth rationale explaining the reason for any literary choices I may have made for this project.

In my project, I chose to address the mother a bit more and explore some of the effects of her absence. I split my passage into two different scenes. The first being the man’s thoughts about his son after his wife left and the second being a dream he had. I chose to place this between pages 58 and 59 right after the man explains the mystery and silence of the way she left.

My overarching theme centered around personal growth. The essential question I found for this novel was “How has tragedy altered the development of the characters’ strength?” It seems as though every time something bad happens to the father and son, the son matures more and the father weakens. Though some might think the father persevered throughout the story, I think McCarthy shed light on his weakening spirit during the whole story while the son however became gradually less fearful.

On page 58, the mother has just left the father and son and the only thing the boy chose to ask was, “She’s gone isn’t she?” and nothing further. This stood out to me a lot because the boy is often very inquisitive of his father, and for something so monumental and sad in both of their lives, he only posed one question. So I chose to talk about that through the father’s perspective in my passage. I included that the boy did not cry the night she left, another sign of growth in his character. This wasn’t something he feared.

Along the passage, I used small familiar description words or phrases used along the book to best match McCarthy’s style of writing. Some of these include “Dark and sullen”, “the same bleak road”, “He’d taught her that much at least”. I also tried to avoid saying “the man” and “the boy” too often and instead used “he”; McCarthy often purposely uses “he” even though there are two male characters because he assumes readers will know who he is referring to in the story. For my McCarthy-esque vocabulary word, I chose “trekking”. He is a fan of using words that describe something long, vast, or dragging. I felt like the word “trekking” captured that because it describes going on a long arduous journey which is the basis of the entire novel.

The second part of my passage is a dream the man has about his wife the night after she left. He thinks he’s found her and when he reaches his destination there is only his son waiting. This is the reality he now faces, and he is coming to terms with it here. I also made the dream parallel to the scene later where they find the bodies calling for help because this could be something that happened to her when she left.

​CREATIVE PIECE

The scene below is what was deleted before the book was published

He traveled through the skies. He had moved forth the dark leaves that scattered on the ground. There was a dog. It came gallop trotting towards with its nostrils fully He had on a mask that covered his identity. The man was in sight, but could not hear his screams. He went through a cave where it was dark and filled with groans from those that were not strong enough to see what God had planned for them.

The boy heard gunshots that skimmed past his ear. He had ended up in a yard, that had crumbled excreta on the grounds. The boy called for his papa and only to see his ashen, thick breathe passed through the air.  

The boy woke up in a daze. The man was laying next to him with the quits pulled around his head. The sky had moved along the with only the pink shades showing.

Papa?

He didn't answer at first.

The man looked up at the boy`s waxen face.

What is it? What` s wrong.

I dreamt something bad about us.

What did you dream. It is not real

The boy faced the road. You were using your pistol, I heard the gun go off. I was scared, the boy said.

It was just a dream, we will be okay, okay?

Okay

He cupped the boy`s forehead in his hand. There was a light silence that echoed off the stiffened trees in the cold. The man looked intensely for any sign of danger on the road, no one was there but the awaken dust that relocated every second.

Rationale

This is an analysis of why I made the decisions for my project

I chose to analyze the motif on dreams, because this was a way to introduce or get the reader prepared for the upcoming scenes. McCarthy shows the reader how dreams could be the gateway to what is going to happen. It takes place where the reader is in the man`s or boy`s dream and has a front seat of what they are about to see or what they already saw.

I wanted to draw attention to this scene because I feel that the dream was a good way to build up to the scene.. I also think that dreams shows how the boy captures lots of  the images and in returns them has dreams that show that. Dreams is a non-direct way to send the reader pointers about what will happen next in the book. You can see inside the character's head, which also build character development. It gives you in this case, how the boy takes what is happening around him and dreams about it.

The scene where the man from the truck comes and finds them, I think needed to be more developed. It wasn't foreshadowed at all. There was no indication that the boy would have been in that type of danger. When adding the scene prior to that happening, I feel the reader is now inclined because they want to read more because of the dream. The dream was basically a startup to what was going to happen in “reality”.

There was a lot of questions to be asked, should as Why are dreams so important? This is what I wanted to make clear and analyze on. Dreams were constantly brought up in the book because it showed how the man and the boy differed in accepting what was happening. When the man dreamt, it usually was involved with people in his past or people that he once loved. This was because the man knew a world before this. When it came to the boy, his dreams were based upon fears that he had or foreshadows that would happen later in the book.

The word that I used that was McCarthy-like was “water-logged” which just meant moist or wet surroundings. This was not used in the book and I think adds a feel to where the character was and basically the whole mood of the dream.