The Road - Blog 2

The boy keeps asking his dad if they are going to die, and he does not believe the dad when the dad tells him  they are not going to die.  "If they find us they'll kill us, wont they Papa" (115).  The boy seems to have more common sense than the man.  While the boy is aware that their chances of survival are extremely slim, the man has almost convinced himself that they are going to live, partly because of his efforts to reassure his son.  The boy says, "I dont think we should go up there," when they come upon a large house along their journey, but the father, blinded by his hunger, decides "it's okay," and that they have "got to find something to eat" (106).  The man should have followed the boy's natural instincts of fear in this situation, but "desperation...led him to...carelessness" and he nearly got them both killed, or worse (117).  The child is commonly afraid of entering abandoned houses, but in this case his fear turned out to be justified.  The two seemed to be growing further and further apart along their journey, but now maybe the father will listen to the child more and their bind will strengthen.  The father realized that he can not give be careless out of desperation again, "no matter what" (117).  I think this is good news for the father/son relationship, but I do not know how they are going to find food now.  The part with the people locked in the room disgusted me.  I think I am going to have nightmares tonight.  I guess the "bad guys" lock the other people up in that room and eat them.  I find that repulsive and I think I would prefer to die.  The man  and child seem to be in pretty bad shape right now and I do not know how they are going to keep surviving since the boy already looks "like something out of a deathcamp" (117).  A particularly disturbing line in my opinion was, "Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?" (114).  The situation has come to the point where he has to consider killing his own son, and that is messed up.  McCarthy has created a scenario so scary that I can almost imagine why the man is thinking about taking this twisted form of action - because he does not want his child to be eaten by the freaks that live in the big house.  McCarthy has put inside the head of the man through his literary devices like rhetorical questions and the dialogue between the man and the son.  It is kind of creeping me out.