1. The Book I read was
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This book was set in a post apocalyptic world on a lonely, desolate road. A man and a boy (their names are never given) are traveling together with only a cart containing their supplies and each other. They come across many dangerous people while traveling on the road, including a man who tries to kidnap the boy, cannibals who are keeping people in their basement in order to eat them, and three men & a pregnant women, in which they later find their campsite that has the remains of a baby who was cooked over fire. From all these travels, the two become starved but then miraculously find a house that has an abundance of food that they can eat. They stay there for a couple days and then continue on their journey. Throughout the novel the man's goal has been to make it to the coast and they finally make it to the beach, but then the boy gets very sick. While sidetracked, their cart and everything they own gets stolen from a thief. The two go looking for the thief and later find him and get their stuff back. After this the father and son go into an empty town where a surprise awaits them and drastically changes the boy's life.
2. The theme of this novel was good versus evil. Whenever the man and boy came upon a stranger on the road, the boy would always ask if they were "good guys" or "bad guys". Along with that, the man would tell the boy to always look for the good guys and never take any risks. I believe that McCarthy chose to write about this topic because he wanted to expose the two types of people in this world, along with the way people need to live, especially teenagers. You need the follow the good, influential people in your life, not the ones who are just up to no good.
3. I chose this book because it won the Pulitzer prize, and seemed unlike anything I've read before. This book first came to my attention when my Avid teacher, Mr. Ilac told me about it. He said it was a dark and depressing book, and that's what appealed to me, because I have never read a depressing book before (I read The Fault in Our Stars but it wasn't even that sad honestly). The book was suspenseful, so that's what kept me reading it constantly.
4. I found the book to be very realistic. I think that this is how a father and son would be in a real post apocalyptic world. This book reminded me of a TV show called "The Walking Dead" because they both they take place in a post apocalyptic world and are about constant travel. Also, there is a father and son in both stories that have a close relationships.
5. In this novel, the author's tone is depressed and hopeless. In one excerpt on page 32, McCarthy writes,"Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." Another time he writes on page 99,"The snow lay deep and gray. Already there was a fresh fall of ash on it. He struggled on a few more feet and then turned and looked back. The boy had fallen." and finally McCarthy writes on page 250,"He walked out on the beach to the edge of the light and stood with his clenched fists on top of his skull and fell to his knees sobbing in rage". As you can see the whole book is dark with few good moments in it.
6. Literary elements in this novel would include
alliteration as found on page 1,
dark beyond
darkness and the
days.
Assonance, also found on page 1, "l
ow m
oan and t
urned and l
urched away." Similes (page 1) "Like the onset of some cold glaucoma".
Metaphors (page 1) "the inward parts of some granitic beast".
Imagery (page 1) "black," "dark," "gray," "shadow," "pale".
Personification (page 143) "When he woke the gas lamp overhead was hissing softly".
Situational Irony when the boy recovers from being sick, it shocked me that he didn't die.
Symbolism (page 269) "You said that was okay because good dreams are not a good sign."
Hyperbole (page 97) "The whump of falling trees and the low boom of the loads of snow exploding on the ground set the wood to shuddering."
Onomatopoeia (page 97)
"The
whump of falling trees and the low boom of the loads of snow exploding on the ground set the wood to shuddering."
Allusion (page 172) "What if I said that he's a god?"
CHARACTERIZATION
1. Direct characterization Example #1
“The Boy: Can I ask you something?
The Man: Yes. Of course you
can.
The Boy: What would you do
if I died?
The Man: If you died I would
want to die too.
The Boy: So you could be
with me?
The Man: Yes. So I could be
with you.
The Boy: Okay.” (pg. 11)
This shows that the Man is very caring towards his son because he would want to die if he died.
Example #2
The boy lay with his head in
the man's lap. After a while he said: They're going to kill those people,
aren't they?
The Man: Yes.
The Boy: Why do they have to
do that?
The Man: I don’t know.
The Boy: Are they going to
eat them?
The Man: I don’t know.
The Boy: They're going to
eat them, aren’t they?
The Man: Yes.
The Boy: And we couldn’t
help them because then they'd eat us too.
The Man: Yes.
The Boy: And that's why we couldn’t
help them.
The Man: Yes.
The Boy: Okay. (pg. 194)
This quote shows that the boy cares for other people but he is also understanding of why thing happen the way they do.
Indirect Characterization Example #1
The
boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy
had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the
spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding
him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276)
Again this just shows how the boy is compassionate towards other human beings, and seeing a dead baby just crushed the little boy.
Example #2
"When he looked up the
road rat was holding the knife in his hand. He'd only taken two steps but he was
almost between him and the child.
(The Man) What do you think
you're going to do with that?
He didn’t answer. He was a
big man but he was quick. He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up
holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already
dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired
from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet.
The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his
forehead.”
The fact that the man would kill someone else in order to protect his son shows how strong the bond between them is and how the man loves him.
2. When the author focuses on the characters' dialogue, he usually makes them talk in short and choppy conversations. There is a lot of use of words like yes, no, and okay. For example, here is a conversation on page 148:
Boy: How long can we stay here papa?
Man: Not long.
Boy: How long is that?
Man: I dont know. Maybe one more day. Two.
Boy: Because it's dangerous.
Man: Yes
Boy: Do you think they'll find us?
Man: No. They won't find us.
Boy: They might find us.
Man: No they won't. They won't find us.
3. The protagonist (the man), is a dynamic character. By traveling with the boy so much, he learns how to be caring and compassionate like when he let the old man ,Ely, eat dinner with them. However, the man doesn't doesn't have too many personality traits and he is more of a flat character.
4. After reading this story, I felt like I was with the man and the boy through their journey's on the road. The description of everything was just so realistic and it was like I felt the things that the man and boy felt. An example in the story that just had me on the tips of my toes was on page 110 when the two found a bunch of nude people that were going to be eaten.
"Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous."
ENDURING MEMORY
There were a bunch of great ideas that McCarthy wrote about in this novel. However, there is only one that will always be remembered in my mind just because of the intense moments McCarthy delivered it through in the reading. The love between a father and son is strong, but I think that the man in this novel had an extremely strong bond with his son. It was on page 250, where I first realized how much the boy meant to the man.
"He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air. His hand on the thin and laddered ribs. He walked out on the beach to the edge of the light and stood with his clenched fists on top of his skull and fell to his knees sobbing in rage."
At this point in the story, I had come to the realization of how miserable life was for the man. The boy was his only reason he didn't kill himself already. I just admired how great McCarthy's style of writing was and this book is defenitely one of those ones that gives me the motivation to read more (because I prefer not to read on my spare time). The themes in this book are just so intense and make you think a lot about how lucky you are to be living the life you are living, because not everyone gets to enjoy the happiness of life.
