The Road Research Post: Love and Perseverance

Hehehe...I once again forgot when the heck this thing is due, so I'll just give you (any readers/classmates) my usual tired delirious nonsense and pull out random stuff in the form of a decent blog post. *Snicker*
...Actually, I'm REALLY tired now, so...tomorrow. Morning. I'll do this then. Sorry.


Okay, so I was looking at some [one] sources, which included an interview with McCarthy. I noticed that

Righto. New day, changing post. I just read a review for The Road, and one thing that just caught my attention now was the conversation between the "Ely" fellow and the father. First of all, the author of the review made a connection to the prophets in the Bible, and he suggested that Ely was "Elijah, herald of the Messiah, who will return on the Day of Judgement...Anyway, Ely responds to the father's proposal that the boy is a god: "Where men cant live gods fare no better." When I first read this in the book, I couldn't make sense of the statement. But now, looking at it, I realized a possible explanation: gods are a belief of man; if there are no men alive to believe, there are no gods to believe in. A-HA!! I got it. :)

Oops. Back on to the actual topic of this post. I was thinking, and I was going to ask Mr. M if I could have this post about 2 topics, but I figured he'd say that I could do it if I managed to connect the two ideas somehow. Well, I think I can. Here goes...

Love and Perseverance. These two often go hand in hand. When there is love, there's reason to persevere. In The Road, the love between the father and his son is quite apparent, even though, as pointed out by John Jurgenson (author of the article "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy"), "they never say 'I love you.'" In response, Cormac McCarthy states "No, [I didn't have the father and son say they love each other]. I didn't think that would add anything to the story at all."



He has a point.  The two show their love through their actions, since actions speak louder than words. For example, the man puts his son at the top of his priorities. Whenever they find something good or useful or necessary for survival, and there's a little available, the father always pushes for the son to have it first and for him to have the most. Like on page 201, when the pair finds water in the form of a very small creek, the father filters the water into a jar and gives it to the boy first:

Go ahead, he said.

The boy drank and handed it back. 

Drink some more. 

You drink some, Papa. 

Ah. That excerpt also displays the mutual love the boy has for his father. I'm pretty sure I talked about this in my post about the bond between the father and son, but if not, okay. The father always pushes the good stuff like hot cocoa or Coke or Koolaid-like juice drink onto his son, but his son is concerned with them sharing and being the same.

I will refer to this one class session, in which a classmate talked about a scene in the book, around page 34 in the book. The father had some cocoa...

"...he fixed it for the boy and then he poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim. 

'You promised not to do that,' the boy said. 

'What?' 

'You know what, Papa.' 

He poured the hot water back into the pan and took the boy's cup and pured some of the cocoa in to his own and then handed it back."

 The classmate stated that the boy was looking out for their water supply, a statement I disagree with. I felt, as I read, that the boy was emphasizing his desire for them to have the same; he didn't want to be the special one. What he got to have, he wanted his father to have. This feeling is also displayed whenever the man wants to check out a house or location and tells the boy to stay put. He wants his boy away from danger, but the boy just wants to be with him and always wants to go with him.

Wrapping that part up, the father loves his son more than anything else, and the father means the world to the son. They want to be together, so much to the point that they want to die together:

"What would you do if I died?" 

"If you died I would want to die too."

"So you could be with me?"

"Yes. So I could be with you." (p.11)

 and, when the father is at his sickest:

[Boy]: "Just take me with you. Please." (p. 279)

 Now, to weave that in together with perseverance. Where there is love, there is a drive to survive. It's kinda like "if there's love, there's a will; if there's a will, there's a way." The Wall Street Journal's interview says this, and I agree:

"He knew only that the child was his warrant." (p. 5)

 As I found out, one of the definitions of "warrant" is "justification or authority for an action, belief, or feeling." Basically, it's a reason. I interpreted the excerpt above as the man stating that the boy was his reason for being, for living, for continuing on. We have also been over this in class; the boy has to depend on his father to survive since he's so young, but the father in turn depends on the son in order to push on and keep going.

"When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you re happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you." --the father (p. 189)

Um, I'm gonna have this part be much shorter than that of the "love" section, because for the most part of the "perseverance" portion is referring to the love and relating it to the story. Above all, love is the key in The Road, aside from the whole "good vs. evil" thing.

Love is more than a feeling, it is a living thing as well as a force, and with it anything can be overcome.  This is a point proven throughout the duration of the story.

"Are you carrying the fire?"