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."

Father and Son: The Bond

Hehe...too lazy to come up with a weirder title, so we'll go with da default. It's late (relatively; early by my other post standards), and I'm tired, and I brilliantly left 98% of my notes in my locker, so yeah. It'll be short--as much as possible.

In The Road, the main characters are a man and his son, and it is apparent that the father just wants to protect his son and keep him as happy as possible in their situation. I noticed that the dad is always agreeing with his son, as if he was just making sure his son was satisfied. He says things that don't really contradict the boy, and the conversations generally have a soft tone to them. "Yes," "sure," "okay," "I know," etc. (Sorry, no good examples at the moment). In the flashbacks with the man and his wife, at the statement "Her cries mean nothing to him" (or something close to that) implied to me that he kind of loved his son more than his wife, or rather, the boy was more important to him at that moment in time. The father overall wants to keep his son safe, which is why he's constantly moving and pushing him and trying to explain their situation.

A certain conversation that really stood out to me was:

"Do you want to die? Is that what you want?"--"I don't care; I don't care."--"I'm sorry. Don't say that. You mustn't say that."

That was after the whole "I saw a little boy" scenario, and it proved that the father is really protective, and that in the end he just wants his boy safe.

Another thing about the bond between the father and son was the mutual love between them. They's argue: about the boy getting more or better things than his father (and the boy not liking that), about what to do, and so on. But when it comes down to it, in times of danger or extreme caution, all negative thoughts, feelings and/or emotions (leaving the boy to scout, shooting the man) are forgotten, and they rely on each other and enjoy each other's company, and they truly love each other. For example, after the argument regarding the other boy and the dog, and the narrow evasion of the "bad guys," the father told the boy to stay put while he got more firewood. Yet the boy followed him and helped him gather wood too. That was an "awww..." moment for me.

Sooo... Yeah. I felt a mutual love between the two, and they were/are always looking out for each other. That's probably what the relationship between parent and child is, anyway. That whole "unconditional love" thing; the need to protect your child, even if it seems harsh or mean, and still loving them no matter what.

Yeah. That's all I got. But, I apparently rewrote this little speech by the father to his son in found poem format (not really "rewrote" per se; just reformatted it):

"The Bond"

My job is to
take care of you.
I was appointed to do that
by God.
I will kill
anyone
who touches you.
Do you understand?

"If we were going to die would you tell me?"