A Nature Without a Mother

The mother of the boy and the wife of the father is seen many times in the dreams of the boy and the father. She represents many things, but one I see is the idea of Mother Nature.

 In many scenes we see her in she is part of the nature. For example in the fathers memory of her outside of a house in the, “Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts”(68).

 Also we can connect that Mother Nature has left the world of The Road because of the lack of colors in the majority of the novel, where the mother does not appear. Cormac writes, “They came to an old iron bridge in the woods where the vanished road had crossed an all but vanished stream. He was starting to cough and he'd hardly breath to do it with. He dropped down out of the roadway and into the woods.” This is one example of what we can see throughout the novel.   

Sweet Dreams

          Dreams… something we all have experienced. They help us cope with the real world, with what we are dealing with. Usually they are full of beauty and harmony. They give us this joyful warm felling. Some are not that peaceful. Some are horrifying, terrific, so frightening they wake us from the horrible moment we are passing.

Yet we don't wake up before the horror is over. We wake up just before we die, but we suffer the deaths of people that are close or that of people that we don't know. We stay up just until the last moment, until we wake up dripping sweat in a drenching wet bed because of our heart rate that flies off the scales.

            In the Road all his dreams are to the contrary of what I just stated in the previous statement. The father (who is still remains nameless) and the boy don't suffer beside what they see in real life. Their dreams are full of the beauty of what they once lived. An example is, “The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts”.   

Bad Guys???

      What are the “Bad Guys” that the boy and father mention every time they see a sign of civilization or people? I think it could be an evil monster that is created by the nuclear radiation mixing in with some sort of animal that made it smarter, stronger, and more vicious. It could also be a group of people that they are running from that have become wild and crazy for food and will find some at no mercy. Well one thing is for sure, they are running from something, and it is “bad”. 

Trash

Something that I can see in almost every page are verbs that end with ”nt”. This is something that I see in not only what I have read, but in the pages that follow, as I skim through them. This shows the depression and lack of confidence that the characters have. What i think this represents is a feeling of no way to go forward, and a feeling of last resort of getting down to a "good" life.  

This is no the only thing that shows a sorrow tone. The descriptions of the areas they travel through, the description of how everything is “trash” around them. They live in trash, literally, they are sleeping in trash bags and carrying a shopping cart as a pack where they keep thier old, trashy food and cloths.

The words that McCarthy uses in this monotonic writing shows the not only sadness, scariness, and darkness of the lives they were thrown into, but how we have to fight the same thing, but not only to the extect they have to live in, One full of death, bad times, and hopefully a happy, warm ending.

???

What is the conflict? What effects the Characters? What effects them to change if they change? How will they fight the people they encounter and control themselves? This are all questions that will be answered later in the readings, but for now I can only guess. Well I realized that the father and son are living on the road running from the cannibals and living a hard life. The Father and the Son have no name, so far, and I'm trying to find out why that is. It could be because everyone “loses” (well does not need) an identity once the world ends or maybe they just forgot what they were. There surroundings are hard and they need to find food and not fall for the people they find. To be able to answer more I'm gonna have to read on, see you next time.

Travel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=071KqJu7WVo

            The novel The Road and the movie Zombieland, have very little in common. They are both about a post-apocalyptic travel through the US to safe and better living. Although one is humorous, and the other is more serious they both have aspects in similar. The main characters of the movie Zombieland are like a father-son relationship and they have to run a way from flesh-starving zombies. In the Novel they are father and son and they run, living lives like hobos, “He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup.” This is how the Father describes his son and how they sleep. They both live on the road trying to live in a “end of the world” scenario.  

Death and a Valley

The Valley of Ashes, a terrain that is full of industrial ashes just south of the Eggs. This terrain is a place that is described by death from the fist time it is described: “A fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (22). The Valley represents death, pain, lifelessness, and darkness. It is the place where the death of Myrtle Wilson occurs, and the reason that Gatsby is murdered. It is also the place that is where Tom has his affair, chocking his marriage like a parent that places a pillow to their baby.

            The Valley of Ashes also represents the idea that the rich create and oppress the poor. The industry (the rich) creates the ashes that oppress the poor working class.  The fact that it is also a valley, the lowest point of a valley is another reason that the author shows this oppression.

            The Valley is full of symbolism, but those were some of the main ones that I could think of.