The End

I feel that The Road ends at the moment when the man and boy stop walking and he knows that this is where the road ends for 'when he lay down he knew that he could go no further and that this was the place where he would die.' which brings the novel an end for the man and a return to the chronological beginning of the story as the first dream he has in the story reappears, and he is able to pass through this time around. This signals the end for the man and that nothing is holding him back from death anymore, no 'granitic beast'. We are left with the boy alone and grieving for his father; when he joins with the new, mysterious family we are given a new beginning for the boy which we know next to nothing. The end's ambiguity raises many questions which leaves the reader anxious/curious about the boy's future in this world. We know that he is 'carrying the fire' which it is implied can possibly redeem the world but what hope is there in the world of The Road for a life; the boy lives, but is it a life worth living? Will he stay with this new family, carry on living on the road? This ambiguity makes me feel that the end of The Road is not hopeful but rather worrying and bleak with the unknown prospect of the future.

The Relationship of the Man with the Woman

“Nothing was closer to me than your coldness. So much love remembered exactly wrong.”

Günter-Grass

Structure and The Handling of Time

The narrative of The Road moves in the continuous present with analeptic episodes into the man's memories and the sense of time is broken down to scattered and vague references such as 'four more days' and 'In the morning' which are the more specific references presented to us. The broken down sense of time is representant of the man still grasping at a vague sense of a normal routine; wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, walk, eat, walk, eat dinner, sleep during the night. This continuous loop the man keeps as the world around him descends into entropy creates the sense that the man and boy live in their own world and time 'each their others world entire'; that the man and boy live in their own circle of time within this entropic world but at the same time separate from it. The abstract references to time are very important in the story because it represents the concept of time as alien and disconnected from their world, as if it doesn't belong anymore as it -just like the rest of human kind and society- falls into dissolution as any other creation of humans. A key abstract quote of time is 'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it' which I chose because it creates the feeling that the man's time is not his own and has been taken or 'borrowed' from somewhere or someone else. This ties in with the man slowly letting go of the memories of his past in order to survive in the present which we see in the frequency of his memories slowly declining through the novel; here is created the impression that the man is 'borrowing' time from his life before the boy to give time to live in the present, to survive. In turn this creates two separate characters within one; the man before the explosions and the man after which is a key characterisation of how the man goes through a change in order to survive and brings in the notion that something must be lost in order for something to be gained; the man must sacrifice his past, his humanity to survive in the present and time is 'borrowed' form his past to give time to the present. This could perhaps be the reason for the decline in memories from his past as the novel progresses; as the man's memories begin to run thin, he runs out of memories to take time/strength from. After this he slowly falls to his eventual death as he has no more time from the past left to 'borrow'.