Coming across the man who has been struck by lightning (pp. 50-53)

The existence of the man is first alluded to on page fifty as the man notices the sudden appearance of human tracks, when queried on his existence by the Boy the man replies 'Who is anybody?' which sets the tone of the state of human affairs in the world is The Road by inferring that everybody is nobody to them, and that anybody could be anyone. Suggesting by this that by this point the world has descended into such an unredeemable state of entropy that the normal functions and standards of society have corroded and the normal rules of human expectation no longer apply. The lack of trust and the wariness of the Man for the rest of humanity here tells the reader that humans in this world are capable of any means by which they'll survive: murder, betrayal, theft etc. and of the Man's outlook that even those you know can become someone else in this world which was revealed to him brutally in the suicide of his wife. The devastating effect the apocalypse had on humanity triggered a transformation from human to survivor which left humans are unknown species to each other, as the Man states 'Who is anybody?' in a world where humanity has decayed and rotted in the ashed of the fire.

The Man's perception of other humans in this section is contrasted  with the The Boy's unrelenting will to help others as he repeatedly implores his father to help the man, 'pulling at his coat' asking 'cant we help him' even when it is as the Man says 'There's nothing to be done for him'. This characterises the Boy for possessing an all-enduring hope which in This Road is something almost alien, unbelonging, and possessed by a Boy who is alien to this world.

The man struck by lightning himself is symbolic of the calamitous fallout of the apocalypse on humanity in The Road who was 'as burnt looking as the country' representing the effect of the apocalypse burning out humanity and leaving them ruined and vulnerable to the new world where only the ruthless survive as survival cannot exist in the same place as humanity. McCarthy presents Survival and Humanity as binary oppositions which cannot prosper in the presence of the other and empitomises the two absoultes in the characters of the Man and the Boy thus creating as paradox in the beauty and innocence of their relationship in the novel by allowing the two, survival -the Man- and humanity -the Boy- to work together to survive as the Man allows the Boy to survive and the Boy keeps the man alive. The man's attempts to throw away his humanity -in this section as he leaves personal posessions 'His driver's license. A picture of his wife' laid 'down in the road...then he stood and they went on'- represent the concept of survival vs. humanity as the character himself believes that humanity cannot exist inside of him if he wants to survive, but the fact that it is the Boy that he is surviving, shedding his humanity for, contradicts these actions as while he still wants to keep the Boy alive, he will always possess some humanity, as to survive optimally he would have to leave the Boy, who keeps him alive and his humanity intact. This paradox brings to light McCarthy's Post-Modernism in the rejecting of two binary oppositions as absolutes which can't exist together and in the combining of literature genres Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Modern as well as Dystopian.

Fire and Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire,

   Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

   But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

    To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

   And would suffice."

-Robert Frost

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'.

The Road Rat

'A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.' Who is the man echoing here? How do you believe these words are uttered?

These words echo the man's last conversation with his wife where she tells him 'I should have done it a long time ago. When there were three bullets in the gun instead of two... You have two bullets and then what? You cant protect us.' and 'I'm speaking the truth.' which tell us the effect that the woman has on the man; how she lingers in his subconscious despite his endless attempts to rid himself of her. I imagine that these words are uttered with a numb, disconnected tone and expression to reflect the man's shock and despair of the harsh truth that there is only one bullet left, so they must die later, slower. This shows the man trying to repress these feelings of despair and the morbid thoughts of the death that's awaiting them, resulting in this numb and disconnected expression as he refuses to face the truth. The fact that the man echoes the woman's voice here represents that the man feels the closeness and reality of death more now than ever -where he refuses to accept that they will die in other circumstances in the novel e.g. 'Are we going to die now? No.' pg. 92- as the woman is symbolic of death and memories of her only arise when the man feels death is near.

What do we learn about the man through his exchanges with the Road Rat?

Key elements in the man's characterisation arise in his exchange with the Road Rat as acquired traits and knowledge is alluded to in particular as the man describes why the Road Rat will not hear the gun shot. Not only are we shown the man's ability to think quickly in a difficult situation but it is revealed that the man possibly has and interesting history in medicine as the man says 'Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore.' or defense/combat in '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.'. By using jargon and complex lexis like 'colliculus' and 'temporal gyrus' it is impossible that the man hasn't had some kind of medical training or education which would teach him these complicated terms and how to use them and by combining this knowledge with his obviously deft skill in combat gives reason to deduce that the man had a particular profession which involved all of this skill set. Whatever that may have been we know that it gave him the skill to survive which is presented here and at other parts of the novel (such as the scene when the explosions hit with his wife when he immediately filled the bath).