Post-Apocalyptic Literature

Mythologizing of the Past in The Road

The First can of Coca Cola

'He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.' 
The sharing of this first can of coke signifies the disintegration of a consumer-capitalist society and creates the contrast between the world as we know it and the world of The Road. This contrast mythologizes the first world privileges that we take for granted by comparing it to the fascination of the boy when he first tastes it, He savours it as if it's the only one he'll ever have (which is likely, however the boy does have another coke, found in the bunker) and the way the boy treats it gives us our first impression of the idealised, 'golden' vision he has of this old world (our world) which is only a myth to him. Although we know our world to be far, far from being this, as the boy never knew that world it's unsurprising that he forms this 'golden' mythical view of it, compared to the world he lives in. The can of coke symbolises this idealised view that the boy has, it being one of the few surviving things he encounters, it forms his impression of the old world. He assumes that if the old world had such a thing like it, it couldn't have been bad and as he delicious Coca Cola is pure and unaffected he feels that nothing could be better than living in that world again; forming his idealised view. However, we can assume that the way the world was before the events in The Road was by no means perfect in any way, judging by the way things turned out (with the nuclear explosions that caused the apocalypse).

His Uncle's Farm

'This was the perfect day of his childhood. This the day to shape the days upon.'

The memory of his Uncle's farm sentimentalizes his past, spotlighting this day as his best, most happy memory (not the day he was married, as what you would assume). This description leads us to believe that it is (one of) the only memories he has which is left untainted by the apocalypse, no part of it gives him pain, grief or regret just pure nostalgia, happiness and childhood innocence; unlike the memories of his wife (which you would thin would be his happiest) which -although sensuous and romantic- are bitter and harsh, which is reflected in the use of snow and ice imagery to demonstrate the heart of his wife turning to ice as the world burnt. The likening of the woman to ice in a world destroyed by fire and heat tells us that the woman was never meant to survive the apocalypse. This memory of his Uncle's farm tells us that this is what the man wants to remember of the old world, this perfect memory separate from the crumbling world around them, the world that is now closer to a myth than a memory.

Returning to his Childhood Home

'On cold winter nights we would sit at the fire here, me and my sisters, doing our homework. The boy watched him. Watched shapes claiming him he could not see.'

The idea of 'home' is a distant myth to him, the returning to his childhood home shows the shattering of his hope that 'home' will always be there. Home is a constant, safe returning point, the place where we always return to after the world becomes chaos; so the man's returning demonstrates him clinging on to the security and comfort he once knew here, hoping to find solace in the home that what once his. However when he returns the house is (as expected) a ruin destroyed by the explosions, which shatters the idea of 'home' to him and he truly becomes the wanderer/traveler that he's been acting as, and 'home' becomes a myth.