The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Dissident Heart · Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:51 am Post subject: Generosity and Hospitality

MA: the father feels the need to stifle the generosity in order to save the son. He urges the son to be less hospitable and less compassionate in the interests of survival.

The father's lack of generosity and hospitality is an effort at defending their lives. I think the life worth defending (as the father sees it) is one filled with generosity and hospitality...thus the complication/conflict you describe.

What makes this torturous trek worth while is the fire of generosity and compassion that animates the boy. In order to tend that fire, acts of violence and hoarding are necessary...or, at least the father sees no other option.

The boy seems to think that this fire will suffice and it will be met with similar fire in those they meet along the road. Maybe he has the idea that the fire will kindle a spark in those who lack it: it is contagious, so to speak, and it will spread. Maybe he thinks there is no person so dark that this small light wont make a difference. It is like the agapic impulse or satyagrahic practice of Dr. King and Ghandi: these radical acts of loving kindness and generous hospitality will awaken the sleeping compassion of the most vile and violent of dark souls.

The father loves this and wants to protect it: perhaps for the hope of future generations as well as simply something worthy of care here and now, no matter future possibilities. But, to protect this compassion, he must kill, even murder.

I think the author captures this deep human mystery in the dynamic between the father and son.

Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 4/19/07 11:55 am

irishrosem · Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 5:43 pm Post subject: Re: the Road

Mad: The bunker is too much a grave. In some sense, they could have survived there for as long as the supplies held out, but it wasn't activity, and in that sense it would have always been just a form of settling down into death.

Yes, but for me that choice demonstrates that the father had, at least, some faith in finding others. He didn’t choose the grave—rich though it was. He chose the road, full of danger and doubt; but, also the only choice with hope.

I think this constant beckoning of the road echoes the idea of mythology that’s played around most of our responses. (In fact, the road could be a character unto itself—taking its curtain call alongside the absent mother. Neither living entities, both enormously present.) The father, just before finding the bunker, tells the boy that they must keep going: “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up” (116). The road beckons them to continue to try to find others—and offers the possibility that they will. And the father, to encourage the boy, invokes the myth of the “good guy,” equating the myth with that activity. In this sense--finding solutions to problems, working hard for his and his child's survival, pushing on despite dire circumstances--the father fulfills the "good guy" role.

But when the child asks about the “good guys”: “So where are they?” The father replies: “They’re hiding…From each other” (155). And the father will never fully incorporate the "good guy" image of never giving up, into choosing to trust someone. We’ve discussed that the child’s opportunity to trust the final stranger was only made possible by the father’s death. That the father would have never taken the leap of faith required to trust another person. I found in this the same hesitation that people have today, even in our relevant physical safety, to reach out to others. The fear is probably more emotional, than physical. But the symptoms are the same. No one will reach out until another person does so, and thus we wander around “hiding…from each other.”

D.H.: The father is not optimistic, as much as in love.

Mad: No doubt the father loves the son, but it's also possible that his love for his son is in deep conflict with his love for the ideals the boy seems to embody.

Mad, I love the conflict you spelled out here. They were both rattling around in my head, but I never plugged them together. I think this is really a true nugget of the story. So, in the end, when the father dies leaving the boy alone, which love wins out? Is it the father that can’t kill his son: “I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant” (235). Or is it the man who sees in the boy all the possibility of the society that haunts his memory, the world he once had but doesn’t anymore: “Who will find the little boy?/ Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again” (236)

MadArchitect · Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 6:41 pm Post subject: Re: the Road

irishrosem: Yes, but for me that choice demonstrates that the father had, at least, some faith in finding others. He didn’t choose the grave—rich though it was. He chose the road, full of danger and doubt; but, also the only choice with hope.

I don't know. I'll have to think about it. At most, it's starting to sound like part of the father's internal conflict that he can't reconcile his desire for community with his distrust of others.

Incidentally, I think we've been a little hard on the father. He's distrustful, and that's potentially fatal for the son, but we have to bear in mind the big reason for his mistrust: he's seen the end of the world. We should probably try to keep in mind the passages in which he remembers seeing the fires on the horizon, as I'm sure those are images the father keeps in mind.

(It also points back to that weird Janus-faced motif of fire running through the novel. The good guys are carrying the fire; the world was consumed by fire. Does that mean that the fire the good guys are carrying also contains the potential to destroy everything?)

So, in the end, when the father dies leaving the boy alone, which love wins out? Is it the father that can’t kill his son: “I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant” (235). Or is it the man who sees in the boy all the possibility of the society that haunts his memory, the world he once had but doesn’t anymore: “Who will find the little boy?/ Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again” (236)

A little of both, I'd say. In the helplessness of his final bout with mortality, he seems to finally find some reconciliation. It's almost as though his helplessness had freed him up to trust in the boy's promise. He assures the boy that he'll be alright, and I don't think he's trying to conceal anything at that point: I think he honestly believes it, no matter how improbably it seems from a realistic point of view.

In fact, I almost hate to suggest it, but given that the entire book has followed the father's point of view to the exclusion of the child's, you could almost imagine that those final passage after the man's death are the father's dream. He gets to lie down and die, and the boy makes it after all, and spends the rest of his life with his father's memory in the back of his head. But it's too easy to dismiss a character's happy dreams, so I'd hate to take that suggestion too literally.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:04 am Post subject: Pilgrimage to Goodness

Mad: The bunker is too much a grave. In some sense, they could have survived there for as long as the supplies held out, but it wasn't activity, and in that sense it would have always been just a form of settling down into death.

irishrose: Yes, but for me that choice demonstrates that the father had, at least, some faith in finding others. He didn’t choose the grave—rich though it was. He chose the road, full of danger and doubt; but, also the only choice with hope.

Uncertain motion on the dangerous road was better than constrained inactivity within the secure bunker. Nothing is secure in their world, nor certain. The bunker was an oasis for this untrained and illprepared pair of desert nomads. Are they on pilgrimage?

Later generations might see the bunker as a hallowed resting spot: a holy shrine in memory of the miraculous generosity that sprang forth for the extraordinary pair, providing incredible sustenance and unexpected protection for their sacred journey. Future pilgrims will journey along this terrible road in rememberance of the fire that fueled the fragile hope of the human race... .. .

irishrose: “Who will find the little boy?/ Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again” (236)

Goodness gracious, gracious goodness. Excellent selection of text irishrose (althruout this thread). Goodness (in this sense) seems more than an ideal or concept...but as an active agent that seeks out and pursues people: a force and power that protects and sustains. The father doesn't say, "Good people will find the boy, they always do"...but "goodness".

A Pilgrimage to Goodness...that meanders crookedly through hell.

irishrose: The fear is probably more emotional, than physical. But the symptoms are the same. No one will reach out until another person does so, and thus we wander around “hiding…from each other.”

Mad: Incidentally, I think we've been a little hard on the father. He's distrustful, and that's potentially fatal for the son, but we have to bear in mind the big reason for his mistrust: he's seen the end of the world.

PTSD...post traumatic stress disorder...a debilitating condition that often follows a terrifying physical or emotional event causing the person who survived the event to have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. Persons with PTSD often feel chronically, emotionally numb. Once referred to as "shell shock" or "battle fatigue."

irishrosem · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject: Re: the Road

Mad: Incidentally, I think we've been a little hard on the father.
D.H.: PTSD...post traumatic stress disorder...

I think this is a good place to veer off on another topic I had considered regarding the father. I think it would be much different to read this book as a parent. We’ve discussed the competing needs of the father to protect his son and to reach out for some community interaction. But can the reader realistically expect the father to trust another, considering all that he has been through? (And considering that his wife left him alone? We still need to get to a discussion on the wife/mother.) The man’s purpose, particularly after his wife’s death, is quite clear: “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?” (65). In fact, are we projecting onto the father ideals that he doesn’t even necessarily contemplate. There may be no need for the father to consider when and where to try and trust someone. There is no one to trust, because there is no one left from the world the father knew.

The text is replete with memories of the father’s past, a past the son can never understand. Perhaps the son is capable of looking for the communal world of old because he has no experience of what once was. The father, on the other hand, is continually haunted by this past (PTSD):

“Then one day he sat by the roadside and took it out and went through the contents…A picture of his wife…[he] sat holding the photograph. Then he laid it down in the road also and then he stood and they went on” (44).

“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought” (75).

The can of soda, the lonely books abandoned on the bookshelf, a childhood bedroom. Each day the father leaves behind a vestige of the past only he knows, a spark of the fire only he possesses. And each memory he experiences alone with no capability of transferring that experience to the boy.

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins…What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.” (111).

In the end, the father is utterly and totally alone in this dystopian world:

“Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well” (130).

The father is truly a tragic figure in this story, but he certainly does not deserve undue criticism. His death is necessary for the child to move on, just as the eventual demise of any parental figure’s role is necessary for a child to finally grow-up—particularly if that child is to take a step forward from his parent’s generation. In the end, I think a parent would read this and only hope they would do as well for their own child, as the father did for his.

D.H.: A Pilgrimage to Goodness...that meanders crookedly through hell.

D.H., here’s another quote that references goodness. I linked them in my notes, but I can’t seem to work it out on the page. I figured I’d give it to you just in case you’ve got something working there:

“There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all” (109). Death…beauty…goodness

MadArchitect · Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:30 pm Post subject: Re: the Road

irishrosem: I think it would be much different to read this book as a parent.

Which is, in large part, how I imagine McCarthy to have written the book: as a parent.

(And considering that his wife left him alone? We still need to get to a discussion on the wife/mother.)

Incidentally, I'd still like to hear your thoughts on why females were more often the specific targets of accusations of witch-craft during the crazes of the 16th and 17th centuries (not to mention, in antiquity). In the appropriate thread, of course...

In fact, are we projecting onto the father ideals that he doesn’t even necessarily contemplate. There may be no need for the father to consider when and where to try and trust someone.

Along the same lines, I doubt that the father really goes through any process of considering the pros and cons of trusting any given person. He distrusts as a matter of course the presence of a small boy in one of the villages they pass through, and an old man who can only threaten their safety as a decoy. Neither distrust is particularly rational. But at the same time, I see no particular reason to think it disingenuous when they father talks of their being other good guys. The belief and the practice contradict one another: true; but contradictions of that sort can coexist in a person, and it strikes me as believable that they'd coexist in this particular character. (This ties in to what Mr. P and I were discussing in one of the threads pertaining to "The God Delusion" -- a conversation you instigated.)

irishrosem · Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:47 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

Mad: Based on this novel alone, I see how you might suppose as much.

Yes I guess the approach the father takes in The Road could lead one to believe the author is kind of a loner, but I had developed that idea when I read Blood Meridian.

Mad: And while this is the only Cormac McCarthy I've read (though it certainly won't be the last),

Mad, just to let you know, I prefer Blood Meridian. And my brother, who’s read The Road, Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, preferred NCfOM to both.

Mad: I'm aware that a significant portion of his other fiction has centered on the American West. That's probably what made me suppose that he valued family life,

I don’t read anything in American Western literature. Is family life a significant recurring theme in this genre?

Mad: In particular, he lacks one specific experience his father had: that of the actual apocalypse that precedes the events of the novel. I think that, more than anything else, confirmed for the father his distrust of others,

Yes I think the apocalypse would have propelled the father’s distrust, but I also think the wife’s choice would also encourage this same distrust. If you can’t count on your life partner to partner you through life, who can you count on? I think the father has concluded that there is no one to trust.

Mad: and while my memory is a little splotchy on this point, it seems to me that he's been rather meticulous about keeping that apocalypse a rather vague part of the boy's education.

And, as a result, McCarthy has been pretty meticulous in keeping the details from his readers.

Mad: Well, you do play in a hardcore band, and it is allergy season...

Heh…heh…heh…Mad made a funny.

Mad: Does the boy even have a theology? Based on the last several passages, it sounds as though he's more comfortable with his parental relationship than he is with the concept of God.

I don’t have my book with me, but the scene with Ely also has a discussion both about the father and the boy’s religious beliefs. If memory serves, I think the father states that he doesn’t know what the boy believes. I am fairly certain the father believes in no after life, and I think it unlikely he believes in a supreme being.

Dissident: I think there are interesting trinitarian processes at work here...the Father, Son, and Holy Fire...Where the father is willing to sacrifice himself for the son, the son is willing to sacrifice himself for the stranger on the road.

I think the references to both the Old and New Testament representations of god are fairly clear. The father, with his eye for an eye mentality, threat of killing his son, actually sacrificing his son to his dream for the world’s future; the son with his generous and sympathetic spirit to the least of the travelers they meet, his trust in others, his understanding of others’ sins.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 4:55 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

Mad: Based on the last several passages, it sounds as though he's more comfortable with his parental relationship than he is with the concept of God.

I don't think comfort is the right word. He is actually quite unsure, uncertain, insecure, and frankly terrified regarding his relationship to his father, and everything else for that matter. What he is most secure about is an idea: keeping the fire alive...and he is hardly certain about this seemingly holy endeavor. Tied to this idea is the promise of a new home somehwere down the road...which, again, is less than sure. What is present in the son thruout all of this is his visceral, gut instinct to care and show sympathy for fellow tragedies along the road. Perhaps this is what it means to believe in God?

Irishrose: I think the references to both the Old and New Testament representations of god are fairly clear.

When I mentioned trinitarian, I didn't mean a distinction between Old and New Testament representations of God. I don't think the distinctions hold up entirely with the text, in that I don't think God in the Hebrew Bible is completely violent, nor is God in the New Testament entirely generous and sympathetic. I think Christians have far too long accentuated the dark side of God in their "Old Testament" while white washing the violence of God in their "New Testament".

The Father is Moses, the Son is Israel and the Fire is Torah and the Road represents 40 years in the desert on the way to the Promised Land, post-Slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt....

Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 5/17/07 11:32 am

MadArchitect · Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

Dissident Heart: The Father is Moses, the Son is Israel and the Fire is Torah and the Road represents 40 years in the desert on the way to the Promised Land, post-Slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt....

It doesn't strike me that McCarthy intended to write allegory, and I doubt that the associations are as form as you present them here.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

Mad: It doesn't strike me that McCarthy intended to write allegory

His intention is a mystery as far as I can tell. Why write about the end of the world, filled with terror and despair and heartbreaking loneliness...highlighting the very worst of human folly and brutality...providing short, brilliant glimpses of beauty, dignity...fantastic dreams of impossible futures...crushing despair, unexplainable courage...what is intended here? Allegory is certainly a possible, perhaps probable intention.

But we haven't really determined the actual relation between authorial intention and literary outcome. He may not have intended an allegorical tale, but he produced one nonetheless. I happen to think the Mosaic allegory I've suggested is present in the story. I think its obvious enough that the author probably intended it as such.

It may also be that the cultural/historical influence of the Mosaic narrative is so pervasive that our author could not escape its grip: stories about the end and beginning of the world, defining what is good and evil, will undoubtedly carry an intractable Mosaic flavor.

Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 5/18/07 4:01 pm

Chris OConnor · Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 1:53 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

Please let me know when you guys feel this book discussion should be removed as a Sticky Topic and replaced with another one. Thanks. ::80

MadArchitect · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 11:54 am Post subject: Re: The Road

It's probably safe to unstick it now, Chris. As for a replacement, we haven't really discussed that yet...

irishrosem · Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject: Re: The Road

I had meant to write up something about the mother's role, but never got a chance. Since the book is totally out of my head at this point I think it would be more trouble than it is worth.

For an ad hoc discussion of only a few people this turned out rather well. I don't have a ton of time, as is apparently true of everyone else who contributes here. But I would be able to contribute at least as much as I did for this book. Is there any interest in doing another ad hoc discussion? Or do we want to just let this go?

BTW, D.H. since we did your choice first, you’re automatically conscripted into participating if we decide to continue on. ::10

Dissident Heart · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 11:57 am Post subject: Re: The Road

I had hoped to spend some more time exploring McCormac's utilization of simile in the story...I remember when beginning the book how well he captured an impossible scene with an astutely crafted comparison. Uggh. Not enough time. Kind of like the book....end of time. The End.

irishrose: BTW, D.H. since we did your choice first, you’re automatically conscripted into participating if we decide to continue on.

Say when.


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