BookTalk.org

Please discuss pages 1-33 (the beginning) in this thread.

I enjoy the "diary" structure of the novel, the brief well-spaced paragraphs. It took a bit getting used to the omission of apostrophes and unmarked dialogue, but I'm cool with it now.

To survive, the father and son must rely on constant routine and the reminder of love for one another. One passage in particular seems to underscore this:

"...they found a few ancient runner beans and what looked to have once been apricots, long dried to wrinkled effigies of themselves."

I love that: "...have once been..."

If that isn't past, past tense then I don't know what is.

In your mind where do you see the boy and the man? East coast? New England? urban or country?

I've been wondering that... I mean, I think they'd be from a city, but I'm not sure.. If I had to bet on it, I'd say New York or something. They do have remarkable survival skills, which suggests the father at least may come from a rural setting.

The structure took me some getting used to as well. It reminds me of Jose Saramago's style, although Saramago will organize and entire conversation into one long sentence, whereas McCarthy makes a new line for every time someone speaks.

I found the setting for this novel to be very ambiguous. I don’t think McCarthy had any location in mind, the message he may have been going for is that these circumstances could happen to anyone, anywhere, or everyone, everywhere. I get the sense that this is a global catastrophe. By not specifying the exact location is impactful. It’s like McCarthy is saying, “this could be you”.

Time is also not specified. The aspect of time may be similar to the ambiguity of place. It could happen at any time. Again, this is very impactful. Most survival stories/movies give the time, place and the event which thrusts people into survival mode. These factors are missing here. Not only do we need to use our imaginations to fill in the gaps, but we need to recognize that this situation is very plausible. This is something that makes this novel scary, it actually could happen.

He's not sure if it's October, but the father guesses that it is. You're right, Suzanne. Time isn't a key factor. Your ideas also tie into the reason why nobody has a name: The boy, the father, the men, the woman...etc.

reader2121 wrote:He's not sure if it's October, but the father guesses that it is. You're right, Suzanne. Time isn't a key factor. Your ideas also tie into the reason why nobody has a name: The boy, the father, the men, the woman...etc.

There are similarities to le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness", including what you just mentioned.

Gee, I'm late--have to read faster (so much for time not being a key factor ).

I think that McCarthy is challenging the reader in these first pages to either stand back and look at the characters, location, time etc. as largely undefined or to impose our own cultural/contextual lens on what we read. Either way might be valid but the resulting expereince of reading will be different depending on which way the reader goes and the degree to which the reader imposes his/her own context and worldview. Really, in the first 33 pages we know almost nothing about the characters except that they are male and are man and boy. We might assume that they are father and son but that would be jumping to a conclusion and filling in the blanks. There are also some mysterious references to a 'she' character but I wasn't able to get any grasp on this character. We don't know anything about their racial or cultural background, as to location, a lot of places in the world could fit this description .. cities, rural areas, highways, mountains, rivers, could be a lot of places. As to time, there is some hint of time of year, but if this is happening in the southern hemisphere perhaps October is wrong?

So in my view the author is leaving a great deal of space for us to fill or not to fill in the gaps and therefore each reader can experience the book differently. One key thing we do know from these first pages is that there has been a terrible apocalypse, loss of life and there are serious threats to the man and boy. Yet the threats are not well defined in this section so the story is propelled forward by a vague but serious sense of threat. Again, a chance for the reader to fill in the blanks, or not.

And yes I agree with oblivion, there are parallels with the Left Hand of Darkness.

oblivion wrote:

reader2121 wrote:He's not sure if it's October, but the father guesses that it is. You're right, Suzanne. Time isn't a key factor. Your ideas also tie into the reason why nobody has a name: The boy, the father, the men, the woman...etc.

There are similarities to le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness", including what you just mentioned.

Gee, I'm late--have to read faster (so much for time not being a key factor ).

It's also similar to Saramago's novel "Blindness." No time, place, or names mentioned. I think it's interesting. Of course, it makes writing about it difficult- you have to be specific when talking about minor characters.

And don't worry- I'm late too. I've read this before, but I wasn't planning to start until November, since it's the book for November & December.

Father and son seem to have lots of conversations filled with one and two word sentences and not a whole lot of content. But I like this because it seems realistic, especially under the circumstances they are in. Some of these conversations take up most of a page in my little paper back.