The Road 2

"The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body (49)."

In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy a man and his father are off on a journey after a disaster, the chaos and the destruction that has plague their environment that is causing people to lose their minds. In this quote the man’s wife is very depressed and she can’t handle the disaster in the society anymore so she is talking to her husband about her planned suicide. They then discuss about how the man will raise their son without his mother being around anymore. The woman says that they will be able to survive these harsh conditions on their journey as long they stick together and the man shows love to his son. When on this journey the woman suggests that he needs to give his son food and share it with him. He needs not to be greedy or else they won’t survive. The only way they will survive is if the man shows great love, respect and care towards his son. My reaction to this passage is that it shows a side of karma that is present in the book and that is also present in our current society. It shows you that if you do good things then you will get good things in return. In this case the man, if he is good to his son and treats him well then they are going to be able to survive their long journey through the post-apocalyptic world. But I also feel sad for the boy because his mother is going to commit suicide because she can’t take it anymore. It is going to be hard for the boy to progress through the novel without the comfort of his mother being there for him through thick and thin.   

The purpose of this passage is to show the sacrifices that you have to make in order to be able to survive sometimes when times are harsh. The mother is sacrificing herself because she can’t go along anymore; she is willing to sacrifice herself so that her husband and her son are able to survive. She knows that she is weak now and she is only going to drag them behind if she continues on the journey. She can’t take the chaos and the destruction that is going on in the society any longer. In this passage the specific techniques that are used are imagery, vivid description of words and tone. The tone in this passage is sad/ remorseful because the woman has to commit suicide in order for her family to survive because she can’t go on living this way anymore. The words that help contribute to the tone are words like “phantom,” “harm,” “crumble,” and “ghost.” These words are negatively connoted and they are associated with death. These words help to show how the woman his feeling inside of her with all of this destruction and chaos in the world. The imagery in this passage is created through the tone and the word choice. With very descriptive words the reader can visualize the scene much better and more effectively. With words such as “phantom crumbs,” “well advised to cobble together some passable ghost,” and “shield it from harm with your body.” These words provide a sense of imagery to the passage. You can see the phantom crumbs and the passable ghost and you can the passable ghost cobbling together. The overall effect of this passage is to show through the woman’s eyes how she feels and how the destruction and chaos in the world is breaking her down and destroying her. It has destroyed her so much that she can’t go on anymore and she must commit suicide.

In the novel the word “human” means you are struggling to survive because of the chaos in your society. You are not living in the right living conditions that you need to survive because of the destruction in the society so you are forced to move out of die, so the man and his son decided to go on a journey across the landscape of the world for survival in hopes to reach a better place. Our depictions of the future reveal that the present has much value to it. The present is very real, you can have everything one minute and then the next day everything is gone, things can be gone in a blink of any eye so worship every aspect of life, the good and the bad. We use language and images to manipulate people’s minds by creating a vivid description of the situation so the reader can visualize it in his or her head. By visualizing it the reader can maybe relate to it because that situation has happened in their lifetime and the way they view the situation now could change because of the manipulation of their mind.