Doomsday

Last week, I wrote about dreams, and how the father denied himself the escape offered by good dreams, instead preferring nightmares, or better yet, reality. In this week’s reading I was again struck by the father’s refusal to let go of his chokehold on reality, this time by refusing to relive good memories.

The father in The Road strives not to remember. “He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins…So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not” (McCarthy 131).

I think the father’s reluctance to remember is more than just concern for the origins of the memory. If he allows himself to be distracted by a memory, even for a second, it could be fatal.  This, I think, is why he leaves the mother’s picture in the road – to remember her would be to damage her even further, but more importantly, would damage himself.

In The Albertine Notes, the junkies are forever chasing good memories, looking for relief from life after the bomb. Either that, or they’re trying to jump into the future, desperately seeking to experience something, anything, other than the present. By using Albertine, they’re destroying their ability to remember, but they don’t care about the forgetting, the “brownout” in their brains caused by the drug (Moody 181-183).

The concept articulated by McCarthy, above, that remembering something inevitably causes the memory itself to change, is the basis of Moody’s ahistorical remembering phenomenon. If the act of recollection can change one’s experience of a memory (becoming numb to a painful experience, a first impression colored by the ensuing relationship, etc.) why stop there? Why not be able to change the very reality that created the memory in the first place?

Do you wish you would die?

No. But I might wish I had died. When you’re alive you’ve always got that ahead of you.

Or you might wish you’d never been born.

Well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

(The Road, 169)

—

The dialog between the old man who calls himself Ely and the man was potent and insightful.

The man asks Ely if he tried preparing for the thing that caused the destruction. The man responds, “People were always getting ready for tomorrow…Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them.” This tone veers from the traditional apocalypse towards the neo-apocalypse. The world takes no heed of its “inhabitants.” (168)

Ely’s thoughts on God confirm this: “There is no God…There is no God and we are his prophets.” The survivors of the apocalypse, in their rags and caked vomit, show the prophecy of their creator more than tell it. Man is made in God’s image, and in this world, God is at the end of the line and perhaps not even there at all. (170)

In a story within a story, Kurt Vonnegut writes that’s Hitler’s last words were “I never asked to be born.” Putting the choice of suicide (ceasing life) aside, “never asking to be born” is a concept that concerns the man, Ely, Dr. Manhattan, and perhaps every human being ever subject to judgment. (The concept is concerned less with Dr. Manhattan’s human birth, but his God birth – becoming something that can no longer relate to human life and the moral quandaries and judgments that follow.) Ely’s response to this objection is that “Beggars can’t be choosers,” as if the natural state of our souls is supplication, as if being alive fulfills our (what exactly does “our” mean here?) most basic necessities, which may be life affirming after all. (169)

The ending of The Road was rather lackluster for me. Knowing the neo-apocalyptic structure, I didn’t expect the story was going to end happily.

The father’s symbolic death on the road that was going to lead to them to anticipated salvation of the coast functions as his cold, asphalt deathbed. The pair has feared the road but believed that had no choice but to travel on it to get to their destination. I’m still not certain why the southern coast was the place to go (but honestly I don’t the man was either). The father knew his was dying, trying to hide the bloody ominous signs of his death from his son. He broke his promise to stay with his son because when the time came he abandoned him in death. When the time came he broke their unspoken suicide pact. So the question remains, was it better for him to keep his son of alive, enduring the harsh world, or kill him, along with himself, when his mother wanted to die. The only answers that come to mind are the final words of Angels in America – more life.

The barren world, McCarthy creates with nameless characters seems to be very neo-apocalyptic but there a glimmer of hope when the boy finds someone else who has the fire. While the boy has found a family to protect him, he still faces the problems he faced before – there’s no renewable food source so they will not be able to sustain themselves. McCarthy leaves the reader hanging with no real conclusion but the inevitable, eternal end of death.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road seem to be a typical example of what Liz Rosen would call “neo-apocalyptic” literature. Two survivors, the elect, are living in a dystopia in the aftermath of some worldwide catastrophe. In the beginning, the child is called the voice of God. Food basically nonexistent—what the two find through scrounging can barely feed them and they often go hungry. They live in constant fear of being caught and eaten by cannibals, ostensibly representing the unelect. Only the cannibals have anything resembling an organized society, and they create one only by oppressing and murdering other people. The world is covered in ash, creating an endless stretch of gray. In short, they live in a never-ending Tribulation.

At second reading, however, I started to see the more biblical apocalyptic story. McCarthy obliquely hinted that fierce fires that burnt everything in its path ravaged the world, leaving behind the ash. The traditional idea of Hell is a place with lakes of ever-burning fire.  Food is often found spoilt, as if touched by Famine, the rider of the black horse in the Book of Revelation. Everywhere, you see the dualistic relationship between the living and the dead, young and old, and good guys and bad guys.

Then, you have to consider electism. The father and the boy are not elect. By the end of the book, the father is forced to commit several acts that might have killed people. Even then, the father dies before the boy meets up with the new family, who might be considered New Jerusalem. Finally the child will have the company of other “good guys.”

Last week I read the entire book because I thought that we were assigned the entire book. I unfortunately do not have any new insights on the novel (because I read it over a week ago), but I plan on commenting on everyone’s posts for inspiration and discussion…so everyone post please!

One of the realizations that came to me as I read Cormac McCarthy’s The  Road was that life is far more precious if you had to fight for it. Every sacrifice you make to accomplish something means that the worth of that sacrifice goes into that accomplishment. To have to fight everyday for survival, to be hunted, hungry and cold everyday either breaks one spirit or tempers it into steel.

Another thing that caught my attention was how the father kept telling his son that they were the “good guys.” The son’s uncertainty shines through in that he is not secure in the knowledge that the measures his father took to survive were not unquestioningly moral. To a great extent, this moral ambiguity is justified. That they left the slaves that they found to the cannibals rather than setting them free comes to mind as an example. However, the practicality of these actions cannot be questioned. Everything the father did, was for his own and son’s survival. In a dystopia where everyone is in imminent threat of being eaten by other people, your own survival becomes far more important than anyone else’s.

This brings me to the subject of cannibals. While I have heard accounts of cannibalism when people are in desperate straits, somehow desperation does not seem quite extreme enough to justify the idea of cannibalism. Seriously, you are eating other people! That’s a terrifying idea to contemplate—eating people or being chopped up and eaten by other people. I can’t wait for this book to be over.

So far, after reading the first 150 pages of The Road, I find that the most striking aspect of the story was this one line — “are we still the good guys?” One of the elements of Apocalypse we frequently discuss in class is the concept of the Good “us” versus the Bad “them.” Traditionally, the Bad “them” is to be punished and suffer the wrath of God (or some other divine power) with the coming of the end of the world and the Good “us” will survive to see New Jerusalem. It is this one belief, that this father and son are the good guys who “carry the fire” that give them any will to go on in a dead, soot-covered, post-Apocalyptic world. The son’s constant question, “are we still the good guys?” is very important after seeing the pair abandon a dying man and a lost young boy to their own devices. It is obvious that in a world where most humans did not survive, there may have been some major changes in morality.

In this story, everyone who survived is living the same horrible life, and there seems to be no real  reason to believe that there hope. The father seems to safely guard the dream that the American South is their New Jerusalem but I have a feeling (from what I have heard about the book before reading it) that this is an empty hope and that they will reach the South only to find everything decimated. In this manner, The Road resembles “On the Beach” more than The Book of Revelation. I almost believe that the most rational thing to have done in this circumstance was to commit suicide– just as the boy’s mother and everyone in “On the Beach” had done. So, this makes me wonder about suicide in times of extreme crisis. Is there a time when suicide may be the best thing? Is the father putting his son through unnecessary suffering by insisting that they keep going on the Road? Is this kind of survival instinct something that should actually be admired, or is it bordering on delusional? Maybe I will be proven wrong later in the book, but for now, I have no hope for these characters.

This week, I was intrigued by the difference between coping methods in the post-apocalyptic worlds of The Albertine Notes and The Road. Everyone in The Albertine Notes seems consumed by escapism. The junkies are obsessed with using the drug, the dealers are obsessed with selling the drug, and even the Resistance movement is singlemindedly fighting in the past and the future to stop the spread of the drug. No one, it seems, is very interested in rebuilding present-day Manhattan, or even moving away from the wasteland and starting over.

I get this. When everything falls apart (even on a non-apocalyptic scale), it’s tempting to hide under the covers, self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, or food, obsess over controlling the little things, and refuse to acknowledge reality.

What I don’t understand is, in The Road, the father’s total rejection of the comfort of his dreams. He is living in a terrible, horrible, post-apocalyptic world, and he is “learning how to wake himself” from dreams of a world with flowering forests, birds, and bright blue skies. He mistrusts good dreams, believing “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death” (McCarthy 18).

I understand he has a responsibility to his son, and he can’t afford to get lost in a dream world, but I find it hard to believe that the best solution is to sleep with only nightmares for company. In a world where every-day waking life is a nightmare, wouldn’t it be more beneficial (to maintain humanity, sanity, hope, etc.) to take solace in whatever small comforts are available? I don’t think that’s a luxury, or too indulgent. Or is it just too much of a slippery slope?

“The Road” is an irritating read.  I’m not partial to this (post?) modern, pared-down style, with barely a comma or quotation mark in sight, missing apostrophes, and in general, almost stream of consciousness style that makes it hard to make sense of who is talking.  I gather this is the point of such writing.  It leaves a dry, bitter aftertaste.  This probably means the book’s affect is effective.  If the form gnaws, then the content bites.

The content of the novel, though, is not particularly sensational.  Simply, it’s a listing of the everyday lives of father and son as they make their way to the south:  Breakfast.  Lunch.  Supper.  Sleep and repeat.  Every detail of their existence is painfully amplified – or reduced – to the small tasks: build a fire, warm the food, find the cart. Each is rendered as though each decision will determine whether they will live or die.

These acts of survival are carried out by two unnamed people, trekking through a wildnerness amid traces of a civilization past.  The anonymity creates distance.  But these nameless, faceless people could also be me, this could be you.  This could be the story of the Others — the Bad People.  But in this climate it is every man for himself — and his child, maybe.

The conversation in the novel is reduced to the essentials, and it’s often  ambiguous who is talking.  The father is constantly concerned that the boy is not talking. It’s as though speech/communication is the last quality that allows them to hold on to some humanness.  Much of this conversation revolves around questions of mortality.  The boy is always afraid they are going to die. At the same time, he sometimes wishes he were dead and reunited with the mother. (Freud would have a field day!)  Why do they want to stay alive when there is nothing left? In a way I was angry at the wife for abandoning her family but maybe she was right after all.  If they have each other, do they have enough?

This seems to be a theme in apocalyptic narrative: the idea that humanity is worth saving for the few worthwhile human connections that exist.  We’ve seen this in Watchmen with Dr. Manhattan and in The Albertine Notes.  And I don’t mean this  in terms of the Elect, though that is a likely source for the idea.

I do not entirely dislike the novel.  There were tender moments and images of beauty against the stark, bleak background.  This too is probably a feature of the novels themes.  But again I return to the question: against such devastating nothingness, no redeeming ending, a forever stretching out endlessly — of what purpose are these tiny connections, who cares and what does it all mean?  This novel cries out for this type of reflection. It seems needy.  I haven’t yet finished it (I’m halfway through) and am looking forward to blogging about the END.

In “The Road,” McCarthy portrays a protagonist who is resentful towards the wrathful God who created his post-apocalyptic world he has been condemned to with his son.

The nameless man and his son are wondering around a desolate, torched land trying to reach the coast. He addresses his creator: “Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God (11).” His angry plead to understand what has happen shows he has a complicated relationship with God. He seems to believe that there is a heaven that he will be going to but he’ll be extremely angry when he gets there. He’s talking to God, therefore he thinks there is a possibility that he exists. Perhaps it is a God who is a watchmaker like in Watchmen.

His relationship with God has been transformed by the atomic disaster but so has his relationship with people. We know very little about the protagonist but there is a hint that he was a doctor. Though he has taken the Hippocratic Oath he still passes by the lightning stroke man that is dying. He has rejected his role as a doctor where he is now no one but a father to his son.

The man has a sense of reverence for his son as he feels he is charged to protect him since he is the only good left in the world. He refers to his sleeping son as a “golden chalice, good to house a god (75).” While parents tend to have strong loving feelings towards their children, this relationship is more intense as they are literally each other’s world. There is another interesting scene of transferred divinity is the when the pair finds a house stocked with food. They pray and thank the people, not God, for the food that probably saved their lives.

They are living in a Godless world epitomized when the boy catches a snowflake in his hand and “watched it expired there as the last host of Christendom (16).”