The passage that really stood out to me in the second half of The Road was the statement made by the man who briefly travels with the boy and his father: “If something had happened and we were survivors and we met on the road then we’d have something to talk about. But we’re not. So we dont”(172). It’s interesting to think about those on the road as anything but survivors, but I suppose if one considers what the man is claiming it makes sense; in order to be a survivor you have to survive, and in a world like the one they’re in there’s no such thing as making out alive. This is, however, a simple fact of life; everyone dies, but it is profound in this setting because death is not something that happens at the end of a long full life, a “survivor” in this world doesn’t have the option of escaping a death full of suffering. This passage reminds the reader that this is not the story of wandering travelers, this is the story of people trying to use the road as a pathway to the past.
The old man’s very detached vision of life and death seems to serve him well. He reminded me very much of some kind of Eastern religious person who sees his place in the world, but does not attach his existence to the world in a way that makes his, or any human’s existence, necessary for the world as an entity. In his view, the end of life is the end of death: “When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?” (173).
I think the old man’s balanced and very peaceful attitude towards the conditions he’s living in would serve others well. His character represents the value or perhaps necessity of detachment in a world that one no longer has a place in or can relate to. The acceptance of the world no longer being a human object, but rather a being in and of itself might allow for a struggling traveler on the road to accept his or her situation and find peace instead of suffering through deep psychological and emotional turmoil.
It’s interesting, though, that this encounter seems to push the father and the son to grip even more tightly to their humanity and their relevance to the world. For example, after the old man leaves the boy does not look back down the road (174). This indicates behavior uncharacteristic of the compassionate child. He has, perhaps recognized that interacting with this man could be detrimental to their survival. The father becomes more outwardly communicative and affectionate toward his son. This is probably influenced by his increasing awareness of his own death on the horizon.
Interestingly enough, the father’s death is incredibly peaceful. Even though the way he died caused him to feel physical pain, it ultimately allowed him to escape the world seemingly at peace with where he was leaving the boy and with his efforts to survive. The boy was not, to my surprise, discouraged by his father’s death. He was not influenced by the old man’s attitude, and seemed confident in his ability to claim the title of “survivor” because he really believed that he was carrying the fire.
I think that the boy’s ability to carry on was surprising because I felt that if I had been in the same situation I would feel defeated and abandoned without my only human companion, partner, and protector. It’s important to remember, though, that the boy showed his maturity and ability to transcend the struggles the road presented throughout the novel. The father was weaker than his son emotionally and mentally. He was too attached to a world long since passed, but the boy, though attached to that world through his father, was able to remain unattached to the past, which aided in his ability to stay focused on finding a future. The boy believed in being a survivor even in a world where survival is a perceived impossibility, and this gave him enough strength to carry on.
Since I finished the novel I’ve been trying to work out the issue of the value of struggle. I wonder if in this world where newborn babies are roasted on spits and fermented jars of fruit are the closest thing to a delicacy one can find, is it really worth walking hundreds of miles, forgetting what’s real and what’s not, and completely losing a sense of identity, just to survive?
I really liked the way you characterized the boy, almost as a bridge between the past that he knows through his father, and a future that is hard for the father (and even the reader) to imagine, but something that the boy holds onto. This helps to reconcile some of the confusion I had about the boy’s morality seeming to feel out of place in the post-apocalyptic world in which he lives. Though it does seem more suited to the past world that they boy knows through his father, this reading is probably due to the fact that I live in this “past” world, because the boy’s moral system is one that fits into his future, and helps him to define this future as something positive and worth surviving for.
Your question about the value of struggle is an important one, and I think it depends on your perception of the novel. I certainly didn’t think of the characters as “forgetting what’s real and what’s not, and completely losing a sense of identity” – especially not the boy. Though their lack of names does indeed suggest a lack of individuality, I think that the glimpse of the group the boy is with provides a glimpse of a group in which individualization is possible, and realized by the boy. Indeed, the fact that we can characterize the boy and his father seem to suggest they have some identity. As for the horrendous acts and lack of luxury – these things exist in our world today, and people have either found counterpoints to these disheartening facts or an inherit value to life – or both – to convince them that survival is worth the struggle.
I too have been thinking about the question though – not from the perspective of the boy and his father, but from the point of view of the cannibals. Why is it worth it for them to go through such a struggle to survive, given that they are the ones making the world an uglier place (presuming a certain moral system) and these very acts show they don’t assign an inherit value to human life beyond the utilitarian value as food?