Have you imagined how the post-apocalyptic world will look like and will you choose try hard to survive or to die? In the book, The Road, written by McCarthy, the sky is dark. It’s cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. Everything has gone, only except some human beings who try every way to survive even by hurting and killing people. It seems that there is no reason to keep surviving in a world which no hopes remain, a father still perseveres to survive with his son and they are sustained by their love. On their journey, the father sacrifices a lot to protect his son and strongly shows his parental love. In this book, the father and the son have great …show more content…
For example, on their ways, they keep looking for food and they are always starving. One time, they went to a supermarket, and the boy found a Coca Cola. Then, the father says to his son, “It’s a treat. For you” (23). The father opens the can for him and wants him to drink at all. However, the boy insists on sharing it. The boy says two times “You have some, Papa” (23). The man just “sipped it and handed it back” (23). When all the food has gone, a can of Coke becomes so precious. When the father decides to let the boy drink it all, it means he gives all the food resource to his son. The can becomes a conversation between the boy and the man, which is a tender tribute of their concern for one another that transcends thirst, hunger, or even survival. In addition, when they are looking for the food, the father always risks by himself and asks his son to stay to keep safe. For example, when they are looking for the food in the boat, when the father is going to go outside to have a look, the boy asks to go with him. The father refuses and says, “I’ll keep tracking on you. To make sure everything’s okay” (221). Then, the father went out to find food by himself. We can see that the father protects his son so much that he will not have possibilities to let anything hurt the boy. For us, it is common to have a coke or our parents go out to buy food; however, for them, a coke means the …show more content…
For both of them, they are “each other’s world, entire” (6). Nothing or no one else matters because they can only trust and love each other. As the man 's wife points out before her suicide, "the boy was all that stood between him and death" (25). In other words, the man 's thirst for survival is fueled by the love for his son. While the man may expect his own death, he lives in order to seek life for the boy. Moreover, one time, a thief threatens the boy with a knife at his throat. The father decides to shoot and attack the man immediately. He says to the boy, “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you.” (65). For the man, his killing is justified because it was committed in the act of saving his son, a responsibility he says was assigned to him by the god. Throughout the entire journey, the man does not kill out of malice or for food. He only hurts others when they have threatened the boy 's survival. We can tell that in order to ensure the boy’s safety, his father can do anything to protect his kid. Moreover, he says, “He could not construct for the child 's pleasure the world he 'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he” (154). For the father, the earth enjoyed by the man during his own childhood is a planet that no longer existed to the boy. When the man considers
Major Works Data Sheet Your Name: Jialin Jin Title: The Road Author: Cormac McCarthy How many times on AP test? Once List four major conflicts (blank vs. blank) in the work and in your own words, provide a brief plot summary of the novel in five sentences or less. Man and Boy
Throughout the novel the father's love for his son pushes him to protect him no matter the risks. For example in the novel many times the two would go to an abandoned house
‘His mother and I have devoted our lives to him, but he-’ ‘That’s bull!’ Cole shouted suddenly, although he wasn’t holding the feather. ‘You drink until you can’t stand up, and you’re gone all the time. A devoted parent doesn’t whip his kid until a shirt can’t hide all the bruises!”
While the child was feeling down; instead of picking her son up, the mother scolds her child “[reminding] him, once again, not to shout out in public. And never to speak with his mouth full” and his sister reminds him that, “Papa’s gone” (Otsuka 50). For one of the few emotional outbursts in the novel, there is no consolation for the distressed child. There is only condemnation of his actions and a reminder of not only of how he should act but also of the very topic that is distressing him, his missing father. It is clear that it did not matter what age an individual was, it was expected that the child would remain silent and distant from
In addition, the daughter finds a fork in the road that she finds questioning. Towards the end of the passage, when Dad went to find the vocabulary book, the daughter thought, “Why should I eat when my own father has abandoned his own food? Nothing’s more important than his books and vocabulary words. He might say I matter, but when he goes on a scavenger hunt for a book, I realize I don’t matter” (Lopez paragraph 26). This shows that the daughter feels that her father does not care as much about her.
In the beginning of the story, he was an innocent kid without any worries or fears about his father or things that coming up. He tends to think positively about things around him. When the boy witnessed his father was about to beat his mother, he was scared, but then, he decided to stop his father from doing it. "The boy rose from his chair. ' No!'
Seeing what a father and son had to go through to survive. With living in a dull, grey world that’s full of death and fear, having their hope to survive it at all costs as long as they’re with each other. A father’s love for his son and not wanting to give up on him. Giving him a chance to live through these dark times, in hopes for a new beginning. He was born into a dark world and that this is all he knows.
[BOY] ‘And we always will be.’ [MAN] ‘Yes. We always will be.’” (77). The man and the boy both have similar code of ethics because the man is teaching his son how to survive in this world, they believe its okay that they go into houses and take what they need so long as no one is their, not to rob others, if possible to avoid contact with other people, and many others that involve just staying away from others and trying to live.
The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed.
He is the fuel to his fathers fire. When his son is sick and dying, the man says to himself, “You have to be quick. So you can be with him. Hold him close. Last day of the earth.”
The father’s wife had recently died, leaving him with the boy to take care of with the only mindset of keeping him alive, doing anything for their survival. This affected the father in a big way, leaving him with little hope and hardly any reason to stay alive, but the boy was “his warrant” (McCarthy 5) , his only reason for life. The boy starts out very scared and weak, always wanting to hide behind his father, knowing that one day he will die. The boy matures with every event that happens, and he maintains to have hope throughout most of them. “The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.
From beginning to end, the son calls his father “Baba” to show his affection and admiration. Despite the father’s inability to come up with a new story, the son still looks up to him. This affectionate term also contrasts with the father’s vision of the “boy packing his shirts [and] looking for his keys,” which accentuates the undying love between the father and son (15 & 16) . The father’s emotional “screams” also emphasize his fear of disappointing the son he loves so much (17). Despite the father’s agonizing visions, the son remains patient and continues to ask for a story, and their relationship remains “emotional” and “earthly”--nothing has changed (20-21).
In this scene, the man recalls the final conversation he had with his wife, the boy’s mother. She expresses her plans to commit suicide, while the man begs her to stay alive. To begin, the woman’s discussion of dreams definitively establishes a mood of despair. In the
In everyday life, there are so many people worth to love and worth for giving them much affection. But have you ever thought, who is your dearest? For everyone, the answer may be grandparents, mothers, siblings or friends. For the boy in McCarthy's novel,"The Road", his father's image will forever be the sacred fire that warms his soul forever. "The Road" written by McCarthy not only about the relationship between a father and his son but also about the contradiction in itself every human.
His idiosyncrasy remains loving and understanding, even when his younger son returned home after many of been away with not a penny to his name. The young son showed disobedience to all the goodness his father had offered to him. The young son showed traits such as selfishness as well as being ungrateful. He had no worth for his father’s property nor did he want to work alongside his father on the family farm.