The Road, Assignment 2 by Wayne

Assignment 2
2)
The background environment of the man reminds me of the movie “I am legend”. The movie’s background was also based on an apocalypse of mankind (although every other species except mankind was alive unlike ‘The Road’). There is a similarity in between the two protagonists ‘Robert’ and the man. The protagonist in the movie‘I am legend’, Robert had difficulties coping with the reality that he is the solemankind living in the world. In this movie, Robert tried to overcome his lonelinessby interacting with the mannequins imaginarilyin stores.In ‘the Road’, in my point of view, the man expresses his desire to meet the world before the apocalypse by dreaming of it. However, based upon the statement that the man thinks such dreams are useless, the man is having an inner conflict between his desires and rational thoughts.
“And Dreams were so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly.”Pg.21
This phrase reminds of when I came back to Korea from the United Kingdom. I had dreams nearly every night about the nation. It was really sweet to be in Britain although it was in my dream but disappointed when I was woken up by the sound of Korean TV coming from the living room and realizing that I was back in Korea. To be specific, I was hanging around with my friends in downtown chatting, laughing but all in a sudden, I started to hear Korean people having a conversation, and the world I was in began to go blur, twist and I was looking up the ceiling. I soon figured my surroundings, and became disappointed.
3)
After reading my first 50 pages, I have wondered why the stores and homes were so bleak of foods and goods. There are hardly and food left in those places which is very weird since I thought that the man and the boy are the only people who survived the apocalypse.
My Questions:
1) Was the apocalypse along term process? So that the people slowly died whilst consuming foods and goods?
2) Were there any other survivors? The other survivors may have moved to the south already, having used up the daily necessaries in the regions they passed by.
My answers:
1) But there were corpses lying around the city, this would not have happened if the apocalypse was a long term process. It must have been a short term event. Perhaps a volcano or a deep impact.
2) “Someone had come out of the woods in the night and continued down the melted roadway,”pg. 49
There are two things that can be inferred from this quotation. One, the man and the boy are not the only survivors. Two, the survivors show tendency to move towards the south.
In conclusion, there was a mass exodus of majority of survivors moving to the south whilst consuming many life necessaries in the local stores. The man and the boy however, somehow got left behind and try to find necessaries in bleak stores. There is also a part where the man obtains the only can of Coca Cola left in the vending machine lying on the floor and gives it to his son. This is abackup evidence for my idea that there are many other survivors who have already consumed pretty much anything useful in the northern area.