I’m sure that the book is becoming more interesting as time passes by, but I also found out that there are lots of disgusting and scary scenes coming up which make me tremble. I can’t stop reading the book whenever there are big events that I get excited with.
Page. 154
Even now some part of him wished they’d never found this refuge.
This is the scene when the man thinks that they shouldn’t have found the refuge, the bunker with lots of food and supplies. I’m not quite sure why the man says this, so I was very curious to find out about the meaning of this phrase. I reached my own conclusion that the man probably said this because if they didn’t find the bunker and all the heaven’s supplies, then they would never desire for something comparable to that. If they didn’t find the bunker, the man and the boy would still strive to find more supplies and earn food with their own will, but after finding the bunker, they kind of lost their willingness to gain supplies by themselves. I think this kind of phrase makes readers think one more time and comprehend the information on the book more carefully.
Page. 161
He had a filthy towel tied under his jaw as if he suffered from toothache and even by their new world standards he smelled terrible.
I laughed a lot when I saw this quote. I thought it was very funny. This scene takes place when the man and the boy found an old man on the street with a filthy towel under his jaw and looking like a beggar on the road. The author expressed the old man’s smell that it was terrible even on their new standard. Their new standard, I guess would be really low. What I mean by this is that their new standard of so-called dirtiness would be like not having a shower for a year or something. I was really impressed with the author’s expression of this, even if it was very short and unnoticeable. He could’ve just written ‘The old man was very stinky.’, but instead he made the readers think one more time and have a short giggle about the phrase.
Page. 175
I am going to die, he said. Tell me how I am to do that.
Page. 177
He held the boy against him, cold to the bone. Don’t lose heart, he said. We’ll be all right.
I put two of these phrases together because I was very interested in finding the man’s true feelings toward living and the way he expresses hope to his son. On Page 175, it seems that the man had absolutely lost hope and desire to live but on page 177, I could see that the man keeps on blowing hope into the boy and wants him to cheer up. In this situation, I think the man is having internal conflict with himself. He really wants to kill himself because he’s in a really harsh situation and wants to get out of it. However, the man really wants the boy to keep faith and blow him some hope of surviving this situation. The author illustrated the man’s feelings very well by dialogues and internal thoughts, so the readers can easily find how deep the man is feeling and his internal conflict overflowing him.
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That first quote also touched me. I think it's related to how he feels about the past and his memories of the world as it once was. The bunker is a relic of a world from long ago and the more he remembers it, the more keenly he feels the loss. In many ways, it is sad the boy never knew those joys, but he is freer than the man because he never lost much by comparison.
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