Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Letter for the boy.

Hi, this is Wayne

It is hard for me to know what exactly you are feeling like in this book yet since I have not experienced your post-apocalyptic surroundings. It must be really hard for you to face all the extremes that normal children can’t even think about. I feel sorry for you because you haven’t yet experienced a happy normal life like other children yet. When people are in their childhood, it is best for them to be surrounded by trustable family, friends, and shelter so that you can develop a healthy and positive personality. However, you are living in a bleak and grey world full of misery with dead bodies, destroyed cities, and survivors with their sanity on the edge.

You have got to make sure that physical situation does not let you down and let go of hope. You have a sacrificial father who would do anything to protect you. From reading this book, I could really tell that he is thinking about you a lot. He always tries to make you see the bright side, though it seems like your father himself is also having a hard time with all the things you may not understand.

Whenever you get tired, scared, and discouraged, try to think of the bright side. You have the best father in the world. He really cares about you and as soon as you and your father reach the south, there would be many survivors and probably abundant amount of food. There will be a chance for you to socialize for first time in your life with optimistic environment around you. And yes there are and would be series of difficulties that are to torment you such as the mad truck guy. The truck guy was really foolish and aggressive. He probably was a criminal escaped from prison or something, because majority of people do not act that way even when the situation is as extreme as yours. In my perspective, the survivors in the south would be kind and caring for other survivors. In the south, it is warmer with more food. Many of the survivors would have experienced the things that you are going through so they must be sympathetic. Unlike hostile people who haven’t reached the south yet.

Remember, never give up or be negative. Like I stated above, always try to be optimistic. It is the only light that is going to shine your road through the thick grey ashes and lead your way to the brighter side of the world. Always listen to what your father says, and you should be able to soothe him when he’s sad. You are the only one who can do that and it would help encourage you father a lot. You are the only hope of your father, don’t forget that. Yourself and your father are the only people in the world you can trust and rely on.

Take care, never lose hope!!!

Sincerely, Wayne

Monday, April 12, 2010

a letter to the boy

I finally finished reading pages 51~100. It was another hard reading for me. I could understand the story better than pages 1~50. In 51~100, I think there were not any dreams or thoughts about the characters. It just showed the experience of the man and the boy meeting a lot of new survivors while they walk along the road. While I read this part of the book I felt that the boy was really stressed out. So I am going to write a letter to the boy because I feel a little sorry for him. Let me start.
Hi, well I do not really know your name because the author did not tell about it. However, I think you really had a bad time in the world of disaster. It was very hard for me to imagine what you have experienced in the world. I read that you met a lot of people while you walked along the road. There were some people in the truck and wanted some food. Hence, he captured you and put a knife beside your neck. It would have been very scary in this part. If I were you, I would just have gave the person some food and ran away from him. Well, you just sood there and your dad shot the man. It would have been very scary for you to see a person die right beside of you by getting shot by a gun. I felt you feeling scared because you did not speak to anyone after that experience. Also, throughout the story you do not live like other ordinary people in the world. You live like a poor person... It was very sad to see your dad and you going t places to get food and getting tired while walking. I wanted to help you guys... I cannot imagine how hard it would have been for you guys to absorb in a world like that. Well, I wish the end of the story would be a happy story for you and your dad. It can not all be so scary and tiring. Wish you luck~!
Well, I wrote a letter to the boy in the story. First, I felt really sad for him because he experienced very hard times which other people do not really experience in another world. Also, I imagined having an experience like him. It would have been very scary.

Assignment(51--100) JACK

As the father and the son are going to the south, they see and experience a lot of things. At first, they meet the truck people, who attract the son and the father by suggesting to giving them some food. But, in fact, they are some bad guys wanting to get some food from other survivors. Thus one of them grabs the boy and feeling dangerous, the father shoots the guy. After running away from those truck people, they reach to a small village. They try really hard to get some food from discarded houses, only to fail to get. Feeling extremely hungry, the boy and the father keep following the road.

Here, the father hates hearing the boy's "I don't care if I die." This is because the little boy is his only warrant, and without the son, the man will not be able to make it to the south coast. In other words, they are depending on each other with love. Or, perhaps, the father is afraid of his own death caused by the disease that makes him cough. The father knows that if he dies, the boy will be eaten by other people and become one of the constituents of the "pool of guts." I was actually shocked when I noticed that what the truck person is chewing can be a kind of flesh of a person. In reality, the man says that he eats whatever he can find around him, and "whatever" here may contain the human beings that he saw. And I believe that the truck man takes the boy in order to threat the father and keep him from moving until he gets to the truck and cook the boy. Isn't this "cook" cruel? How can a person cook another person? Filthy, eh?

The last thing that I could feel reading was, although this is not related to the context of the book, that the author of this book, Cormac Mccarthy does not use any proper punctuation. Instead of don't, he uses dont, and he even does not add quotation marks after quoting what the characters say. And the sentence structure itself is not so complicated. I believe that this puts highlight on the simple and basic life of the father and the son. They should live on the minimal amount(basic amount) of food, carry the basic clothing and blankets, and they should think most basically so that they can survive in that full-of-cannibals world. I can be sure that I am not gonna eat people even though there is nothing to eat.

I confess I read some more, about 20 pages or so, and I can be sure that there will be something really exciting, and shoking for some of those. And there is only one bullet left in the man and the boy's gun. I wonder how that will be used.

What has happened?

As Diana told us, I could follow the story more easily than the last time. Still, it was hard for me to understand the whole thing so any kind of corrections are welcomed!

While the part 1 was mainly about the man and the boy travelling the road, the part 2 contained some actions and the man and the boy encountered other people in part 2.
Also, it becomes clear that the man is the biological father of the boy.

What I found most interesting about this part is that the man seems to have two sides of him. When he's with the boy, he's all nice and caring , yet when he encounters other survivors he becomes very logical and tough. This is clearly shown on pg 66. The man and the boy sees a group of survivors referred to as "bad guys" and they try to hide themselves at first but the man's eyes meet one of the group member's eyes. Then the man stand up for themselves and when the group member threatens the boy, the man moves swiftly and kills the group member.

I was really surprised because I thought the man would not be able to hurt other people. This part shows how much the man loves the boy and how much he is willing to sacrifice for the boy. Still, the man was so harsh and I wonder if the killing was necessary.

The part I also found memorable was the dialogue between the man and the man's wife.
The dialogue goes like this :
We're survivors.
Survivors?
Yes.
What in god's name are you talking about? We're not survivors. We're the walking dead in a horror film.
I'm begging you.
I don't care. I don't care if you cry. It doesn't mean anything to me.
Please.
Stop it.
I'm begging you. I'll do anything.
Such as what? I should have done it a long time ago. When there were three bullets in the gun instead of two. I was stupid. We've been over all of this. I didn't bring myself to this. I was brought. And now I'm done. I thought about not even telling you. That would probably have been the best. You have two bullets and then what? You can't protect us. You say you would die for us but what good is that? I'd take him with me if it weren't for you. You know I would. It's the right thing to do.
You're talking crazy.
No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won't face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen.But I can't. I can't.

As you can see the woman is determined, very cold and cynical. The man is begging her to stay but the woman won't hear of it. The woman thinks that they are not survivors, rather cursed(And I agree with her.)and they're merely living because the man forced them to survive. Now she has made up her mind and she's saying good bye to the man.
As I read this part, I wondered who "they" were. "They" seem to be very dangerous and unhumane.
Are "they" the same people whom the man and the boy encountered?
Also, why are there only two bullets, instead of three? Did the man use one in the name of protection?

There's a line on page 57 where it says I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is. This particular line shows how the man and the woman view the life and the death differently. As I read this book I could tell that the man has a great desire to live and protect the boy. For the woman, death is actually a rest and an escape route from the real world.

The boy seems to adjust well to the fact that his mother is gone , however he says he misses her mom and he wishes he were dead too.


I wonder what will happen to the man and the boy if they move to the South. Will they be happy? Will they settle in?
I hope they reach their final destination and become happy.

Question : Did the woman merely leave the man and the boy? Or did she kill herself? Very confusing. I still can't figure it out. Someone please help me!!!!!

Tracy assignment week 2

Again, I decided to talk about the quotes I liked in this book. The first one is on page 54.
‘All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.’
All things of grace and beauty, their birth were in grief and ashes. The boy was born after the disaster. He was born in grief and ashes. Is the speaker saying that the boy is about grace and beauty? I think this is true because the man talks about the sleeping boy right after. The man has the boy who is all the thing of beauty and grace.

Also on page 75:
‘He dried him with the blanket, kneeling there in the glow of the light with the shadow o the bridge’s understructure broken across the palisade of treetrunks beyond the creek. This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.’
It is the man’s job, as the father of a boy, to protect him and care of him in this dangerous time. He washes a dead man’s brains out – he cleans and purifies the boy. He takes him to the fire – he takes care of him and protects him from animals which fear fire and humans. It is up to the man to protect the boy who is supposedly connected to god and beauty and grace.

‘You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand? Yes. He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys he said. Yes. We’re still the good guys. And we always will be. Yes. We always will be. Okay.’ (p.77)
I was appointed to do that by God – God had given the man a mission to protect the boy. He tells the boy that even if they had killed someone it wouldn’t be a very bad thing because God had given the man permission to do it, to protect the boy, and it was a necessary thing to do in order to live.

These are the quotes that I liked. But I have a question about a phrase. I couldn't understand.
'The day is providential to itself.' (p.54) I looked up ‘providential’ in a dictionary and the meaning being lucky, happening at the right time. What does this sentence mean? I am really, really curious.

That's all. Ta-ta.

Christine:D

The second part of The Road was truly fantastic. I was impressed by the way author tells the story. Meanwhile, I still had difficulties with understanding the details. I hope I can solve my curiosity in Tuesday.

There were lots of meaningful dialogs in the second part, so I decided to choose some of them and analyze those in my way. There might be(actually,, must be) the things I got wrong or misunderstood about the book, so corrections are welcomed!:-)

p.77 (The boy)"Are we still the good guys?" he said.

"Yes, We're still the good guys."

"And we always will be."

After they face with the 'bad guys' and food is almost running out, the man becomes sharp. Still, he never expresses it directly to the boy. 'Cause he's the reason why the man lives. And because the thing which motivated him until now was all about his love toward the boy, and it will be. The man says to the boy that he'll kill who ever touches the boy. "Are we still the good guys?" the boy asks.

It seems that the boy can't adopt the change of his dad. By asking these kind of questions over and over, he wants to make sure that the man is the one he used to be. Though the answer from the man is kind of apparent.

p.82 (The boy)"We're not going to kill it, are we Papa?"

At one village, the man and the boy hear the dog barking. The boy asks immediately, "We're not going to kill it, are we Papa?" As mentioned before, the boy has a sense of difference about his dad's changes. Why did he asks this? It's because he thought the man might kill the dog, which he won't do usually.

Yet, the boy uses the word 'we'. This shows the boy's unconditional love toward the man. No matter what happens, he and his dad can't be apart. They two can't act separately. Also, this means that the boy will be beside his dad though his father does something unacceptable and brutal.

p.59 (The boy)"Did you have any friends?"

p.84 (The boy speaks to a little boy)"Come back, I wont hurt you."

p.85 “There's no one to see. Do you want to die? Is that what you want?”

"I don't care," the boy said, sobbing. "I don't care."

As it often mentioned in this book, the boy almost knows nothing about the world before disaster. Ever since he could remember, he was traveling with his parents in order to survive.

While walking along the road, he became curious. "Did you have any friends?" he asks his dad. Does he even know what a friend is? In the boy's memory, there was always only two people. Himself and his father. Though he can rely on and depend on father, he never shows his true, entire feeling to his father. It's because the boy knows that the dad is already struggling with such a heavy burden. The boy needs someone else. Somebody who can share the feelings.

After seeing the smoke far away, they go into a village with taking the risk. While the man is looking for food and clothes, the boy faces a little boy. Maybe it was the first time that he saw a boy who's about his age. He, without hesitation, runs to the boy. Yet, a little boy's gone. "Come back, I wont hurt you." he cries with a sense of emptiness. "Do you want to die? Is that what you want?" the man presses the boy for an answer. "I don't care." the boy says. At this moment, the fear from the fact that he won't be able to make friend again is much greater than the fear about the death itself.

I believe that the author tries to tell the readers that the boy is becoming mentally weaker. It seems that the boy now understands how much his father cares about him. Even more than himself. Meanwhile, because of that, it becomes harder to sincerely open up his mind toward his father. He swallows his anger by himself, and cries more often; rather than just explaining what he really feels like.

Quotes #1,#2, and #3.

When I was reading the second part of the book, I felt that they book was much more interesting than the last part because there was a comprehensible story line. I especially liked the parts where some kind of tension was appearing between characters in the book.

Pg.55-60

The first set of quotes that I chose is from the man’s flashback. On their way to the ‘South’, the boy confesses that he wants to be with mom right before he sleeps. After that talk, the man recalls his memory with his wife right before she leaves for her ‘self destruction’. In that memory, there are a lot of places where it shows the wife’s suffering and how self destruction was the only choice for her.

“What in God’s name are you talking about?
We’re not survivors. We’re walking dead in a horror film.” (p.55)

In this quote, you can see that she doesn’t think that the way she is living is actually ‘living’. For me, this was a common experience when I had no happiness or too little happiness in my life. In her case, she had to put all of her time in trying to keep her life that was meaningless to her.

“Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They’re going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won’t face it. You’d rather wait for it to happen. But I can’t. I can’t.” (p.56)

Here, you can see that she also had to spend lots of time worrying and being afraid of ‘them’. I felt that this is one of the main sentences that warn us about the danger from other humans. Before this scene we didn’t know exactly what the man’s fear was. However, in this scene, you can see that the fear the man was having was from other humans and that these humans are people who rape or attack others. This was the key sentence to understanding the main character's fear.

“Maybe you’ll be good at this. I doubt it, but who knows. The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far.” (p.57)

In this part, it becomes evident that the woman is going to leave. The man keeps on begging the woman to stay and that he needs her but she still leaves him. But by the last sentence, you can see that she still cares for the mand and feels bad for him since he has to keep living. By the way she says good bye, you can at least see that she is not leaving because she doesn't like the man and the boy.

“There was no argument. The hundred nights they’d sat up debating the pros and cons for self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall. In the morning the boy said nothing at all and when they were packed and ready to set out upon the road he turned and looked back at their campsite and he said: She’s gone isn’t she? And he said: Yes, she is.” (p.58)

This is what happens after she leaves. The boy and the man accept her decision. Actually, I felt that they already knew that it was coming.

This quote that I made is my favorite part so far. It was the first exciting scene that came after the serene story line. It also answered two questions that I had about the book. One was whether the boy was actually the man’s son or not and the other was what had happened to the woman.

I think that this part is an important part of the book because it has a detailed story about the wife. Throughout the book, I felt that the woman has some kind of big importance even though she is actually dead. She keeps on coming out in man’s memories and dreams. She seems to be the link that connects the man and the past. If you see page 54, the man says “There is no past”, he can’t remember his childhood games and stories but, in the memories with his wife, he seems to remember quite well about the world before.


The second quote that I chose is in the scene where the man has an argument with another man.

“You won’t shoot, he said.
That’s what you think.
You ain’t got but two shells. Maybe just one. And they’ll hear the shot.
Yes they will. But you won’t.
How do you figure that?
Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you won’t have the, anymore. They’ll just be soup.” (p.64)

This part showed clearly that they were both enemies to each other. This part is important because it showed the man’s character. The man seems to have a very logical personailty. Instead of running away or just being afraid, the man manages to fight with the other man. His words make sense and seem very professional that the other man even asks him if he’s a doctor. It doesn't sound too special but no many people can behave this way when they are in the situation of their own life and death. In addition, I believe this personality of his seems to have acted as an advantage for him to survive in this apocalyptic environment.

Finally, the last quote I wanted to talk about was on page 82 and 83.

“A dog? Yes. Where did it come from?
I don’t know. We’re not going to kill it, are we Papa?
No. We’re not going to kill it.”(82)
“They never heard the dog again.”(83)

This is about a dog that they man and the boy finds on their journey. From far away, they were able to see that some people were living in that area. When they get closer, they find a dog. The boy begs his father not to kill that dog and the father agrees to do so. However, after time, they couldn’t see the dog again. In that scene, the boy and the man had run out of food. Thus, they were reasearching for food in that village. However, there was no food left in the food market. But, after time, they could smell wood burning.

What came to my mind? I thought of the dog eating tradition. In Korea, some people still enjoy dogs and the Westerners criticize it a lot. They think it’s really savage to eat dogs. But, in this scene, the savage tradition is portrayed. I think it shows how bad the whole situation is. I mean the author is a westerner and most of them think of eating a dog as an extremely cruel thing. So, this part emphasizes how bad the man and the boy and the other survivors needed food.

P.S.

These are some thoughts that I had while reading the second part of the book. I'm really sleepy since it's two in the morning so plese tell me by comment if there are any unlogical assumptions or errors! :) Oh, I followed someone's reading method of taking notes as I read and it helped me a lot THANKS!

Memorable Scene

I must warn you that my description may not be accurate.


Starting from page 61, a pack of men with a truck emerges on the road. Judging from the man's reaction to these people, they seem to be dangerous folks. The man immediately hides off the road and keeps silence with his boy, as soon as he detects them(but he is already spotted-_-). The people were wearing filthty blue coveralls and a cap. Some of them carried rifles and their faces were as dark as skull.

"They could hear the diesel engine out on the road, running on God knows what. When he raised up to look he could just see the top of the truck moving along the road."-pg.61

This quote from pg.61 first reveals that a truck, generating diesel engine noise, appeared on the road.

"Men standing in the stakebed, some of them holding rifles."-pg.61

Then the following sentence shows there were some men with the truck and some of them possessed guns. Their having weapons is the first clue that suggests these people are hostile and dangerous.


"the black diesel smoke coiled through the woods."-pg.62

In the next, it is described that the truck is emitting black smoke. I depicted it on the picture.

"They'd have no other way to start it save to push it and they could't get it fast enough to start on that slope."-pg.62

The truck encountered a slope. Meanwhile the truck's engine was not powerful enough to push the truck along the slope. It seemed like the truck is not in good condition. As a result, the truck helplessly halted.



This is the description of the man demonstrated in page 63. The second paragraph is all about the description of one of the mysterious people with the truck. And according to what it says, he looks like a very dangerous person. His face is very dark and has rough beard, which makes him look tough. Moreover, he is rachitic too, meaning his waist is bent forward. He also wore a pair of dirty blue coveralls, which I drew on the picture above. All these physical features indicate that he is a man of danger.

So far was the specific description of the 'truck on the road' scene. Why was it so memorable? It was mostly because of there being survivors. Before these people appeared, the man and his boy were the only living existance in the novel. However now that these dangerous folks appeared, much information is indicated. If you read through the following pages, you will see the conversation between the beard guy and the man. According to their conversation, the 'truck people' are definitely hostile and aggressive. It even seems like they eat human meat. This means survivors began to hunt each other after the world met the apocalypse. Perhaps those people were the human-hunt group or so.

Thus the 'truck on the road' scene is a turning point of the story and therefore, very important.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Unique, Response to the Book, p.51-101

Compared to last week, this week, I underlined more and wrote more on the book. I couldn't hlep it. There were more information given and more events going on.

This week, I'd like to talk about structure, the father and the boy's relationship and some motifs just like last week, and also talk about some parts that gave me important information. Now, let me start.



1. Structure

This time, the structure is simpler. From page 51 to 60, most of the text is about the man's memories(thoughts on the past + what happened in the past), dreams and thoughts. Then from page 61, except for a paragraph in page 87, all the other paragraphs are describing the events that happens to the man and the boy. I think it's because the man and the boy are in hurry and danger almost all the time so the man has no time to think about the past.

Let's briefly look into the more detailed structure: the present - the man leaving his wife's photograph with money, cards and license on the road - the present - the dream of tattered gods - the beginning of the apocalypse - hearing birds flying away - playing cards and telling the boy some fake stories about the past - providential days and beauty based on pain (thoughts of the man) - the present, the boy says he'd like to die and the man says not to think of it - the past, the man's wife kills herself - the past, the birth of the boy - a dialogue between the man and the boy - the present (meet bad guys on a truck, kill one of them and run away - visit a village that seems deserted but is inhabited by some people - leave the village and a little boy and a dog the boy saw there - a memory of a dog of the past - see a troop of bad guys - meet snow and decide to leave the cart and move on - a dialogue between the man and the boy.


some notes on some paragraphs;

1) The man's wife chose the death because she couldn't bear the situation. She didn't show love toward the man and the boy. She didn't really care about them. She just wanted to escape, give up, run away. Think I can say the man loves the boy more than the woman did.

2) In the paragraph on the dog of the past, there were very strange words. 'us', 'I', and 'me'. Guess 'I' is the man, but then it's inexplainable why 'he' is also used to name the man. Direct quote is here : 'The dog that he remembers followed us for two days. I tried to coax it to come but it would not. ... I promised I would not hur the dog. ... That is the dog he remembers. He doesn't remember any little boys.' Well, think 'I' means the man, but 'he' was used in the beginning and at the end to connect the memory(past) and the present. But still, why did the author use the word 'I'? What does it mean?

3) The dialogue on page 100 to 101 shows that the man started to doubt whether they'll survive or not. 'You think we're going to die, don't you? ... We're not going to die ... But you don't believe me ... Why do you think we're going to die? ... But you don't belive me ... But you think I might lie to you about dying.' Even if the boy keeps saying that he doesn't know, the man keeps saying that the boy doesn't believe him. It shows that HE is not believing himself. He wants to believe that they're not goning to die, but he can't stop thinking that they'll die soon.

+) Bad guys eat humans. The guy the father shot was changed into a pile of bones, skins and guts when the father went back to the place to fetch the cart. And the bones seemed to be boiled, the man said. It shows that they eat dead people. Another group of bad guys, they have woman and boy slaves. These slaves are for sexual things. The father had every reason to avoid these bad guys. There's even the wife saying that they'll rape her and her son if they catch them. They'll really do. And They'll eat the man.



2. Characters

1) The man
He's trying to calm the boy, make him believe they'll survive, nothing bad will happen. Even in a desperate and dangerous situation, he continues to say 'it's all right'. As they are running for their lives, as they are dying of the cold, he keeps saying 'it's all right', 'we'll not die'.
(In the text, he also proves himself to be a calm man, ready to kill a person clean and quickly when the danger comes. Also he knows a lot about human bodies and might be a doctor since he knew how to cut the cord of the baby.)

2) The boy
He recognizes things quickly and accurately. He is the one who sees the smoke of the village. He is the one who hears the dog barking. He also recognized that his mom killed herself right away when he woke up. He is a warm-hearted child who pities a man hit by a lightening and worries about a little boy in the village. But he is also strong. Even if the man's filtering most of the violence in the world, the boy still sees the brutal scenes and bears them with no word. He is bearing the situation well.


+) A note on the people's health. The man is coughing. The bad guys(the first group, I mean) were coughing. Many of them wore masks. Someone even wore a biohazard suit. They need to cover their mouth to filter some bad chemicals in the air. Sure, there are ashes everywhere. But why is the boy not affected by it? Why are the people affected by the atmosphere all the adults? Will the boy get sick like that in the end?




3. Motifs

1) gray, ash
These words are repeated a lot this time. Ashes covering the snow so quickly. All the world is gray and ash. (... wanna quote some lines of the text but I underlined too much I cannot find the parts quickly;;)

2) death
There are many deaths here. The man's wife says the death is a lover, and she loves it now, and kills herself. The man kills another man who threats the boy's life. There are dried corpses and skulls. The boy and the man worries about the death that will eventually reach them soon or later. Death is a threat. And it's quite near them.

3) God

This time, the man didn't show that much doubt toward God. Rather than that, the word 'God' was repeated a lot this time to show surprise. You know, there are expressions with the word 'God' that are used when you're shocked or surprised. 'God!' or 'God's sake' and things like that.

However, on page 74, the man says his brushing the boy's hair to dry it seems like some ancient anointing. Anointing is putting sacred oil on one's head. This term's used in Christianity to mean a sacred and positive ceremony. It's so sad that I'm not a Chirstian so I don't know what it means in detail. Somebody please let me know.

On the next page, p.75, the man says as he looks at the boy's hair, 'Golden chalice, good to house a god. Please don't tell me how the story ends.' It reminds me of the line in page 5, 'He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.' After reading page 75, I started to think that maybe 'he' of the last line of the quote from page 5 might mean the boy. To the man, the boy equals the God. And in that sense, god is not a negative figure to the man.

And, on page 77, the man says that his job is to take care of the boy and he's appointed to do that by the God. Throught this, we can see that the man is not having negative feelings toward God anymore. I don't see why he's attitude changed, but well, think we'll gonna see it soon or later.

(+ Maybe this part shows that still, his faith is not as strong as it was before the apocalypse. 'The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. (page 89)' The word 'sacred' makes me think that it has something to do with the god and the bible. Does sacred idiom mean something related to the Bible?)

Seora-Writing a letter to the character

As Diana told us, I could really see the story getting more interesting. However, it was hard for me to understand as well. I had to read the same sentence over and over again in order to just get the grip of it. In page 51~100, there were lots of facts that we had to remember, and I think the most important thing was the relationship and the feelings between the man and the boy. Even though the boy was having a hard time, I know that the person who was really strenuous was the man. So I decided to write a letter to the man and not the boy.

Dear Man.
This is Seora. Hi, how are you doing. Well, sorry I even asked that since I know that you're not doing well. It must have been terribly hard for you to take care of your son when it is hard just taking care of yourself. When I was reading throughout the book, I could see that you were sick but you're trying to hide that from your son. Also, you keep having memories of your wife who has betrayed you and your son.
I'm not a grown up and I don't have a kid, so I might not know exactly how you feel very well. Well, I kinda feel more related to the boy than to you, because I really believe that you should have helped the lightening struck man, the dog which has been following you for 2 days and the poor little boy who was staring them at the village. However, when I come to think of it, I think I could understand your side of the story also. Since you have the responsibility of taking care of your son. For your son, it is easy for him to say help "Let's help the man, Let's help the dog.", however for you, you have to think about everything. Think about the consequences of it, and calculate everything into the equation. It would be hard for the boy to understand your situation, but I wish you would at least give the boy some break. I know that you have to say no to the boys' wishes, but at least be more generous to him. I can see that you are a very kind father at all times. How you teach the boy things, how you let the boy see the map and the binoculars, how you always get the toys and books for your boy to read. But when it comes to your survival, I see that you become very strict. I wish you would give some time to the boy to digest the reality, and tell him one by one how you really wish you could help them, but you couldn't so you're just hoping that the boy would understand. This would make it easier for the boy.
About your wife, I really do feel sorry. I think she made her decisions very carefully, and I am glad that you respected her decision. I know it was hard for you to let her go like that, since you had to care for the boy now by yourself without any help. But you could see it as that your wife knew that the boy would be safer being with you than to be with her. She knew until the last moment that she was making the right choice, and by that, I think you could feel more pressured, thinking of the responsibility over your child.
However, I know that you're doing a great job, and no one could have ever done it better than you are doing right now. What I am really worried about though, is your health. I know that you feel your only reason to live is because of your child. But you always have to remember that if you are sick, and you die, your boy would die too, since there is no one to look after him and he is still young. So if you want to take care of your child, start taking care of your health first. Just like the boy is everything you've got, you're the only thing that the boy has got. So cheer up! The world still has hope as long as you are alive. I will be here cheering for you!!!^^
P.S It's late at night, and I'm kind of tired and annoyed by the fact that I have to go back to school tomorrow, so I know that I'm kind of babbling but I hope you understood what I wrote. Thanks
Sincerely
Your number 1 Fan Seora

As I was reading, I keep wondering how the book will end. Unfortunately, Joanne accidentally told us the ending so she ruined the fun a little bit(--^, i'm kidding^^) but that doesn't stop us from having interest in this book. I hope something bright and sunny comes up in the next pages that I'll read. Have a good night, and see u tomorrow!^^

Three quotes that I wanted to mention in this part.

When I was reading the first 50 pages of this book like many others, I had a lot of problems with understanding it. So I thought that the next 50 pages would not be so easy either. As I expected, it was still little bit difficult for me to understand every detail part. However, it took less time than when I read the first 50 pages because there were much more things happening this time. I would like to talk about three quotes I found in the book that made me to think about it carefully.

The first quote comes from the last paragraph on page 58, which is pretty beginning of the part I read.
“In the morning the boy said nothing at all ….. and he said: She’s gone isn’t she? And he said: Yes, she is.”
When I was reading the previous part, I thought the boy would not be very old because he seemed to need a lot of care from his father. However, by reading this part, I noticed that the boy would be older than I expected. It’s not easy to ask such a question that asking whether his mother was gone. If I were him, I would be shocked and sad to know that my mom has gone. How did the boy know that his mother had left him even though nobody told him? Maybe the boy had known and felt like his mother was going to leave even before it actually happened. We can see that from the quote saying ‘the boy said nothing at all’. There might have been some quarrels or miscommunication between the woman and the man that the boy had listened to so that he already knew his mother was going to leave him sometime. I felt very sad to see the boy pretending not to be sad in that situation.

The second quote can be found on page 70.
“Take me with you, the boy said. He looked as if he was going to cry.
No. I want you to wait here.
Please, Papa.
Stop it. I want you to do what I say. Take the gun.
I don’t want the gun
I didn’t ask you if you wanted it. Take it.”
This conversation comes after the man killed a stranger to protect his son from him. It seems that the boy is really frightened and doesn’t want to be left alone. I was little bit surprised to see the weak aspect of the boy because I though he was very brave. He always said ‘I’m okay’ when his father took care of him. It refreshed my memory that the boy was still young. Besides, I also found that the man is trying to be stricter to the boy than before. Of course all that is for the boy too. After the man encountered a danger with the stranger, he became colder and maybe he felt like the boy had to be stronger not to mention himself. But it’s still very sad that the man should give a gun to his little boy.

The last quote is on the page 82.
“ A dog?
Yes.
Where did it come from?
I don’t know.
We’re not going to kill it, are we Papa?
No. We’re not going to kill it. ……
We won’t hurt the dog, he said. I promise. “

I think this part is pretty similar to the second quote that I mentioned above. But we can notice that the boy started to have doubt on his father. After seeing his father killing a person right in front of him, the boy became more worried about whether his father is going to kill anybody again. This part also made me feel very sorry about the boy because it seems that it’s becoming harder and harder for the boy to withstand all the situation and fear.

By reviewing my journal, I realized that I focused a lot on the boy. I just tent to get into the boy’s situation very much. Maybe it’s because I care about the boy like the man does. Anyways, I think I should try to think more about the man and the overall situations happening in this book next time.

week 2- assignment 4

Wow! This story is becoming more interesting as chapters pass by. While I was reading the pages 51-100, I couldn’t take my eyes off each and every detail. From the story related to the man’s wife to the conflict between the man and the other survivor, I’d say Cormac McCarthy really deserves the Pulitzer’s prize! Though, there were some specific parts where I felt impressed and attracted by the most, so let me introduce them.

Page 54
So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.
Page 74
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.
Page 82
He bent over and kissed him on his gritty brow.
These three quotes that I mentioned above are the ones that I could feel the strong bond between the man and the boy. In such desolate and barren environment with nothing to rely on, the man and the boy just have each other to keep their faith alive. So they build intense relationship and try to express love toward each other more (but there are some times when the man acts in harsh manners to the boy, probably as a way to keep the boy safe). Moreover, this part in particular appeals to me because it makes me think again about the relationship with my own parents. Nowadays I stay in the dormitory and go back home just during the weekends, so I don’t spend much time with my family. The first month (March) was so busy that I couldn’t even think about my parents a lot but as time passed, I began to feel the importance of my family and how much they affected me. Anyways, from these phrases I could feel the strong humanity between the two characters and relate it to my situation.

Page 66
He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with a knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet.
In my personal thought, this part was the most thrilling but rather tragic one from pages 51-100. In this scene, the man and the boy encounter another survivor who seems to be very big and aggressive. The stranger tries to get the man’s properties by threatening the boy as a hostage but then the man shot the stranger and ran away from the dead body with his son. While I was reading this part of the book I felt 2 things. One was about understanding the man’s situation that there were no other things to do but to shoot the stranger, and the other thing was about the human’s selfishness. With the limited amount of food, clothing and shelter left for the survivors of the apocalypse, they are becoming more violent and uncooperative. I’m sure that I’ll turn this crazy when I encounter situations like these, but it makes me think again about how the humans can be so selfish.

Page77
Are we still the good guys? He said
Yes. We’re still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.
This is the scene where the boy doubt whether they are the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’ after seeing his dad being so cruel and violent to others. I totally understand the boy’s feeling. He must have lots of confused thoughts in his mind about his dad and his behaviors. I think the boy is too young to know that his dad is acting that way just to keep him safe. Furthermore, I noticed that the boy is slowly losing his faith and his identity after living in the harsh environment for so long. He doesn’t seem to trust his dad as much as he did at first and the boy seems to be too exhausted to do anything.

Assignmet - Writing a letter to the boy(from page 50 to 100)

From page 50 to 100, the story becomes more interesting. The man and the boy met other survivors. But unfortunately the made conflict with each other and the man had a kill someone in front of the boy who was really scared. I guess as more events occur, the easier it is for me to concentrate on the whole plot and understand the book. I was thinking that the boy must be really terrified and confused at all these things happening to him, so I decided to write a letter to him.

Dear. Boy
I've been reading you and your fathers story all along and I guess the situation is getting worse. You probably wouldn't know but your father is having a hard time, too. At night, when you are asleep, he often reminds his past and thinks about your mother who left the family rejecting your fathers plea to stay. He is trying his best to cover the role of a mother, too. And the only hope that is left to him is you. Your the only family he has and that's why he hates you saying things about death. When you saw your father kill someone with the gun I surely understand that your were frightened, but because of that you should not doubt your father. He just did it to protect you, no other purpose. And the little boy you saw in the abandoned city, don't blame your father for it. There wasn't really anything he could do to help him. It may be confusing whether you are doing right or wrong. I figured that out in page.100 when you keep answering ' I don't know'

I see you are starting to ask your father questions about yourself. Like 'Are we still the good guys?' Although your father told you that you were the good guys, in my opinion there no clear judgement of good and bad in a situation like apocalyptic. Especially when people start turning insane. I mean every survivor is struggling to live each day. The lack of food, coldness, danger of encountering other aggressive people, clothes.. Most survivors including you and your father are in desperate surroundings which tightens you every single moment. I hope you understand that the situation is influencing the people. You should also understand that your father is starting to lose hope, too. While I was going through the story I have never seen your father scolding you and mentioning about death. In page 85 your father said ' Do you want to die? Is that what you want? ' He doesn't really mean it. It's just that your making his judgements and thoughts more unclear. So do not give up at least for your father. Well,, you should feel lucky to have survived in this disaster and be thankful for having a dad that protects you and loves you all the time. As you said in page 85 about the little boy, 'What if that little boy doesn't have anybody to take care of him? What if he doesn't have a papa?' you should realize that it is a gift of having a dad like that. I guess I kept talking about your behavior that I didn't thought was like. I'm sorry for it. Anyway, I'll continue reading the book and hope you survive till the end to meet a bright world again without any dark, gray ash.

Three open-ended questions that I had as reading the book

1. Why did the woman leave the man and the boy? (Why had the relationship gotten worse?)

A: From page 55 to 58, the man looks back into the time when he had a big fight with the woman over whether letting her leave the man or not. You can see that the woman is extremely upset with the man and doesn’t believe or trust him anymore as a spouse or a partner of the survival. She thinks that he’s going to stand as a spectator and let the boy and her get killed by “them”. It seems like there’s a great danger lingering around them, and she seems like to be scared of those dangerous people.
Did the man really consider the woman as a useless burden and that’s why he lost his credit? This question just relates to the question #1 above. She says on page 56, I should have done it a long time ago. When there were three bullets in the gun instead of two. It tells you that the man has done something not good with the bullet. There are two possible scenarios. First one is that he might have wasted it in a stupid way, and he gave a bad impression to the woman that he isn’t a reliable person to protect her and their son. Another one is that he might have killed an innocent person or killed someone in a cruel way. She got frightened by his cruelness and thought that he could betray them at some point and that’s why she wanted to leave him.
The man’s reaction to her anger shows that he made a serious-enough mistake to drive her nuts. He just begged her not to leave him and promised that he would do anything for her. However, it seems like the woman is ready to face the death and she’d rather accept her death than being with the man. The conversation on page 57 supports that idea. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is. Finally, she decided to leave the man and even the boy. Maybe she thought at least the boy would be safer with the man than herself.

2. Is the man a cold-hearted and cruel person or a practical and penetrating person?

A: The answer depends on which part you gave more attention to. According to two incidents that reflected his characteristic, you can see that he took an easy but kind of heartless way to save his son and his own life. …leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead. (Pg.66) You can see his action as a way to protect his child, which is doing his duty well as a father of one. Otherwise, he seems to be good at shooting a gun. Maybe he has had many chances to use it, but in a negative perspective, he seems to have no sympathy for the man he just killed and it’s like he doesn’t feel guilty just because the man tried to have his son as a hostage.
At least at that time, he had the reason to act in such a cold way, but when the boy wanted to save the dog and another boy he saw in a village, the man said big no-no to his son. We could take him and we could take the dog. The dog could catch something to eat. We cant. And I’d give that little boy half of my food. Stop it. We cant. (Pg.86) If the man had had a little bit of understanding, he should at least have persuade the boy with the reasons that they couldn’t do that. He just kept saying no to the boy, which could have hurt his feeling. As I wrote, you can evaluate the man’s personality in either positive or negative way, and you can even say that he is a double-faced person.

3. Who are “the bad guys”?

A: As I mentioned in the Question #1, there’s a danger around the man and the boy and that is not just an apocalypse but also some bad people. From page 51 to 100, we saw two groups of people which the man called as “the bad guys”. It seems like there are sort of small groups who are moving together and there is a tension between the groups. The man emphasized the fact that they’re good guys to ensure the boy that they’re doing nothing wrong, different from the men they faced. Are we still the good guys? he said. Yes. We’re still the good guys (Pg.77) You can also find out that the man and the boy are hiding from others because they don’t have enough power to protect themselves. All they have is a pistol that the man’s got. When they escaped from the group of men after shooting the man, they left the cart behind them. When they came back to get it, everything was searched by the bad guys. You can see that there’s nobody to trust except for the partner(s) in this chaotic situation. So, if you want to know a definition of “the bad guys” in this book, it could be “the people who don’t move within your group and can steal your goods and food or even who can kill you”.

Timeline ~♥


As I read throughout the book it absolutely was getting more and more interesting…
In this part of the story the man and the boy spots more survivors. The man and the boy refers to them as ‘ the bad guys’.
Start ☞
(pg. 50) We can see how pure and angelic the boy is in this gray and dying world. He cries for the man who got struck by lightning. He begs his father to save the poor man but in the reality there’s nothing they could do for the man. They pass the lightened man in silent.

(pg. 52) This is the page where the man’s wife first comes up. At 1:17, the clock stops. The power is gone. By the way ‘she’ cradles her belly in one hand, it seems she’s pregnant.

(pg. 58) ‘She’ leaves her family.
She would do it with a flake of obsidian. He’d taught her himself. Sharper than steel. The edge an atom thick.
The conclusion is that she killed herself. It can be found that the man and the woman had been talking about their life, should they continue living or just die, seriously before. The boy in instant understands that his mom had left them.

(pg. 59) This is the part where the woman gives birth to the boy. Besides you can find out more about the woman’s personality how she was deliberate and cool-hearted.

(pg. 60) On the road, people wearing canister masks approaches with a truck.

(pg. 62) One of member of the group leaves his group and encounters the man and the boy.

(pg. 66) Q. what’s roadrat??? L
However, the stranger gets hold of the boy and uses knife to threaten the man. This was his mistake. The man fires his gun in the stranger’s forehead.

(pg. 78) The man again searches for any danger around them using his binoculars. However, it’s the boy who sees smoke past buildings. Taking a risk, they head to the place where the smoke comes up

(pg. 81) They hear a dog barking which follows them for 2 days afterward.

(pg. 82) They sleep in a parked car and it rains outside.

(pg. 84) This boy actually has better sense than the man. He sees a boy, about his age, wrapped in an outsized wool coat across the road. The boy chases the boy, but he is already gone. On this part, again we can see how naïve the boy is. Besides, from the dialogue on the page 85, loneliness of the boy is found. However, the man is edgy by the thought that there actually are people there and they are watching them, hiding themselves.

(pg. 91) Personally, I think this is the part where you can get much hint of the story.
An army in tennis shoes, tramping ~ Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in a number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold ad fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.
To me, it seems like the world is ended by the big war. Army is still moving and there’s slave somehow. So… the leaders (man in power) are still alive and the war is still going on?

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Assignment number 1-(4) Writing down 3 quotes that appeal to me

Still, I had lots of problem reading and understanding the story line of ‘The Road’, but as Diana teacher had told us, I could understand ‘a little more’ about the story than the first time. Maybe one thing that made me understand more about the story was because of the scene of man and stranger conflicting. That kind of tension makes me pay more attention to the story than usual.

Page 62 ~ 66
Pg.64 Where did you get it?
Found it.
That’s a lie.
Pg.65 Why are you looking at him?
I can look where I want to.
No you can’t. If you look at him again, I’ll shoot you.

Those five pages were main pages that I paid most attention to, while reading from page 51 to 100. It can be seemed as a normal fighting scene between the man and the stranger, but it somewhat came to me differently. To me, it seemed like a scene that showed heartless world, which was a main atmosphere of ‘The Road’. And that made this story look more tragic. In the story, the man is being very careful not to trust others or to be seen by others. As I could see from the quotes on page 64, the man does not believe what stranger says since he noticed danger. Also, he is trying his best to keep the boy from the danger. He doesn’t even allow the stranger looking at the boy (pg.65). In the end, when the stranger snatches the boy, the man shot him.

Page 70
Take me with you.
No. I want you to wait here.
Please, Papa.
Stop it. I want you to do what I say. Take the gun.
I don’t want the gun.
I didn’t ask you if you wanted it. Take it.

These pages can also be said as an example of showing heartless world, but I could feel another one rather than the one I felt on pages 62 to 66. The boy doesn’t want to be left. Well, it is very common reaction that people can expect from all the boys at that age. Most of the children don’t want to be left alone. However, unlike many children these days, the boy in the story was born after apocalyptic disaster. (It is mentioned somewhere from page 3 to 50) But he’s not still adapted to the disastrous environment, and he’s feeling bad and worried about being left alone. That means that he already saw and experienced many cruel and brutal events which occurred after apocalypse that he couldn’t bear at that age.

Page 77
Are we still the good guys?
Yes. We’re still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.

The last quote is from page 77. Well, I want to add the dialogue which is on pages 100 and 101. I think that these parts show that the boy is starting to get suspicious about his own values and identity. He repeats asking his father about if they are doing right thing, and whenever he does so, his father reassures him that they are. But actually, I guess the boy’s trust toward his father (or even himself) is descending, judging by him asking questions a lot or saying ‘I don’t know’ lots of times.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Week 2--Assignments

You guys have been doing an AMAZING job on this blog. I have truly enjoyed reading everyone's responses and comments. I think it is helping you to read each other, too (at least I hope it is!). This week I want you to finish the literary terms assignment. Find at least 10 examples from p. 3-50 and 10 more from 51-100.

Blog assignment one:

due: Before Monday, April 12 at 11 p.m.

Create a new post responding to p. 51-100 of The Road. This post should be a minimum of 500 words (one page typed--you can use a word processor to check yourself). You should complete one or more of the following:

1) Create a time-line of the events for this section of the book. Include everything that happens and all of the characters that are involved. Try to include as many specifics as possible. Include page numbers for reference.
2) Find a character or situation in the book that reminds you of someone you know, something that has happened in your life, or something you have read/seen before. Explain in detail what about the book reminds you of something from life and how it is similar or different from what you know about in life.
3) Ask three insightful, open-ended questions about the chapter you have read to this point. These questions should not be easily answered by looking in a dictionary or encyclopedia, but rather questions about the ideas and characters in the text itself. Try to answer each question based on your understanding of the text to this point. Support your answer with details from the text and page numbers.
4) Write down three quotes from the chapter that you read that appeal to you and the page on which they appear. Explain in a paragraph for each quote what is happening in the text at this point, what the quote means, and what about the language of the author appeals to you.
5) Draw picture of a visual image/event from the chapter of the text you have read (you will need to upload it to blogger somehow). Try to label specific things from the text in your picture with the author’s words, ideas, and page numbers. Write a response to the event or image you have captured visually.
6) Write a letter to a character in the book or to the author about this chapter. Don’t just summarize, give a reason for why you felt compelled to write him/her a letter about some event or word in the book.


Blog assignment 2:

You should read and thoughtfully respond to two or more other students' responses before class on Wednesday night. A thoughtful response says something meaningful, not "great job!" It should be clear from what you say that you have read and considered their ideas. You can ask questions, add ideas, disagree, or support their points.

Blogging etiquette is that you should try to respond to people who respond to you.

Meeting the minimum of blogging requirements is a minimum grade. Try to respond to everything you find interesting.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

A letter to "the man"

Dear “the man”

I wish that you’re doing okay with your son. As I read through the book, I realized that you got such a burden on your back since you have to survive from the risky surrounding and to take care of your little son at the same time. The book doesn’t have any direct or specific mention about how the world has come to the end. So, I don’t know how you got into all this chaotic mess, but the description of where you’re at tells me it would’ve been something to do with a volcano eruption or a disaster related with fire since you described the setting full of ashes and dust. It makes me think that everything might have happened all of a sudden, because there aren’t any people survived except for you and your son so far in the story.
Oh, and in your dialogue, I easily understand that the boy is your son, but otherwise, the relationship seems like just a man with a boy, neither of them knowing each other well. But still, he is the only one you can rely on, isn’t he? Yeah, even though he’s much younger than you, it seems like you’re also learning something from him. Related with that, I came up with some questions about your family. Where’s your wife? You didn’t mention about her directly in the conversations. I feel really sorry and it might be rude to ask, but, has something bad happened to her? It seems like you are under the double pressure to cover the mother’s part at the same time! Well, your son is mature enough, compared to other boys in his age, (even though I don’t know how old he is, I can guess he isn’t as old as I) but he has nightmares and every childish problem and you are the one who should take care of all of them.
Besides, you are having a hard time with heading to the south, right? It’s cold, ashes are all over, sometimes snowing, the cart isn’t working well, you are out of food… Almost everyday, you are facing the brand-new problems and it looks like it’s never going to end. Your son is thinking a negative way, and you are as critic as him about the situation you are having. But I don’t recommend you to be that way. It’s going to make it worse unless you think, ‘We can get over it no matter what!’ Even though you guys are the only humans survived on the Earth, there is always hope. And it isn’t the end of the story! I know and understand how depressing it might be! But at least you survived from that horrible apocalypse. You should feel grateful for that one. Remember your wife, and every innocent people who died. You are the one who has to lead the Earth back to what it was like. I’ll look forward to hearing good news about you in the book. Don’t lose hope! And if you can’t avoid the adventure, just enjoy it! Good luck! Send my regards to your little smarty-pants, too!

-April 6th, From Jessie-

Quotes

Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watchingthe ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said : If he is not the word of God God never spoke (page 5)

This quote seems to ive off an important hint about the relationship between the man and the boy. Besides, this 3 sentences reveals the man's characteristic intensively. Through out the whole story, the man seems to be very cold-headed and penetrating. Binoculars he carry all the time shows that he is very prudent. The time set on this scene even emphasizes his cod characteristic. Daylight congeals over the land instead of giving warmth or brightening to the land, 'the man's ' gaze is even more frigid.
Besides the characteristic of 'the man', relationship between the boy and the man is quite mysterious. If you look up the word 'warrant' it means an official writren statement that gives sb permission to do something. First interpretation of this sentence is that the man is actually a 'bad guy'. Though the boy calls the man 'Dad', 'warrant' is not the kind of word you use to your son.
If you look at the page 12, there's another dialogue that might be a clue to this sotry.

You forget soem tings, don't you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. (page 12)

By these two parts of the story, I thought that the important memory the boy lost is the rememberance of the man who is rather an enemy than his helper.
The second way of reading this is that the man is the boy's father. Then, the word 'warrant' will mean something more like a importance to his life. To me it seems that the second way of understanding is more appropriate. Way 'the man' cares for 'the boy' is somewhat tender and is in favor.
On page 11 the dialogue(even though you don't quite know who's asking and who's answering... it seems more likely that the man is the one answering) you can be quite sure about the man's sincere love wtoward the boy who is his son. Because in the point of having nothing but the boy beside him, the man thinks the boy as warrant of his life like an oasis in the desert.

Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay. (page 11)

Whichever way you interpret the word 'warrant', the boy is essential for the man's survival. The man, therefore regards the boy as the word of God. He thinks the boy as the last hope.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Assignment 2 by Tracy

So far, The Road has been very interesting and difficult for me. Sometimes I read the book and I don’t understand half of what the page say, that I wonder if I am reading a book written in English or some other foreign language. But I am really interested in the book, and I want to find out what happens in the end.
I decided to find three quotes I liked. Well, here’s the first one.
‘Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.’(p.6)
I can just imagine the father and the boy walking along a barren, gray road. The father will be pushing a rusty, dirty grocery cart. The boy would be trailing along with his father; they would be close, side-by-side. They are each other’s only companion, because they cannot trust other people. They would be each other’s only comfort, only hope.
‘Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite.’ (p.15)
Here the speaker describes what it is like to wake up at night, in the dark. There are no lights (it’s gray in the day, practically no light at night, I suppose) and the huge, indefinite darkness just surrounds you. You don’t need eyes since you can’t see an inch in front of your nose; you just go swinging your arms to detect any obstacles you might get into. The ‘arms oaring’ part might describe the speaker swinging his arms and it might look like he’s oaring in a boat to get somewhere. So if he’s really oaring, what is he trying to reach? We don’t know, and probably the speaker doesn’t, either. Reaching for the unknown, it might be a matrix or a lode, nobody knows. The stars circle Earth, and in earth this unknown place belongs, and the speaker is ‘oaring’ around this unknown place, trying to reach a place he can feel safe.
The next to are connected to each other.
‘He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.’ (p.5)
‘The boy’s shadow crossed over him… God’s own firedrake.’ (p.31)
Both these phrases connect the boy with God, and I think the speaker is seeing the boy as a messenger of God. The boy is innocent and kind at heart, small enough to play with just a truck, but he is mature enough to watch over his father and point out promises that his father had broken. I think the boy is sort of a companion and a guardian who leads the man through the story.
These are the phrases I liked, and even though they are complex it felt nice to try to explain them and understand them in my own way. But still, there are sentences of which I feel are unexplainable to anyone but the author.

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.

The Road

As soon as I opened the first page, I was really overwhelmed by the amount of words I couldn't understand. However as I read the book, I could understand more clearly even thought I still had parts I couldn't understand fully.
This book is mainly about the man and the boy who survived after the earth came to an end. This book starts as the man wakes in the woods in the dark. The man and the boy is planning to go South because the weather is getting cold. They are walking the road and they are the only people walking the road.
The man and the boy don't have names; the man is the man and the boy is the boy.
The world came to its end for unknown reasons and it seems like few years had passed since the disaster.
Somehow the man and the boy survived and they literally have each other to depend on.
The man seems to be the boy's father. The author keeps calling them the man and the boy and I'm quite confused if they are really related or they just found each other after the world ended. Whether they are related or not, the man seems to really love the boy. When the boy asks the man what he is going to do if the boy dies, the man says he is going to die too. I could feel sincerity coming from the man.
Also when the man gave the boy coca cola and cocoa, I thought it was a fatherly thing to do.
The boy seems to be too small to know what's really going around them and I wondered how the man feels. The writing style the author is using is very calm and it doesn't show much of emotions. So we can only guess what the man is feeling.
How would it feel to know that they might be the last human beings?
Despair? Anguish? Hopeless?

I also found it quite ironic that even though all the people are dead, the man and the boy still desperatly try to survive. I always thought communication and interaction between other people made human beings happy and content and the main goal of life is to become happy.
Are they happy? I don't know. Judging from this book I thought that it was their instincts that lead them to survive.

Maybe for them each other's presence is the main thing that keeps them alive.

This book left me with so many questions and uneasy feelings but I can't wait to read more and hopefully I will understand this book better.


Assignment 2. Christine

I really enjoyed reading the first part of The Road, though it was such a challenging book for me. Meanwhile, I’ve found some characters and the situations are matching with the other book’s character, and my own personal experience.

To begin with, there’s a part where the man and the boy find the supermarket, goes in, and finds a Coca Cola. It’s sure that the man also wants it, -or, he probably wants it more than the boy- he gives it to his son to drink it. Even a can of a coke reminds him of the pleasurable memories from the past. The boy asks father if he want some. “I want you to drink it,”(23) the man says. It’s maybe because that he wants to give a piece of the past to his little boy, who’s too young to remember the things before the dooms day. I thought that ‘the man’ is really similar to ‘the Giver’ in the book The Giver. In it, the Giver tries to pass down the memories of the past to the boy Jonas, since it’s part of his job. However, as the time goes by, he passes over big things to minor, littlest things. He tries to give Jonas how was it like long ago. Pleasurable and peaceful times. They become deeply related in a spiritual way with each other.

At the very first part of the book, the boy says to his father.(10) "Are we going to die?" he asks. "Sometime. Not now." the man answers. This conversation between them about living and death really reminded me of the talk with my dad when I was a little kid. I don't know how old is the boy in the book The Road is, but I'm sure that he'd probably felt what I felt that day.
Well, I kind of have lots of thoughts by myself, and sometimes it gets too deep. I believe it was the time right after my grandfather passed away because of lung cancer. I'd never experienced someone so close to me passing away, so for the first time, I was thinking deeply about the life and the death. I suddenly got scared; 'Every human has to die. Then I'll also have to die someday. I won't be able to see, touch, feel, and sing!' The fear of the 'death' was so big that I couldn't control it anymore. With tears bursting out, I ran to my father. "What happened?" he asked. "Dad, am I going to die?" He didn't answer. "Are we all going to die?" I asked again. "Well, someday. But look, Christine. We all have to die. Nothing lasts forever. Yet, the sure thing is that it'll come to you much much later. And when that time comes, you'll be able to understand it and accept it. Sometimes time itself gives you the knowledge." His words calmed me down. Though even now I don't really feel like I could accept the death, but I believe that someday, I will.

assignment 2) 'The Road' reminded me of the movie 'The Day after Tomorrow'

At the first time I got this book, I was very curious about the deep meaning of the title ‘The Road’. I had background information that it was an apocalyptic story, but I couldn’t figure out the relationship that the title would have with the events of this story. As I read through, I could see that ‘the road’ was the place where the main characters long for their survival and think again about the lives of human beings. Moreover, while reading through this story I had lots of difficulties comprehending unusual vocabularies that I’ve encountered for the first time. The atmosphere of the words used made me expect that the ending of this story would be rather depressing and negative. However, I’m eager to know how the story would end and how the two main characters (man and the boy) would get through harsh environment and sustain their lives.

Come to think of it, this book, ‘The Road’ seems to have many apocalyptic aspects of the world similar to those of a movie called ‘The Day after Tomorrow’. Mainly concerned with the idea that they both contain events that lead to the end of the world and the fact that they show us the great feeling of love between son and father, it enabled me to be a lot closer with apocalyptic stories or Science Fictions.

To start with, relating ‘The Road’ with the movie ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ showed me the characteristics of apocalyptic stories and what they warn to the human beings. The basic storyline of ‘The Road’ is that a man and his son were left in the burnt village with ashes and dust all over them. They are trying to move South to avoid the freezing temperatures and survive with all their might. On their way heading South, they encounter hardships with keeping their wills tight and heading for their goals while looking at dead bodies stranded all over. The movie ‘The Day after Tomorrow’, as many people might already know, is also a disaster movie with the ice freezing and the temperature of the Earth going rapidly down. There are some survivors hoping for the Earth to recover to its original state, meanwhile they fighting for their sustenance, competing with each other for food and basic needs. According to these two stories we can figure out the impact that these incredible disasters could bring to humans. In these cases they only seek for their own survival, not even considering about the others in the same situation. The close bonds between the human beings weaken and the world becomes a place where peace could never be found. Humans begin to act like animals literally and compete for only their own benefits. It seems to show about the real humans and warn us about what we could do in unexpected situations. As many of you might have felt, this is bad, really bad. But there’s some light of hope even in the toughest environment.

What is the light? It’s probably the people whom you love. In ‘The Road’, the man really cares for his son, clutching him tight and giving his son Coca Cola and cocoa to drink. Also in ‘The Day after Tomorrow’, the main characters, a father who is searching through the snow to reach the civilians and the son longing for his dad to come and rescue them from the library worry and pray for each other. In the story they finally meet one another alive and feel the importance of family and the intense love between them again. Like this, I think that catastrophes can rather teach us a lesson of the close bonds we can keep even in bad situations.

Overall, through reminding myself of the movie ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ and relating it with ‘The Road’, I could learn about how the apocalyptic events can affect humans and what we should remember even in the harsh environment. I wonder what will happen next in the story ‘The Road’, I’m eager to find out. Will the man and the boy reach South and live happily ever after or will they have some other problems to get themselves through? I’ll figure out.

'The Road' vs 'Blindness'

Assignment 2 - 'writing about something the story remined me of'


When I was reading the first part of the book ‘The Road’, I had a lot of difficulties in understanding what it was about. I couldn’t understand the words and I couldn’t put the stories together into one. However, there was one thing that kept me from not giving up. It was the unknown familiarity of the story. I think the familiarity was because of the many apocalyptic movies and books I’ve seen. As I read the book, the story kept on overlapping with a book called ‘Blindness’ by Jose Saramago.

‘Blindness’ is an apocalyptic book. The problem starts when a man suddenly yells out that he cannot see in the middle of the street. Then, the people who had contact with him get the same symptoms. As more and more people start to get this virus, the government decides to lock them in a mental institution. The book is mainly about the story inside this mental institution and the events that happen after they escape and go back into the world.

I think the biggest relation between the two books is that people can’t see well. In the book ‘Blindness’, people with the virus cannot see anything but white waves. They (the infected people) say that they feel like they are swimming in a pool of milk. So, as the story goes on, people learn to conceive things by touching them and to keep balance without looking. Similarly, if you see on page 15, the man says, ‘The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening.’ At first, people who can’t see feel like they can’t do anything anymore. However, as time passes they get used to it and they can live with it. Although it is a common plot used by authors I always feel amazed and touched by human’s adapting abilities. I mean, you can just experience it by turning off the light and staring at the darkness for a few minutes. Your eyes adapt and you can see distant outlines of some objects around you.

Another thing that caught my eye was the strong relations that seemed to form or get stronger as the tragedy progresses. In ‘Blindness’, people were complete strangers at first. However, as people strived to survive, they became bonded together. They shared even the littlest piece of crackers and held hands so that they wouldn’t fall apart. Similarly, in ‘The Road’, the man and the boy had a very strong bond. If you see on page 29, the author narrates that the man knew ‘That the boy was all that stood between him and death.’ Not only that, the boy seems to care about the man if you see him trying to share with the man, Coca Cola and Cocoa. I think this is why I like by apocalyptic pieces so much. As I read the book, I could feel how important it is to keep strong bonds and form great relationships. Caring about one another and surviving altogether as a result of each other’s sacrifices, it seems so great and makes me feel thankful and happy that they all survived.

But, more than the two points I made above, the thing that most reminded me of the book ‘Blindness’ was the supermarket and the continuous mentioning of other survivors. In the book ‘Blindness’, there are a lot of scenes where people violently fight over food because there are so few. The scene that struck me the most was the scene where people were all fighting with each other in a supermarket. In this scene the woman who still has her sight, finds a storage room underground. She silently moves down and finds food to take to her people. But, before she leaves the room, she opens up a sausage to eat it because she was so hungry. However, starving people smelled the sausage and started running for her! It was so freaky, gross and violent but it was really interesting too. Anyways, the man in ‘The Road’ also says on page 42 that ‘It was for us and it will be for others and we don’t know who they will be and we can’t hear them coming. It’s not safe.’ Not only that, he keeps on saying things like ‘This was not a safe place. They could be seen from the road now it was day.’(p.5). At first, I couldn’t get what it means. From the earlier descriptions, there was supposed to be nothing but this man had a fear of something. However, from the page 28, ‘In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees.’ and page 46 ‘We’re not the first ones here.’ I was able to remember the striking scene from the ‘Blindness’ and understand that the fear the man had was directed at the other survivors.

As I read this story, I could find many connections between the two books. In some ways these books are very different. However, I found that after I related two books together, it made the book a little bit easier to understand. While reading the next part of the book, I will try to connect it more with other stories so that I can understand better.

Unique, Response to the Book, p.3-50

In this article, I'd like to discuss things I found interesting about this book. The first one to discuss is the structure of the novel, the second one is the personalities of the characters, and the last one is some motifs shown in the book.



1. Structure

The book mostly talks about the present, the man and the boy following the road to reach south. However, between those paragraphs showing the present, there appears some other paragraphs showing the man's (the protagonist's) mind and thoughts. They do not appear so often, but still, they come up a few times to give us some information about the past.

The novel starts with the story of the present.(p.3) The man wakes up, goes out, sees... And then, he thinks about the dream on a monster he had the night before. (p.3~4) After the talk about the dream, it goes back again to the story of the present.

Then, on page 12, a piece of memory of the man comes up. It's about the day he spent with his uncle on the lake. It's a seperate story from the main story, and it's giving a scene that can be contrasted with the ashed world of the present, emphasizing how the present world is horrible.

The next one is about the dreams the man has on his wife. (p.18~19) Through it, even if he doesn't really express his feelings about his wife directly, we can see that he really values the memory he has about his wife and he misses his wife.

* But here comes my question: reading the book, I became quite sure that the man, his wife and the boy are a blood-sharing family, and that the man loves and cares about the boy, but then why are they 'the man' and 'the boy', not 'the father' and 'the son'? The author is maybe doing that on purpose, to hide the bond between the father and the son? It just seems to me that the author is avoiding to make sure that the man's wife gave birth to the son, to emphasize that the boy does not remember anything about his mom.

Back to the topic. On the page 21, there comes another paragraph about the man's dream being so rich in color. Then on page 28, there's a paragraph on the first years of the post-apocalyptic world, full of refugees on the road. On page 32, there's another dream of his wife, whom he feels sorry to since he thinks he left his wife somewhere else alone to die. Then the man is busy living the real life, so that he doesn't have any thoughts to show us.

So, there's no strict structure the book has. It's just giving us paragraphs after paragraphs, mostly of the present life of the man and the boy. However, we shouldn't miss the paragraphs that give us some clues to figure the man's past and how the world was like before, and I expect to see them more throught the whole book.


2. Characters

1) The man
He's really cautious of the circumstances, so he keeps staring at the mirror to check his back, having guns near him and moving from one place to another. At the same time he misses his old days, wanting to see things from his childhood days and keep seeing his wife in his dream. Also, he's trying hard to carry out the role of father, by hugging the boy when it's cold and saying some words to give comfort to him when he knows it's not true.

2) The boy
I was actually surprised at this boy. He asks his papa whether he'll gonna die, he expects there to be no coke any more when he grabs a can for the first time, and he even got a promise from his father to drink the same with him, even if he knows that his father tried to save cocoa for him. On the other hand, he gets excited about sliding down the hill on the cart, seeing a waterfall and finding a toy in the cart, and get scared by a nightmare. He was sometimes like a grown-up and sometimes like an innocent child. That was why I was really sorry to him. Because the situation forces him to grow up, he has to be an adult when he must have the innocence of youth only.


3. Motif

There were three motifs I found: gray, the road, and the God.

The word 'gray' is the best word to describe the world, since it's covered with ash, the sky full of smoke and hardly a thing is alive.

The road is the path the man and the boy follow. Their destination is on the end of the road, and they keep following it. The road becomes the setting of the novel.

And the God. The man constantly questions the presence of God. It starts with the word 'godless' used to describe the world on page 4, and it's followed by a sentence, 'If he is not the word of God God never spoke.' on page 5 (* Well, I'm not sure whether 'he' means the boy or the man. Any of you guys got a clue?) .

And the man's feeling on the god is more clearly shown on page 11, when he asks 'Are you there? Will I see you at last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a hear? Damn you eternally have your soul?'. He is questioning the presence of God, or at least blaming God for not doing anything.

Beside these, on page 16, it says that a snowflake expired like the last host of christendom and we can say that it has a slight meaning of the end of christendom. On page 28, it refers refugees as 'creedless shells of men' and it shows that people lost their faith in god. The word god appears on page 31, yet it doesn't show the man's feeling about God.



-The End.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Looking back my own experience after this reading.

When I started to read this book, I didn’t even know what to do. There were so many new words that I can’t look for every single word. Also the background and plots were hard to draw in my head. When I checked the Gifted Class The Road Blog to see what I should do for the assignment, I was little bit worried because I had some problems with understanding the details of the book. Rather than trying to focus on every little detail, I tried to feel the overall mood of the story. I thought it would be better to find the background atmosphere and get to know about the characters. While I was reading the part from page 3 to 50, I could find some information about the man and the boy. The man is the boy’s father and there’s almost nothing alive except them. Furthermore, it seems there had been a disaster or something so that everything was ruined. In this situation, the man and the boy spend all the time together. They walk along the road, looking for food, sleep outside and rely on each other. Of course the whole mood is very serious and nervous, I wanted to focus more on the relationship between the man and the boy than the events. I liked the man trying to take great care of his son during the whole time. He often asked his son if he was okay, and tried to give as many things as he could to his son. That reminded me of my father. Maybe this would be little bit out of the story, but I wanted to tell you how similar to the man my father is. When I was only 8, I remember, I often went to fishing with my father. We used to spend whole night at the fishing spot. One day, suddenly it started to rain. My father quickly built a tent and we spend the night in the tent listening to the raindrops. I remember it was the most scary, cold, but sweet, warm, and precious memory. It was very cold because of the weather, I felt warm in my fathers protection. I was so young and there was nobody to believe but my father. He gave me all the clothes and blankets even though he had been cold too. Also, he kept asking me if I were cold, hungry, sleepy, scary, and okay just like the man did to his son. Although the situation and the mood are slightly different from the book, I could notice that all fathers are the same. They try their best to do everything if it is for their kids. If I were in that situation, (of course I do no really want to be) I would believe my father and rely on him a lot. No matter how hard time it would be, I will be happy if I am with him. Just being with him, it makes me feel comfortable and relaxed. While I was reading the book, I couldn’t really think of any similar experience to that in the story because it is too serious and apocalyptic story. However, when I finished reading the part, somehow I felt warm as if the man was my father. And it reminded me of my experience in my childhood. I don’t know if there is someone who thinks that it’s little bit off the track to focus on the relation between father and child, but I think it’s also important to think about the character’s relationship and their feelings to each other. This was what I felt about the man and the son while reading the part up to page 50.