Week 6 Vanessa- three insightful questions

Yeah! We finally finished reading ‘The Road’. I’m just so happy by the fact that I actually read all the text in the book and understood at least the important events. I expected the story to end that way because there were some spoilers among us (too bad!), anyways I’m just so glad that the little boy met someone whom he can trust and went on to continue his journey.

1. On page.259 there is a phrase where the little boy says he himself is the only one who cares about everything. At the first glimpse I didn’t think this phrase is somewhat important or crucial to the theme of the story but as I thought about it, there were some insightful meanings in this phrase. So why did the little boy say something like that? My answer to that question is that the little boy perceived his father as not a very warm-hearted person (now that they are in harsh condition) and thought he himself was the only one to save other people stranded on the road. The little boy saw his papa not helping other strangers on the road and not opening his heart toward them. Even though as a reader of this book, some people might think that the man’s attitude toward other stranded people on the road is somewhat reasonable because it is just for survival, the little, warm-hearted boy’s mind doesn’t quite understand that situation and only looks on the outer side of his father. Another reason why the little boy says he is the only one who has to worry about everything is because the boy already knows from happenings that other survivals on the road cannot care for others. For example the boy saw people eating each other, which was a big shock to him. From those circumstances the boy is quite sure that other people on the road do not have the heart to care for everything in the world. I can also assume that the boy is really frustrated and disappointed by that fact. There’s basically no one that he can rely on and he might feel some kind of a heavy duty to understand everything in the world and help the world recover from that great depression.

2. On page 260, on the second paragraph the last sentence says ‘But we did kill him’. The little boy says this after they encounter a man who stole their cart full of supplies and got them back by threatening the stranger with the flaregun. The stranger wasn’t physically killed so he just went away, but there is a question to why the boy said ‘But we did kill him.’ I think we can understand that sentence better when we consider ‘being killed’ as in mentally getting hurt. After the man and the boy got their cart back and left the stranger on the road, even though it was them surviving from another danger, the little boy was really upset. He knew that the stranger was hurt in his heart. The little boy understood the stranger’s feelings and probably thought ‘how would I feel if I were in that kind of a situation?’ This thought made him say that the stranger was mentally hurt by the man and the boy trying to scare the stranger away. This also directly relates to the first question I asked about the boy being the only one to understand everything in the world. The little boy always kept in his mind that he is the only one that cares for others no matter who they are, so he wanted to understand and sympathize with the stranger’s situation and his feelings. From this it is clearly proven that the little boy is someone who cares for everyone like God.

3. Lastly on page.268, the man and the boy are talking to each other and the man suggests to tell his son a story but his little boy sharply pointed out that ‘We’re always helping people in the stories but we don’t help people.’ It just means that the boy knew that they don’t act the same way with the behaviors of themselves in stories. What can we figure out from this? I can assume that the little boy had the intension of motivating his dad to help other people on the road by saying this ironical phrase. The boy probably figured out that if he said this, his dad would somehow be really ashamed of himself and feel sorry for not showing his son the best of him. Or it could just be the boy expressing his sudden anger and internal feelings of wrath. The boy is not happy with their behaviors, avoiding the others on the road, not even thinking of taking them along their journey. Some other thing I could figure out from this phrase was that the little boy, knowing that the reality does not exactly fit with the imaginary story, lost his childlike innocence and already overcame the reality of the world. It makes readers kind of sad by the fact that the little boy feels something that he shouldn’t have felt so early at that kind of age.