Thursday, December 3, 2009
end of the road...as we know it
So I was wondering what we should make of the boy's ability to read? If you really thought the world was over, would you bother teaching your child to read? It destabilizes the bare nature existence that the rest of the text presents. McCarthy --I think--strips the text down to its essentials (no extravagant, decorative quotation marks or semi-colons for this guy) to bring the reader into this apocalyptic world. In this ashen landscape, even names become illusive and intangible...and yet... the boy can read the labels on the cans. Is this purely for the sake of knowing what he is opening? or does it suggest some semblance of hope? To push it even further, perhaps giving the boy the ability to read and write gives him the ability to write his own creation story, to form a kind of mythology for the world to come; it seems to me that the boy's meeting up with a girl is meant to echo Judo-Christian creation stories. (Honestly, I thought this part was a little weak on McCarthy's part--like he didnt have the strength to leave the boy alone.) In the end, the strangest aspect of the road is that in a post-civilized world, the only thing we are left with is humanity. And as they travel further down the road, it becomes impossible to turn back--just as it is no longer possible for the world the reader knows to return from the brink.
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I remember someone in class mentioning how this book seemed like a criticism of humanism, but I think what you're saying here really refutes that possibility, or at least gives both views equal ground. I found one of the most interesting characteristics of the boy was just how inherently empathetic he was, despite his desperate life thus far. No matter how much his father attempts to explain to him the "ways of the world" and how to fend for himself completely in spite of others' desolation, he still yearns to sacrifice himself and his supplies to help people. In the end it seems only the humanist can really find enough purpose to live on.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great point. I never really thought about it until now, but I agree that it's a bit weak on McCarthy's part. A boy of that age not being able to read when in our society it's such a standard put of our lives would be something that stands out and helps put this all into perspective. In regards to his humanity, I think it would showcase it insofar as he is living within confines that we cannot even imagine while still growing into the hero of the novel.
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