Okay sooo final I think I somewhat understand what is going on in this book It’s the end of the world and the man and the boy are trying to find other people And make it to where every there going alive…. haha
I think some one is going to die.. It doesn’t seem like those happy books where they live happily ever after and skip down a field… Since they have already had one run in with death I think there will be more bad things to come their way. Do you?
Maybe the world burnt down or there was a huge explosion because the book keeps mentioning a lot of ash everywhere. Anybody got any better ideas??
And who is this girl the father keeps talking about?? Wife??
Yeahh its my bday random facts i thoght you should know!
No one cares what you think Brennan. I just thought I needed to say that.
So, as Mr. Shipley said, the epiphany McCarthy had to write this book was from the love of his son and a past journal entry. This book is extremely glum, and the feeling of some ones passing is very apparent. I think that in the end of this book the child will die and the father will lament the passing of his son and feel he didn’t fill his duties as a parent and guardian. And from what I can gather the wife or woman in this story committed suicide. I am confused on when but I think she did it because she might have thought it was the end of the world. Like in that radio broadcast when it was just a scary tale but people tuned in late and thought it was real and all those people killed themselves. Im still lost but I think I get the big picture…
The father is talking about his wife who killed herself in fear because she thought she would get raped and brutally murdered. She killed herself with one of the three bullets, thats why there were two left in the present of the story. I am surprised the father actually killed that guy who threatened to kill his son because he does not seem like he has the "guts" to do so. Are there any good guys in this story? They have not once came across a group of good people, only insane and starving people, except for that one man they followed and he later died.
alright from pg 46-66 i didnt really understand what was happening....all i know is that the dad is talking to her wife and how she killed herself from fear. Where are they at? What the deal with the truck? please help
ok so i agree with charlie! i'm very confused!! i think the dream about that woman must have been his wife. also the whole truck thing and the man, what exactly happened? i got confused about who was talking and what was going on. if anyone can explain that, please do!
im also really interested in knowing what happened that made ash everywhere.
I still cannnot quite tell why everything is turned to ash- who caused the fire, or was is not even a fire? When the man and the boy ran into the gang of refugees, i think i can explain what happened. For an unknown reason, they did not want the gang to hear them, and when one guy came into the woods, he was talking to the man and the boy. The conversation resulted in the gang member putting a knife to the boy's throat, and the man putting a bullet in the gang member's head.
Aside from that, i think a lot of foreshadowing was going on when the boy saw the other kid, and the father did not see anything. Possibly symbolizing that the boy still has hope, but the father has lost all mental strength.
also on page 89, when the man is thinking of "the world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities", i think it is a sign of the man and the boy going insane, and can no longer fathom true and happy things.
Maybe the the man and the boy soon turn to the gangs in the trucks to survive.
Maybe the gangs are people who have already lost their minds.
Ok, let me explain what has happened so far. The setting of this book begins with a NUCLEAR WAR! This is the cause for all those burned up and charred trees, buildings, and the extinction of many animals and foods. There is chaos throughout the US within the survivors who have little food and are dying slowly. The two protagonists are trying to go near the coast to possibly find more survivors, but specifically to find civilization and food. The father's wife kills herself due to the fear of being raped and killed due to so much chaos and people running around the cities and killing and raping people. These event is a flashback that is a first-person perspective by the father within the story.
I wonder if most people in this story are atheists or agnostic, because the family members do not make any allusions to the bible or pray even with all this chaos. Especially with the mother, who said she hoped to die with endless "nothingness" after she killed herself.
This next part of the book has gotten really confusing. Up til now all the places the father and son had searched were in ruins and filled with ash. Now they are finding dead bodies decaying everywhere and I think that is gross and creepy. Obviously the mother commited suicide, but why? Was this before all of this was happening, or did she just have a feeling? Or was this maybe yet another dream the father was having about her and means nothing at all? Also, why are there all these bad guys everywhere, how could they live through everything that is going on? Was it them that started the nuclear war or whatever it is that happened? Finally, I definately agree with Brennan about the foreshadowing with the son seeing the other little boy while the father couldn't, meaning he had hope still and the father was losing his.
Brennen's theory actually makes a lot of sense in this case. Maybe the "bad guys" are all the people who have gone insanse and think everyone else is a threat to them, thats why the boy and father tried to hide. Unless these people or "bad guys" are the reason of fear, and why the women killed herself. The seeing of the little boy i believe will come back later on, because when the boy heard the dog the dad didnt believe him, but then he heard it. So maybe the dad will see the little boy and others as well. But, what I am really annoyed with in this book is that the little boy really just wants to die. Every other page he always asks the same question, "are we going to die? Are you going to miss me when i die? When are we going to die?" What little boy wants to die that badly???
Alright, well i think that the "bad guys" could possibly be people on the same side of whoever cause the nuclear war (or what ever happened that caused everything to be covered in ash). Also, the "bad guys" kinda remind me of the so called "rebels" in Africa today.
As for the woman in the man's dreams, i am pretty sure that she committed suicide because she believed she was going to die anyways, and figured that it was the least painful and easiest way out.
I am really confused why the trees all of a sudden started to fall though. Im also confused on why it seems that they are the only somewhat sane people left.
i understood the first 45 pages of the road and after continuing to read on in the story i have become very confused about whats going on.
Also i can understand why the boy's father killed the man who threatened his son because he was afriad that the man would kill and eat his son if he allowed him to get to him.
I agree with Hillary that the next 45 pages became really confusing. At first it seemed like everyone else in the town was dead and now the father and his son are running from everyone they come across. Also, I don't understand who the "bad guys" in the story are and why the man shot one of them.
I also agree with Brennan and Hillary on the foreshadowing because the boy keeps telling his dad to go back and help the boy, but the dad keeps claiming that there was no boy which shows how he has lost most of his hope.
As get farther into Cormac McCarthey's novel "The Road" i feel it is getting very intense and little at the same time.
So far in the next 45 pages, the boys and the dad come to the conclusion that they need to move under the bridge in order to survive. They feel that if they show any sigh of life they will be killed, and since they made there home under the b ridge no smoke can be seen. As the days move along the boy and the dad start wandering around the woods and one evening they hear a truck moving along the road. The boy and the dad quietly get into the shadows of the woods so they wont be seen. While the truck passes by the boy and the dad take off running as fast as they can, not bing able to see anything because of the pitch black night. couple days later, some guys tries to kidnap the boy, but the dad shoots him in the head. so now the pistol that the dad had has 0 shots instead of 3. Along the road the boy an the dad see smoke so they go ahead and check it out. On the way the boy finds a child and tells his dad to help him but the dad say no. To finish off, the boy and the dad look around the village where the smoke is at and see who's there
Ultimately, i think the boy and the dad will get killed because they have to build a fire and there probably not many bridges on the way south, so i think they will have to build a fire in the open so therefore i think that they will get killed by the truck gang. the tone of the book goes from sad to nerve racking and intense, which can lead to some disaster waiting to happen
So after reading the next 45 pages in The Road, I have come up with a few points to share. So the father keeps referring to these "bad guys", but who can they possibly be? I believe that the father and the son are in a war. A war for survival. Anyone that is in their path, should be considered a bad guy. It is a war for survival. Every survivor is looking for shelter, food, water, and warmth. They have hit the harsh,cold winter with snow. The father and the son have both become sick. Now this war is also a game. You gamble to survive. The father is always gambling in what he does. It's a win lose situation. every time he finds something that may help in their survival, he leaves his son in a safe place and goes checks it out. Supplies are scarce and they are desperate for them.
Also they have been running into more and more people. The more people you find, the closer you are to civilization. They have less time to camp and to find more supplies. As the father continually says, "We have to keep moving". Like said before, anyone in the path of the father and child is a bad guy. The gang member took a risk and attacked the man's child. He payed the consequence for his action.
I am assuming the wife commited suicide because she knew that death awaited her. She thought of what would happen when the man ran out of bullets in his gun. What would happen next? So she ended all her misery.
So after reading the next 45 pages in The Road, I have come up with a few points to share. So the father keeps referring to these "bad guys", but who can they possibly be? I believe that the father and the son are in a war. A war for survival. Anyone that is in their path, should be considered a bad guy. It is a war for survival. Every survivor is looking for shelter, food, water, and warmth. They have hit the harsh,cold winter with snow. The father and the son have both become sick. Now this war is also a game. You gamble to survive. The father is always gambling in what he does. It's a win lose situation. every time he finds something that may help in their survival, he leaves his son in a safe place and goes checks it out. Supplies are scarce and they are desperate for them.
Also they have been running into more and more people. The more people you find, the closer you are to civilization. They have less time to camp and to find more supplies. As the father continually says, "We have to keep moving". Like said before, anyone in the path of the father and child is a bad guy. The gang member took a risk and attacked the man's child. He payed the consequence for his action.
I am assuming the wife commited suicide because she knew that death awaited her. She thought of what would happen when the man ran out of bullets in his gun. What would happen next? So she ended all her misery.
I think everyone agrees that this next part of the book has gotten confusing. Why are there all these dead bodies everywhere? Who are these “bad guys”? What do they want and where did they come from? Also, I find it ironic that the boy continually asks if they are going to die and the father says no because in reality, it seems there is no way that they are going to live. They walk past dead bodies every day and are slowly running out of food and supplies so it seems that are doomed to die. This makes the story much more suspenseful because McCarthy probably wants to reader to think that the boy and dad will die so that the reader continues to read. And in response to everyone else, the woman talked about is his wife that killed herself before the trip due to fear of what was to come of her life next.
Pages 45-90 of The Road has made the plot more confusing. I agree with Nick's first comment in that the woman that the father has been alluding to must have been his wife who killed herself in fear of this group of people who have taken over. It seems like these people might be some sort of terrorist group. It still seems like there must have been some sort of nuclear was as well, because the group that the man the father killed was from was wearing some sort of suits. These suits might have been to shield them from the effects of the weapons they have used. However it still also seems like the group went around terrorizing the survivors, which is why the man's wife killed herself. She killed herself in fear that they would come after her and torture her and eventually kill her. But hey I might be wrong!
The boy is interested in death, for there is nothing else for him to fixate his mind on but ash and ash. What a terrible childhood that would be, we have all thought about death at least once in our own lifetimes, if not we truly do live in a bubble of neglect and self indulgence. What I continue to find my mind attaching itself to is the son stating that we wants to die and the father not giving him a reason to live. The boy is young, but we all have rational reasons... even if it is faith. As I have stated before, false hope is still hope to the faithful, teach the little boy the truth about what is happening.
Now I am not attacking the father because he does tell the boy a lot, not enough to scare him perhaps but he shouldn't have that be his goal. Who knows where both their minds lay, I sure don't. The roads lead to nowhere, nowhere as we know of existence for words, grammar, names, no longer hold meaning. A structured society is meaningless and I strongly do not believe a commune of some kind exists. Since the atomic age we have been wrapped up in the space race, so where are those people? The humans would survive if there was a nuclear apocalypse, we are either just that smart or.... we are just that stupid.
Reading up to page 90 answered a lot of my questions from my last blog. They obviously are not the only people alive but they seem like the only civilized ones. After the encounter with those men or "bad guys" with the suits and diesel truck it seems like everyone is out to get eachother for food and survival. Almost like people have turned to insanity for hope and survival.
After having Mr. shipley explain the man's wifes death it makes a lot more sense to me, but why would she want to leave them behind and not have faith in her husband to keep them safe? He seems to be handling the safety of his son quite well. Another thought that goes through my mind is: why did he teach her a way to kill herself? I think that's sort of weird but that's just me.
Now that I think of it the only way all of this could have happened is from a nuclear war. Nothing else could caused this big of a destruction to the world and have ash everywhere. It also said in the flashback of his wife when she was pregnant that they could see a glow in the distance.
What really confused me was, did he really see a boy and is the dog really following them? Also, the boy talks about death alot, but it seems like he wants to die or he has no hope in surviving.
I think a lot of people have really good ideas. I agree with Brennen that maybe seeing the boy is foreshawdowing or symbolizing something.
For me, the story keeps getting more mysterious. More ideas and questions pop into my head while I'm reading it. It's almost kind of scary to read. I sometimes find myself having to look around my room to see if everything is okay.
23 comments:
Okay sooo final I think I somewhat understand what is going on in this book
It’s the end of the world and the man and the boy are trying to find other people
And make it to where every there going alive…. haha
I think some one is going to die.. It doesn’t seem like those happy books where they live happily ever after and skip down a field… Since they have already had one run in with death I think there will be more bad things to come their way. Do you?
Maybe the world burnt down or there was a huge explosion because the book keeps mentioning a lot of ash everywhere. Anybody got any better ideas??
And who is this girl the father keeps talking about??
Wife??
Yeahh its my bday random facts i thoght you should know!
I am sorry mr shipley, but i felt i needed to do this: alexa, i dont think anyone cares that it is your bday
No one cares what you think Brennan. I just thought I needed to say that.
So, as Mr. Shipley said, the epiphany McCarthy had to write this book was from the love of his son and a past journal entry. This book is extremely glum, and the feeling of some ones passing is very apparent. I think that in the end of this book the child will die and the father will lament the passing of his son and feel he didn’t fill his duties as a parent and guardian. And from what I can gather the wife or woman in this story committed suicide. I am confused on when but I think she did it because she might have thought it was the end of the world. Like in that radio broadcast when it was just a scary tale but people tuned in late and thought it was real and all those people killed themselves. Im still lost but I think I get the big picture…
The father is talking about his wife who killed herself in fear because she thought she would get raped and brutally murdered. She killed herself with one of the three bullets, thats why there were two left in the present of the story. I am surprised the father actually killed that guy who threatened to kill his son because he does not seem like he has the "guts" to do so. Are there any good guys in this story? They have not once came across a group of good people, only insane and starving people, except for that one man they followed and he later died.
alright from pg 46-66 i didnt really understand what was happening....all i know is that the dad is talking to her wife and how she killed herself from fear. Where are they at? What the deal with the truck? please help
ok so i agree with charlie! i'm very confused!! i think the dream about that woman must have been his wife. also the whole truck thing and the man, what exactly happened? i got confused about who was talking and what was going on. if anyone can explain that, please do!
im also really interested in knowing what happened that made ash everywhere.
I still cannnot quite tell why everything is turned to ash- who caused the fire, or was is not even a fire? When the man and the boy ran into the gang of refugees, i think i can explain what happened. For an unknown reason, they did not want the gang to hear them, and when one guy came into the woods, he was talking to the man and the boy. The conversation resulted in the gang member putting a knife to the boy's throat, and the man putting a bullet in the gang member's head.
Aside from that, i think a lot of foreshadowing was going on when the boy saw the other kid, and the father did not see anything. Possibly symbolizing that the boy still has hope, but the father has lost all mental strength.
also on page 89, when the man is thinking of "the world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities", i think it is a sign of the man and the boy going insane, and can no longer fathom true and happy things.
Maybe the the man and the boy soon turn to the gangs in the trucks to survive.
Maybe the gangs are people who have already lost their minds.
Ok, let me explain what has happened so far. The setting of this book begins with a NUCLEAR WAR! This is the cause for all those burned up and charred trees, buildings, and the extinction of many animals and foods. There is chaos throughout the US within the survivors who have little food and are dying slowly. The two protagonists are trying to go near the coast to possibly find more survivors, but specifically to find civilization and food. The father's wife kills herself due to the fear of being raped and killed due to so much chaos and people running around the cities and killing and raping people. These event is a flashback that is a first-person perspective by the father within the story.
I wonder if most people in this story are atheists or agnostic, because the family members do not make any allusions to the bible or pray even with all this chaos. Especially with the mother, who said she hoped to die with endless "nothingness" after she killed herself.
This next part of the book has gotten really confusing. Up til now all the places the father and son had searched were in ruins and filled with ash. Now they are finding dead bodies decaying everywhere and I think that is gross and creepy. Obviously the mother commited suicide, but why? Was this before all of this was happening, or did she just have a feeling? Or was this maybe yet another dream the father was having about her and means nothing at all? Also, why are there all these bad guys everywhere, how could they live through everything that is going on? Was it them that started the nuclear war or whatever it is that happened? Finally, I definately agree with Brennan about the foreshadowing with the son seeing the other little boy while the father couldn't, meaning he had hope still and the father was losing his.
Brennen's theory actually makes a lot of sense in this case. Maybe the "bad guys" are all the people who have gone insanse and think everyone else is a threat to them, thats why the boy and father tried to hide. Unless these people or "bad guys" are the reason of fear, and why the women killed herself. The seeing of the little boy i believe will come back later on, because when the boy heard the dog the dad didnt believe him, but then he heard it. So maybe the dad will see the little boy and others as well. But, what I am really annoyed with in this book is that the little boy really just wants to die. Every other page he always asks the same question, "are we going to die? Are you going to miss me when i die? When are we going to die?" What little boy wants to die that badly???
Alright, well i think that the "bad guys" could possibly be people on the same side of whoever cause the nuclear war (or what ever happened that caused everything to be covered in ash). Also, the "bad guys" kinda remind me of the so called "rebels" in Africa today.
As for the woman in the man's dreams, i am pretty sure that she committed suicide because she believed she was going to die anyways, and figured that it was the least painful and easiest way out.
I am really confused why the trees all of a sudden started to fall though.
Im also confused on why it seems that they are the only somewhat sane people left.
i understood the first 45 pages of the road and after continuing to read on in the story i have become very confused about whats going on.
Also i can understand why the boy's father killed the man who threatened his son because he was afriad that the man would kill and eat his son if he allowed him to get to him.
I agree with Hillary that the next 45 pages became really confusing. At first it seemed like everyone else in the town was dead and now the father and his son are running from everyone they come across. Also, I don't understand who the "bad guys" in the story are and why the man shot one of them.
I also agree with Brennan and Hillary on the foreshadowing because the boy keeps telling his dad to go back and help the boy, but the dad keeps claiming that there was no boy which shows how he has lost most of his hope.
As get farther into Cormac McCarthey's novel "The Road" i feel it is getting very intense and little at the same time.
So far in the next 45 pages, the boys and the dad come to the conclusion that they need to move under the bridge in order to survive. They feel that if they show any sigh of life they will be killed, and since they made there home under the b ridge no smoke can be seen. As the days move along the boy and the dad start wandering around the woods and one evening they hear a truck moving along the road. The boy and the dad quietly get into the shadows of the woods so they wont be seen. While the truck passes by the boy and the dad take off running as fast as they can, not bing able to see anything because of the pitch black night.
couple days later, some guys tries to kidnap the boy, but the dad shoots him in the head. so now the pistol that the dad had has 0 shots instead of 3.
Along the road the boy an the dad see smoke so they go ahead and check it out. On the way the boy finds a child and tells his dad to help him but the dad say no. To finish off, the boy and the dad look around the village where the smoke is at and see who's there
Ultimately, i think the boy and the dad will get killed because they have to build a fire and there probably not many bridges on the way south, so i think they will have to build a fire in the open so therefore i think that they will get killed by the truck gang.
the tone of the book goes from sad to nerve racking and intense, which can lead to some disaster waiting to happen
So after reading the next 45 pages in The Road, I have come up with a few points to share. So the father keeps referring to these "bad guys", but who can they possibly be? I believe that the father and the son are in a war. A war for survival. Anyone that is in their path, should be considered a bad guy. It is a war for survival. Every survivor is looking for shelter, food, water, and warmth. They have hit the harsh,cold winter with snow. The father and the son have both become sick. Now this war is also a game. You gamble to survive. The father is always gambling in what he does. It's a win lose situation. every time he finds something that may help in their survival, he leaves his son in a safe place and goes checks it out. Supplies are scarce and they are desperate for them.
Also they have been running into more and more people. The more people you find, the closer you are to civilization. They have less time to camp and to find more supplies. As the father continually says, "We have to keep moving". Like said before, anyone in the path of the father and child is a bad guy. The gang member took a risk and attacked the man's child. He payed the consequence for his action.
I am assuming the wife commited suicide because she knew that death awaited her. She thought of what would happen when the man ran out of bullets in his gun. What would happen next? So she ended all her misery.
So after reading the next 45 pages in The Road, I have come up with a few points to share. So the father keeps referring to these "bad guys", but who can they possibly be? I believe that the father and the son are in a war. A war for survival. Anyone that is in their path, should be considered a bad guy. It is a war for survival. Every survivor is looking for shelter, food, water, and warmth. They have hit the harsh,cold winter with snow. The father and the son have both become sick. Now this war is also a game. You gamble to survive. The father is always gambling in what he does. It's a win lose situation. every time he finds something that may help in their survival, he leaves his son in a safe place and goes checks it out. Supplies are scarce and they are desperate for them.
Also they have been running into more and more people. The more people you find, the closer you are to civilization. They have less time to camp and to find more supplies. As the father continually says, "We have to keep moving". Like said before, anyone in the path of the father and child is a bad guy. The gang member took a risk and attacked the man's child. He payed the consequence for his action.
I am assuming the wife commited suicide because she knew that death awaited her. She thought of what would happen when the man ran out of bullets in his gun. What would happen next? So she ended all her misery.
I definately clicked post the comment one to many times. Yup, I think something needs to get deleted =]
I think everyone agrees that this next part of the book has gotten confusing. Why are there all these dead bodies everywhere? Who are these “bad guys”? What do they want and where did they come from? Also, I find it ironic that the boy continually asks if they are going to die and the father says no because in reality, it seems there is no way that they are going to live. They walk past dead bodies every day and are slowly running out of food and supplies so it seems that are doomed to die. This makes the story much more suspenseful because McCarthy probably wants to reader to think that the boy and dad will die so that the reader continues to read. And in response to everyone else, the woman talked about is his wife that killed herself before the trip due to fear of what was to come of her life next.
Pages 45-90 of The Road has made the plot more confusing. I agree with Nick's first comment in that the woman that the father has been alluding to must have been his wife who killed herself in fear of this group of people who have taken over. It seems like these people might be some sort of terrorist group. It still seems like there must have been some sort of nuclear was as well, because the group that the man the father killed was from was wearing some sort of suits. These suits might have been to shield them from the effects of the weapons they have used. However it still also seems like the group went around terrorizing the survivors, which is why the man's wife killed herself. She killed herself in fear that they would come after her and torture her and eventually kill her. But hey I might be wrong!
The boy is interested in death, for there is nothing else for him to fixate his mind on but ash and ash. What a terrible childhood that would be, we have all thought about death at least once in our own lifetimes, if not we truly do live in a bubble of neglect and self indulgence. What I continue to find my mind attaching itself to is the son stating that we wants to die and the father not giving him a reason to live. The boy is young, but we all have rational reasons... even if it is faith. As I have stated before, false hope is still hope to the faithful, teach the little boy the truth about what is happening.
Now I am not attacking the father because he does tell the boy a lot, not enough to scare him perhaps but he shouldn't have that be his goal. Who knows where both their minds lay, I sure don't. The roads lead to nowhere, nowhere as we know of existence for words, grammar, names, no longer hold meaning. A structured society is meaningless and I strongly do not believe a commune of some kind exists. Since the atomic age we have been wrapped up in the space race, so where are those people? The humans would survive if there was a nuclear apocalypse, we are either just that smart or.... we are just that stupid.
Reading up to page 90 answered a lot of my questions from my last blog. They obviously are not the only people alive but they seem like the only civilized ones. After the encounter with those men or "bad guys" with the suits and diesel truck it seems like everyone is out to get eachother for food and survival. Almost like people have turned to insanity for hope and survival.
After having Mr. shipley explain the man's wifes death it makes a lot more sense to me, but why would she want to leave them behind and not have faith in her husband to keep them safe? He seems to be handling the safety of his son quite well. Another thought that goes through my mind is: why did he teach her a way to kill herself? I think that's sort of weird but that's just me.
Now that I think of it the only way all of this could have happened is from a nuclear war. Nothing else could caused this big of a destruction to the world and have ash everywhere. It also said in the flashback of his wife when she was pregnant that they could see a glow in the distance.
What really confused me was, did he really see a boy and is the dog really following them? Also, the boy talks about death alot, but it seems like he wants to die or he has no hope in surviving.
I think a lot of people have really good ideas. I agree with Brennen that maybe seeing the boy is foreshawdowing or symbolizing something.
For me, the story keeps getting more mysterious. More ideas and questions pop into my head while I'm reading it. It's almost kind of scary to read. I sometimes find myself having to look around my room to see if everything is okay.
I'm starting to really enjoy reading this book!
Sorry I blogged a little late Mr. Shipley.
My internet was not responding for a while.
=[
Post a Comment