. Spinning .

It always makes me laugh to think what authors must think of how readers interpret their words. It used to bother me in fact to think that readers turned and twisted things around to make something out of nothing, or nothing from something meant. 

But of course, Barthes and a professor rid me of that silly notion that an author had any rights over what people want to make of his work.

So saying, there are three things from The Road that still play over in my head. 

The timeline:  It bothered me to think that after what, five or six years, the good people of earth would not have rebuilt it and worked together.  I’ve come to accept that this is not a world easily rebuilt.  Nothing will grow.  When the food ran out the good times were pretty much over.  Those left with still some shred of decency in their souls make do and move on.  The timeline then, is perhaps right on track; it would likely take that long to find that nothing works to make things better, and to go through the food supplies.  Even with my own normally well-stocked cellar (Shop Rite’s Can Can Sales) we’d likely last a year, maybe two at most without replenishment.

The "fire":  I thought at first that it was hope.  Maybe it’s faith instead.  But faith in whom?  Certainly not faith in mankind–that’s been proven to be unreliable at best, confirmation at its worst.  Faith in God then? There is a conversation between the man and an old traveler they come across that may give some insight.  Here, in random bits out of context:

The man: How would you know if you were the last man on earth? he said.

I don’t guess you would know it.  You’d just be it.

Nobody would know it.

It wouldn’t make any difference.  When you die it’s the same as if everybody else did too.

I guess God would know it.  (the man)

There is no God.

No?

There is no God and we are his prophets.  (p. 143)

There is another reference, but it seems to hint at indecision.  The man refers easily to God as existing: I guess God would know it.  Regardless of his doubts, it still rolls easily out of his thoughts and into his conversation.  The old man, both denial and confirmation in his statement:  There is no God and we are his prophets.  Completely contradictory within itself.

So faith may be the fire rather than hope.  And faith in God rather than man.  Although the man later refers to the boy as a god and sees a light about him.  Maybe the fire then is something else.

Maybe the fire is simply Goodness.

And third, Could people turn on each other like this?:  From what I’ve learned in my life, and what I’ve just lately accepted.  Absolutely.

What is the inborn nature of man?

There’s a premise throughout the novel that pits hope against acceptance.  Even when hope fades, there is an acceptance that short of death, they must go onward. 

There’s also McCarthy’s usual good versus evil.  Here’s where I am conflicted.  If our basic instincts lead us by self-centered survival, lust rather than love, use rather than cooperation, than the people are returning to that instinctive way that had been reasoned and civilized out of us in order to form societies that work.

But what of the boy?  He knows what’s going on, has grown up in this world, and yet has a caring for others–something that’s not quite "dead" in the man either.  The child cries more easily for others than he does for his own plight.  This caused me some concern for his safety as well as set me to wondering why a child of this time and place would be so.  The answer, I believe, is that he was not raised among the roving murderers but instead by a loving father and mother who along with the lessons he needed to survive, taught him too the things that they remembered as important.  In this child, civilization has not quite hit bottom.  That’s likely why he must remain who he is, cautious, wary, knowing, and yet a civilized human being.

Oh, I’m sure I’ll have more to say as the story settles into my mind to raise questions of the sort we don’t like to think about.

There’s always a sadness to finishing a good book.  I wanted it to go on some more.  If it were a movie, then a sequel would be planned for the boy at age twenty.  He would’ve learned some way to make the machinery work.  Some way to plant seeds deep into the earth.  Some way to rebuild life.

McCarthy leaves a lot of what other writers and readers would consider vital information out of his stories.  Was the boy in fact born after the devastating event?  The woman was pregnant at the time.  What was the slow decline of mankind in the immediate aftermath?  Starvation, moving on to seek someplace where it wasn’t all dust, helping each other until that could no longer be done, the bad guys looting right from day one, and most of the good guys going bad.  But none of that is really important after all.

It could happen.  It could happen just as McCarthy lays it out.  So it’s something to consider–and maybe not much we can do much about. 

But it can’t be forgotten.

Okay.

I’m within twenty-five pages of finishing this book and it’d be done a lot sooner (though I think I’ve broken a record here, at least for close reading versus the good old days when I read a book in a day but didn’t learn much) if I didn’t have to jump up every few pages and share via a post:

If you don’t put down the knife and get away from the cart, the man said, I’m going to blow your brains out.  The thief looked at the child and what he saw was very sobering to him.  He laid the knife on top of the blankets and backed away and stood.  (p. 215)

Dear God, what has the journey done to this boy?

Now you see why McCarthy won the Pulitzer?