On the Road Again...

A few observations and a few questions:

I was most struck by McCarthy's color imagery. The only time color shows up, that I can recall, is in the scenes discussing fish at the very beginning and very end. Other than that, everything is black or gray. It's a device that I normally would find quite tedious, but McCarthy was able to do it without losing me. It gave the book a bleakness that was searing.

I wonder whether any of you identified more with the son than the father. Of course, it's probably easier to identify with the father, as the story is told from his perspective, and since that's the place most of us find ourselves in currently. On the second read I felt much less anxiety-ridden; I was practically a basket case my first time, most particularly during the scenes when they were running low on food. The more visceral scenes, like when they were running from bad guys, I didn't feel threatened; maybe that's because I see my role in my family as provider as more important (or perhaps more tenuous) than my role as protector.

One thing that kept coming back to me was from John Barleycorn. A criticism London made of milque-toast men who don't rage in behalf of lost causes. And here is McCarthy's hero, doggedly continuing in the face of utter hopelessness. Perhaps he doesn't mean for me to generalize about what it means to be a man, but between Barleycorn and the scene in The Road where his wife gives up, I'm struck by the concept that Real Men aren't Quitters. I was also reminded of "On The Beach," the film by Stanley Kramer of the onset of nuclear winter. The premise is a nuclear cloud is engulfing the earth, leaving none alive in its wake. The last place it covers is Australia. There's a brief time when the populace knows the cloud is coming and prepares for the inevitable. In the movie, Anothony Perkins plays a young father who must make the decision between a suicide pill for him, his wife and their young son, or the certainty of radiation sickness. In the movie, IIRC, it was the man who pushed the pill and the woman who refused. In this case, the manly virtue was being able to face reality steely-eyed. Obviously these two virtues (and I can believe both are virtues) are in tension. Personally, I don't feel I've sufficiently cultivated either of them to be of much use in an extreme situation.

One other thought was my admiration at the ability of the father to do simple things. Simple things that I wouldn't have known how to approach, like how to disassemble a propane stove, fix a wobbly shopping cart wheel, etc. Wilderness survival particularly adapted to the horrific wilderness in which he found himself. I guess it made me a little guilty of my inabilities; the softness of the modern man. It also reminded me a little of David O. McKay as an 85 year old man, standing out in the sun all day, pushing on a horse. There's a sense that's being lost in me at least, of how to work and live in a non-mechanized, non-computerized environment. Maybe that's necessary, but it's a loss nonetheless.

Last thought; the confrontation on the beach, with the man who had attempted to steal all their stuff. It's heart-breaking for me. The father exacts retribution, and as a result loses a measure of the respect (although not the love) that the son bore for him. His son was obviously overwhelmingly concerned with morality, and the question of whether they were good or bad. The father always made the "good" decision, until then. It was a moment, I guess, when the son saw the father as a flawed mortal, rather than the hero-god. Psychologically, I suppose that's an integral last step in growing up, which may be why McCarthy ended the novel so soon after. The son had learned all he needed to learn, and was ready for his apprenticeship. And needed to leave his father behind. But I still cried when the father died. Even on my second reading.