The Road- The End

So I finished my book the road and I have to say it is the most depressing book you can find. The ending was kind of perplexing and if you dont want me to ruin it quit reading NOW so the father of the boy dies of a lung infection or something of the sort but the boy is picked up by a group of "good guys" but the last paragraph is confusing. It seems to contradict itself in saying that the world is over and that the world may continue yet, I have read over it at least a dozen times and still do not understand exactly what it means. I did really enjoy the book but it did have some incredibly repetitive conversations. Often times when the man does something that the boy doesn't deem the right thing to do the man asks the boy if hes talking, then the boy says yes he is talking and the man tells him he isn't and then the boy tells him he just did and then they quit talking. This reoccurs every time a major event in the book happens and I dont feel like it is necessary for it to be repeated on the level that it is. The book does a good job of impressing upon the reader that after this generation of people dies out there will never be anything alive on the Earth again and it truly is the end. But the last paragraph suggests a more bright future for the world that contradicts the whole book.
So now I need to chose what to read next, the call of the wild which is one of my favorite books of all time, or the power of one which I've heard is great from my whole family and I might read.

The Road- The people

The people in the road explore the moral extremes. There are the protagonists who are very good people though I don't believe they are entirely perfect they are oppritunists and if they weren't they'd be dead but they don't commit any misdeeds. Then there are the cannibals they are the most sadistic terrible people you could imagine. The boy and the man stumble upon an estate looking for food and clothing to take and find a hatch in the ground where cannibals keep their victims before they cook them, needless to say the man and the boy sprint out of the home just in time to avoid becoming a victim. There are roving groups of cannibals that eventually consume each other. There is very little moral middle ground in fact the boy divides the world into "good guys", and "bad guys" and the only good guys they a have seen are themselves in a mirror. The world shows how people have gone to the extremes of evil by torturing and eating other people something that is completely unthinkable in society this says alot about the human race first it shows we are selfish and brutish in our natural state (Hobbes) but it also shows that we are the ultimate survivalists we are willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive and thus we are among the only specieses that has the capability to survive the apocolypse, and it was only a fluke that the boy and the man are alive but the cannibals were the people who really did what it takes to stay alive but I don't believe that most normal good people would go to that extreme.

Some eventat that happened in my most recent reading is the miraculous discovery of a cache of supplies and food, this is definately a rescue from without and it really affects the reader. When they opened this hatch that the book says looks identicle to the hatch where they found the cannibal victims and saw the food and cloths they didn't believe it was real, they were on the brink of starvation and the man had come to terms with his death and they find this cache of food to save them.

So far The Road has shown a very polarized views of human nature. Though it only shows the bad side becuase honestly it could only be by sheer luck that any good guys are still alive. "Nice guys finish last" and the others eat people.

The Road- The world

The world in the road is a post apocolyptic (most likely nuclear apocoyptic) where humanity faces extinction yet nobody in the world seems to care about humanity. Everyone in The Road is an opritunist meaning that they are not worries about others and they will take any opritunities they see to increase their own chances of survival. Nobody in this world is exempt from this rule even the protagonists are with eachother for their own survival, but not their physical survival but they mental health. It says that they are each other's entire world meaning that without each other they would lose their will to live and cease to do so. The world is nearly barren and seeing other people is rare and most often you do not want to see other people for they range from murderous raiders to cannibals. It seems the only people in the world who aren't insane and evil are the man and the boy. They are help together by the bond of father and son, they probably aren't completely flawed but they are not self rightous they are only trying to be good and stay alive for the sake of the other person. Strangely the world in the road is told from an oblivious point of view where the speaker doesn't actually know or care why and how the world got to this point, it only cares about the man and the boy. The speaker is like this because the man and the boy only care about their own survival and not the survival of the world as a whole. I like this point of view because instead of trying to create a large all encompasing world it creates a small world where there are only two important thing (the portagonists) so the reader cares more about each of these characters because they seem to be the only beacon of hope in the desolate world of The Road.

The Road

So as you may have guessed from my previous posts i have given up on Brisingr. I have started a new book in the spirit of reading ATPH I started reading The Road. I got this book last winter but I didn't have the will to force myself to read this post apocolyptic novel, but now since we are already reading one Cormac McCarthy book I might as well read another. I started the book which is about a father and a son traveling to the west coast of america on what is left of a interstate highway. The destruction of the world is never explained but it is hinted at being cause by nuclear war. Since they often refer to the burned charred remains of buildings. The father and the son are never named in the book signifying that they could easily be anybody or they are a symbol of humans in general not specific people. Cormac describes them as "each others world entire" meaning that without each other neither of them would be able to survive and the only reason they still have the will to live is for the other person. Thus far in the book they have not encountered any other people but they have discussed the prospect of being attacked by "bloodcults". One mildly confusing aspect of the book is that it drifts between the past and the present describing the man's wife before the apocolypse there are no transitions to these aspects except that occasionally the flashbacks are preceded by the man or the boy falling asleep. The book is terrifying and sad somehow Cormac is able to make a boys nightmare about a toy penguin that when you would up it walked around, but the boy saw it moving around and the key in it's back wasn't moving send a shiver down my spine. The book is unbelievably sad as it describes the death of humanity and a father and son's fight to survive. They are trying to get to the west coast simply so they have a goal to go through even though they are forced to walk through the freezing cold rockey mountains with little provisions, this shows that people need a goal and aspirations in order to maintain their will to live.