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.
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3 comments:
Charlie, you book seems very, how you say, interesting. It seems like it fits your preferences perfectly. A book about the end of the world, how delicous.
Charlie,
This book seems very intersting, another novel from McCarthy. Good summary and I might just have to read it sometime.
nick
Charlie his sounds like a very interesting book and I'll have to read it sometime (my Ceramics teacher recommended it too actually!). Anyway the idea of the cannibals and the fact that the men almost starve to death seems to be typical McCarthy because of course he has to deal with life and death in his books.
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