6. What other remarks might you have about the books? Questions? Observations? Reactions?

Through much of Cormac McCarthy's book, the characters refer to their dreams. In the beginning of the story, I was struck with how bizarre their dreams seemed to be. The first few paragraphs spoke of a wild beast that drank from a pool of water in a stone room. When I was first reading about the dream, I did not have a good grasp of what the author was trying to tell me through it. But after reading further into the book, I came up with theories about what the dream represented. The father and the son always seem to refer to themselves as "carrying the fire." I believe that this "fire" is a metaphor for the goodness of humanity. Because the child is leading the father, so I am drawn to the conclusion that the son is the light, and he represents what is left of human decency. When they get to the stone room, which encompasses the creature, Cormac describes it as, "Pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in the shadow on the rocks behind it." I believe that this creature is a representation of all the evil that exists in the world. It represents what human hearts and minds have become infested with. The pool of water that the creature is drinking out off is the world, and all the people who have not yet been taken over by evil. The boy protects the lake with the light, thus he protects the world and guides humanity from the evil that would try to steal their minds. The monster, no matter how it tries, can never see the light so it runs away. This dream did not make much sense to me when I first read about it. But after I began to understand what the world had become, it seemed to make more sense to me.
-Sinead Brennan