Saturday, August 20, 2011

7. If every book is an author's attempt to answer one of life's questions, what question is McCarthy and/or Kerouac attempting to answer? Explain.

I think McCarthy's trying to answer the question "what pushes us forward when there's no longer reason to?" His entire story is about a man and a boy walking south in a post apocalyptic world. The land is barren and soot filled and there are barely any other people. Most of the other people still living have gone cannibal and the boy and the man can't trust anyone but each other. They have virtually nothing, and yet they continue to walk. Everything they do is centered around hope, but why? Why do they so strongly believe there is something south that will help them? I'm not sure if McCarthy found the answer to this question, but this story itself seems to be a very in depth search.
Posted by Jillian at 9:24 AM

3 comments:

Esther said...

"I think McCarthy's trying to answer the question 'what pushes us forward when there's no longer reason to?'"
I think you definitely articulated McCarthy's question well, I hadn't thought about it in quite that way but it makes a lot of sense to me and I think you've connected the road to the humans in an interesting way. However I have to disagree about McCarthy not answering his own question. I think he definitely did. The love felt between the boy and the man kept them moving, I don't know that either one of them actually thought the South would be super-helpful. In the book the man never really gives a straight answer about why the south is so great--basically all he's got in the way of justification is that they are cold and the South is warmer. The question isn't why they kept moving south--the destination was unimportant. The question was: why did they keep moving? And that brings me back to their love. Neither could bear to see the other die because, however bleak life may be, it is at least a given, whereas as even the most religious have a shadow of doubt about after-life. As a parent or a child it is impossible to send your loved one somewhere unknown, possibly nowhere, because you cannot know for sure it isn't worse than life. So they kept moving.

August 20, 2011 at 10:27 AM
Javieska said...

I very much agree with Esther. The man knew he could never do what his wife tried, and did accomplish. He couldn't simply kill his son and end his own life even if that would render them from suffering and striving to find food to outlive another day. He took the harder road--strive to survive as long as they stayed together as the "good guys". And that, was enough to live another day.

August 20, 2011 at 1:54 PM
Chloe said...

I agree with everybody here. There was no destination, they saw their real purpose as sacrifice, because they had nothing else that would give them hope, that would encourage them on to survival. To them dying in peace and with each other was the only thing that had any meaning, because death at this point had become an expectation. What did you think about the complete shift at the end, when all of a sudden "carry the fire" didn't really mean anything and all these things that kept him going this whole time just separated him from the group he needed to survive?

August 22, 2011 at 9:12 AM

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