Friday, August 19, 2011

Post 3 Question #4

In both novels the authors make it clear that woman are only good for having and caring for children. In both novels there's a good and bad side to woman.

McCarthy's Novel: In The Road, we hear of woman quite often. The most detailed section was when they were hiding in the woods and watching the 'bad guys' march down the road. The woman were chained together and pregnant like dogs. From what i read i would say that McCarthy thinks that woman are only good for having and caring for children.

Kerouac's Novel: In On The Road, there's a character named Dean. Dean is known to have 3 wives and 4 kids. I feel like Dean is a womanizer. He thinks that he can just do what he wants with a woman then move to the next one. However, that's not the case!

I believe that women have just as much of a voice as men do. If not then a more powerful one. There's more facets to women than simple matriarch responsibilities.

Posted by Chavon Hampton at 1:55 PM

2 comments:

Henry said...

You said in your intro that "In both novels there's a good and bad side to woman." Are your examples from the books (the women in The Road who are chained and "pregnant like dogs" and Dean's women) the good or bad side of women? It seems like for the women you cited, their experience reflected less their own actions or "sides" and more those of the men around them.

You also began with "In both novels the authors make it clear that woman are only good for having and caring for children." and later state "i would say that McCarthy thinks that woman are only good for having and caring for children." Are you then suggesting that the depiction of a character in a novel automatically reflects the views of the author? Would someone writing about slavery therefore think that all black people should be slaves?

August 20, 2011 at 12:47 AM
Alessandra said...

I disagree that McCarthy thinks that woman are only good for having and caring for children, I think there was a lot more depth to the book and the female characters than that. I wouldn't say that McCarthy necessarily had very positive views of women, but I wouldn't call them negative. There were times where the man would remember his late wife and how beautiful she was, and those were the female parts that really stuck out to me. But more importantly I just don't think that McCarthy was making a statement about the women because it's not about them, it's bout the relationship between a father and son, and he wanted to keep that pure. Lastly, if you're some of the last woman on earth traveling with a group of men, of course you're going to get pregnant! I don't think it has anything to do with them being like dogs. For "On The Road" I would agree that Dean is a womanizer, but I think it's because he just reeally loves women, and wants to have as many as once. I think he enjoys their beauty, and I think a lot of times in the book women were portrayed as the more sly, more cunning ones.

August 21, 2011 at 1:47 AM

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