The Road, Post 2

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

I noticed while reading this, that the boy was forced to grow up so quickly. He was able to deal with things that the man had trouble with, and it upset the man quite a bit to know that his son would never have a normal, carefree childhood. One of the times I think he has this realization is when they come upon bodies, dead and half melted into the tar of the road. The man doesn't want the boy to look at them. "I don't want you to look. They'll still be there. He stopped and leaned on the cart. He looked down the road and he looked at the boy. So strangely untroubled." (191) The boy is so desensitized to these gruesome things because it's all he has ever known. The man had lived in a world where seeing these things wasn't common, so when he sees them, it has a much larger effect than when the boy sees them. All the boy knows about the world before this dead, post apocalyptic time, he had heard about from his father. Even though he's so used to these things, he shows compassion much more than the man does. They meet another man on the road and he begs his father to help him because he knows that if he doesn't, the man will just walk on and leave the traveler to die. "we can't stay here, we have to go. He's scared Papa. I don't think you should touch him. Maybe we could give him something to eat." The boy tries to make his father help people more than once in the book, and I think he does it because though he sees a lot of killing and death and misfortune, he doesn't wish that on anyone.