Saturday, December 15, 2012

The World of the Boy in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The boy character in this novel was, for all intents and purposes, born into the litteral world I described earlier. While the timeline of his birth and the disaster are not explicetly mentioned, given the age of the boy it is safe to assume that he had not developed as a person in the world that we know. Therefore the father has taken it upon himself to create a less harsh world for his boy to grow up in. So the boy lives in a world where he is flooded with advice, stories and risks, and his world is in turn shaped by these experiences, especially the risks. The house that they visit about a quarter of the way through the novel in perticular drastically scared the boy. From there he is even more hesitatnt to enter locations, even though places like the bunker have proven that good things can lie behind closed doors. The boy is so consumed in the world that his father creates for him, that he is unwilling to venture beyond that world. This is most evident after the death of the father, where he is forced to abandon the world that his father created. When he meets the man who would take him in, he repeats phrases that his father had said to establish the world of the pair, like "Are you carrying the fire?" and "How do I know your one of the good guys?" There is, however, one part of the world of the boy that he himself creates, and that is the little boy. The little boy is a vision the boy sees as they pass through what is most likely Rock City Tennessee towards the beginning of the novel. Since their initial encounter, the boy asks the man on a fairly regular basis if they could go back for the little boy, or informs him that he wishes the little boy is with them. This important aspect of the world of the boy, in my opinion, is why he decides to leave the father at the end of the novel. Because while the father has created his whole world, the boy needs other children to create his own world and develop as a person.

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