The Road essay

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Wilson-Dailey 1

Ahmod Wilson­Dailey
Mrs.Lyke
American Literature 3
27 April 2015
The Journey of a Father and Son
Imagine, a world with no life, no color, no love, and the only way to survive in this world is to do the unthinkable or to die. This is the world that a man and a boy have to live in everyday for the rest of their lives. In
The Road by Cormac McCarthy there is a man and a boy who are doing whatever they can to fight for their survival. McCarthy has always been known for his grim, violent, and often plotless writing style and you can notice his grim and violent writing style in this book. McCarthy chose not to give the man and boy names because he wanted it to be more about their relationship as man and son, and that affects the way the readers relate to them because it causes you to not focus on them and more on the situations around them, and if McCarthy happened to have given them names certain situations wouldn’t of been as hard to comprehend.
The man and the boy didn’t have names because McCarthy wanted to show the relationship they had more than who they actually were. The man didn’t want to be in this world anymore, but “he knew that the child was his warrant” (McCarthy 5). The man knows that the boy is the only reason why he is still alive, and that is one reason why their relationship is so strong. The man “sat the boy on the foot locker under the gaslamp and with a plastic comb and a pair of scissors he sat about cutting the boys hair” (151). The man is cutting the boys hair for the first time in a while and later on the boy tell him good job and the it makes him look really

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skinny. When the boy “said you wouldn’t ever leave me” the man responded by saying “I know.
I’m sorry. You have my whole heart. You always did. You’re the best guy. You always were. If
I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you. You’ll see.” (279).
When the man told the boy he was going to die he also told the boy that he would always be with him and love him forever.
The man and the boy not having names always the readers to not focus on them as much, and focus more on the situation they’re in together. The boy and the man have a conversation about “What would the man do if the boy died? If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me? Yes. So I can be with you” (11). If the boy happened to of died the man says that he would also die with him because he can’t live without him. The man and the boy are enjoying a Coca Cola bottle together and the boy wanted to share the bottle with the man, so he gave the bottle to his father and “he took the bottle and sipped it and handed it back.
You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here” (23). They are just sitting outside a random house with a
Coca Cola bottle they found, enjoying it and bonding together. The man “could no enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own” (154). They were having a hard time bonding because everything that the man remembered being fun or a good time was everything the boy didn't have the chance to experience. If McCarthy happened to of have the
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