The Road Essay

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Devin Mallick

Mrs. Hipp/Doyon

3 September, 2012

Ap English IV

The Road Essay.

Tragedy within the boundaries of life can be determined as a possibility of just that, horrible darkness and despair, or you can go past all of it and learn from what you have just endured. This saying is much like what Edward Said made into a quote: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” It is rather a small summary of this quote in rather layman's terms. In this we shall go over how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.

To start off with in the beginning, there was light. Although, this paragraph is about the alienating part of exile since we are not yet to the illumination. When we think about exile the first thing we think about is probably it being one of the most horrible things that can ever happen to you. To that, yes, yes it can. You can be exiled for whatever did happen to you, not know anything about survival skills, and die which is a plausible outcome for quite a lot of technology freaks these days. Exile is suppose to be one of the cruelest forms of punishment for simply the fact that you get banished from whence you came from, can never return, and you have to all in all start a new life... if you can. We to the story where we find the boy and the man wondering without anything but what they can carry and everything they find along their way to the south. This is considered exile to a point for just the fact that they feel alone in the world because it has been devastated and not that many people are still left alive to walk the smitten earthen ground they walk. It's hard to find food, shelter, and almost any type of supplies because it seems that everything has already been raided or foraged for. This is bad if you could not tell by all of the hardship, this is where most people would fail and give up because they feel so alone, this is the true meaning of being alone. All of your friends are dead, most of your family and other odd relatives as well. You don't know where you should go and not a clue what to do, yet like the man and the boy in the story you can find something to push towards and to live for. Now we continue unto the path of happiness if you can force yourself to call it that. Exile no matter what kind, no matter what you do or where you are is horrible and will continue to be so unless you do something about it. This is where we come to the enriching experience of exile and another part of the book. Upon being throw into exile you can do 1 of three things, freak out and die, keep calm and die, or keep calm and try to think your way through things and still die though this time of old age. The way that exile can help you or enhance your being is that you can learn from it and this is huge. If you learn how to live by yourself, on just basic supplies, and what you can find; you're golden. This will set you up for the next things to come: you wont have to worry about trying to find a good shelter, if this ever happens to you again you'll be ready, and if this ever happens to someone you know and/or love you can help them. Commenting on the shelter, the man living in
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