Scavengers on the road choose to resort to murder, thievery, and cannibalism in order to survive. The man's wife responds to the catastrophic circumstances by committing suicide and avoiding whatever gruesome fate might befall her. To the contrary, the father considers death an abhorrent threat that would prevent him from protecting his son his commitment to life drives him on the journey south to ensure his son's survival.ĭiscuss at least two contrasting ways in which the survivors of the catastrophe deal with the chaos. The wife considers death to be a needed relief from these threats. How do the man and the man's wife differ in their conceptions of death?īoth the man and his wife understand that in this post-apocalyptic environment, they are likely to be brutalized at the hands of rapists, murderers, and cannibals. The result is optimistic resilience, a hope against hope, which offers humans an existential choice about how they want to live, whether or not human nature and physical nature make those choices easy or hard. The boy's rescue by a family of "good guys" might be read as an ironic ending with hope in the face of disaster, where somehow the good-guy fire persists. The striking last paragraph, with its vivid imagery of trout hidden in deep mountain glens, offers a redemptive ending to what has been a story of awful indifference and destruction, where hope has eked out a meager, slight existence in the face of the ubiquitous destructiveness of human nature, which has both caused the catastrophe and perpetuated the evils in the world afterward. Overall, does The Road put forth a positive and uplifting view of humanity, or one of darkness and pessimism? He also works hard to reassure his son that they are good people who hold the fire of goodness within them, and that they would never do things like eat other humans. In less dramatic examples, the man continually sacrifices his own health to give his son nourishment. The most obvious example of this occurs when the man does not hesitate to shoot the attacker who holds a knife to the boy's throat. The man demonstrates consistently that he is prepared to take whatever action necessary, even if violent, to ensure his son's survival and best interests. How does the man demonstrate his love for his son in The Road?
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