Quality over Quantity: The Characters of The Road

Well, here it is, my first blog post.

I was very eager to throw myself into the deep abyss of confusion and critical-thinking, that is a fresh, so-called (to be determined by your's truly) AP merit novel.  As I turned to the first page and began my adventure, I thought back to some of the prevalent themes in the novels we had previously read in class.  Because I understood that the plot of this novel was about a father and a son traveling a scorched earth and navigating the dangers of a new life, with no hesitation I remembered the thematic idea of the need for human connection.  My prediction: as the storyline progresses, as I travel further down The Road, this concept will become the pinnacle of this story...that is, human connection is responsible for the characters' survival.

Personally, when I begin reading a new book, the most challenging part is keeping all of the different characters straight.  As you can imagine, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon was a formidable endeavor with the vast amount of characters and personalities to keep in order.  Not to mention three characters were all given the same name (thank heavens for Ruth's prolonged breastfeeding).  The Road, on the other hand, is not flashy with its extent of meaningful character foils and symbolic lines of lineage; it initially boasts only two characters, a father, and a son.

The father, let's call him Papa, is struggling to survive a barren environment, scarred by fire, with his son, we'll call him "the boy".  As a reader, I can relate to these characters because much like them, I am in the dark when it comes to understanding their situation: how they got there, what it was like before, and if there is salvation?  Most of the characterization of Papa and the boy is derived from the dialogue that they share, or flashbacks illustrated through the eyes of Papa.

Papa wants to survive.  He wants to keep living and overcome the challenges that have been thrown their way.  His motive?  His son.  When asked by his son "what would you do if I died", Papa responded that "if you died I would want to die too" (11).  The only reason Papa has continued to look out for himself and fight the harsh environment is to protect his son.  "The boy was all that stood between him and death" (29).  In a flashback, Papa relives the moment when his wife had decided to leave him and his son to escape the painful world by means of suicide.  In this flashback, death is personified.  His wife has "taken a new lover [Death]" (57).  This conversation with his wife speaks to his chief value: death is not the answer, life is.  Because of his experiences with his wife, he becomes defensive when his son says that he wishes he was dead.  The major conflict that faces Papa is, as one could infer from the above background, death.  Death has taken much from him; his friends, his wife, and safety.  Papa (along with much of his surroundings) is associated with the color gray, which represents loss and depression.  Tormented by the loss he has experienced, he warns his son that "you forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget" (12).  An eloquent chiasmus, Papa is haunted by his past and is protecting his son in order to find solace.  Papa takes extreme measures to protect his son from the harsh environment and the brutal gangs.  He uses one of his last two bullets on a man that has his son's neck to the blade of a knife.  His son is the last thing he could possibly lose, and with the ash as "gray as his heart", losing his son would force him to slip into the darkness that blankets the world (27).

The boy is primarily characterized by dialogue.  He is frightened, naïve, and inquisitive.  Through a conversation between Papa and his wife, it can be reasonably inferred that the boy was born into the world that was starting to slip away.  Unlike his father, the barren landscape of ash and dust is the only world he has known.  So one can imagine the immense questioning this child has the propensity for.  The inquisitive nature of the boy highlights how he does not quite understand the situation he and his father are in.  When his father and him come upon a man, who had seemingly been struck by lightning, the boy presses his father to help the man in any way he could.  The boy asks repeatedly, "cant we help him Papa?"..."cant we help him Papa?" (50).  The father knows that under their circumstances, there is nothing that can be done to aid the man, but the boy is unable to see the world through the eyes of his father.  Another example of the naivety of the boy is when they find a relatively nice place by a river.  The boy pleas to his father to stay for one more day, but the father knows that losing time brings them both closer to death.  In summary, the boy is naïve, and is yet to realize that he and his father are all each other have.

BLOG TWIST:  Even though I stated earlier that there are only two characters, in my opinion, there are actually three.  Some would say I lied to you in my opening remarks about how many characters were present in the novel, but I just call it alternative facts.  Anyways, can you guess the third character?  The wife you say?  No, guess again!  Death?  Correct!

*gasp*

But how can Death be a character when it is an abstract, intangible concept?  McCarthy personifies Death to a point where it becomes the antagonist of the story.  The main characters, Papa and his son, have one goal, to survive and continue southwards.  Their only opposition?  Death.  Death is as pervasive as the ash that settles in the remote areas of the dark land the main characters are surviving in.  Death calls to the characters, primarily Papa in his dreams.  It tempts him with "dreams so rich in color.  How else would Death call you?" (21).  The fantasies and memories of what life used to be are Death's way of reaching out and touching the characters.  Death is closely associated with the gray ash that covers the land and swallows the light of the sun, inescapable.  The protagonists, Papa and the boy, will need to overcome the antagonist.  According to my prediction at the beginning of this post, the power of human connection will help our characters triumph over Death.