I read the Road a while back and I enjoyed it. I am no literary critic or a great understander of themes found in literature but I found it humbling and interesting. I am wondering what some of you people thought about the book? Themes, meaning etc.
I like to know what other people think. Their analysises.
>Do you carry the fire?
"He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."
>>8055976
A big part of The Road is idealism and what makes men function. The Man needs someone to need him to keep going, and so he has a bit of a codependent relationship to his son where not only does the son need him, but The Man would probably sink into despair if not for the way his son needs him to live and the faith he has that civilization can recover. In that way it's also about faith and how we need faith in one thing or another to function. It seems unlikely that The Man is religious, but his faith in an indestructible "fire" in certain men is what keeps him going, because he believes he and his son have this flame.
>>8056000
>"Turn from those that need you and lose what defines you."
>>8055976
Women don't have the fire and should never be trusted with anything important.
>>8056014
Is this a book a woman could never understand?
Is it the nature of women to crumble under adversary and run naked into the night?
>>8055976
It's my favorite book by McCarthy.
>>8056000
Mr. Trips has a good grasp of the fire.
Another theme is the relationship between the man and his son, the man growing up in the old world(pre-apocalypse) and having old-world ideals and views that he raises his son with, a child of the new-world(post-apocalypse) who knows nothing of what the world used to be. The book mentions many times the rift between father and son, how the father seemed alien to his son, the son seemed like and Angel to his father. They're from two different worlds, and the father struggled to grasp that, especially when the son would act benevolently towards some of the victims in the new-world.
McCarthy stated in that interview with Oprah that gratitude and hope were the moral resolutions that he wanted the reader to get out of it, and you can see how the father tries to teach his kid to stay hopeful and thankful, and the son doesn't quite see things the same way
>>8056025
I love women, but this is one of the VERY FEW books I would say 99.9% of women will not be able to empathize with the main themes of.
It's basically Blood Meridian for genre faggots. Pass.
>>8056075
The main themes of The Road aren't even important to Blood Meridian. If anything, Blood Meridian is the more "genre" book since it's so bloated and full of wild west cowboys and indians.
>>8056075
>Blood Meridian for genre faggots
lad
>>8056097
I fucking knew Pynchon lurked here
some genre crap
I saw the fire as a gnostic thing, the divine truth hidden in a world full of devils.
Blood Meridian and NCFOM also have references to hiding and carrying fire, also in the epilogues.
>He chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there
>when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do . . . and in the dream I knew he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.
The books also all contain almost supernatural characters (though I can't remember anyone specific in The Road, it seemed like almost everyone they met was a devil) like Anton Chigurh and the Judge, which I always took in the gnostic sense as well.
The Judge especially, it seems like his prime directive is to collect the knowledge of the world and make it inaccessible to man. He's the kind of person who would read a book and then burn it so no one else can read it.
I think you can have multiple interpretations simultaneously acting in a book, I know Bloom doesn't buy that the Judge is exclusively some kind of archon. The judge as war, especially against nature, man's desire to dominate nature, is pretty strong as well. But I like the idea that the Judge exists to confound man's attempts to make meaning of the world, which is a demiurge kind of thing to do.
Oh, we were supposed to be talking about the road. Shit.
>>8056184
>>8056075
>basically Blood Meridian
confirmed for never having read either
>>8056097
ah, a classic passage from Gravity's Rainbow
Right after Slothrop finds Pokler in the abandoned amusement park
>>8055976
Liked it. Entertained by it. Didn't care for the ending. Take it for what it is and leave the "meaning" crap to 10th grade English teachers.
>>8056397
>Take it for what it is and leave the "meaning" crap to 10th grade English teachers.
idiot
>>8056097
>>8056408
DO YOU CARRY THE FIRE? Fucking idiot.
