McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 272

Lets stay here for the night, Papa

We haven’t traveled very far today

I know

It could be dangerous

I know, Papa

We need to keep going

No.


The man turned around to see the boy setting up the tarp. The man walked to the boy with a limp to return the tarp to the cart, the boy grabbed the tarp from out of his hands. The man coughed until he couldn’t stand, the boy made a tent from the tarp and started a fire, he covered the man in a blanket and sat down next to him.


The man sat silently and eventually fell asleep. The boy stayed for a moment before going to see what was down the road. He took the gun from the man and walked towards the Road, he saw a small town in the distance. On the way back the boy gathered some brush and wood for the fire. Out of the suffocating darkness he heard his father calling out. The boy returned, the man livid with anger. The fire slowly began to burn out.


Where did you go, where is the gun?

I have it

Why did you take it

I went to go see what was down the road, and to go get more wood for the fire

I dont want you going anywhere without me

You were sleeping

I know

But the fire was going to go out, you would have froze

I don’t care. You cant go anywhere without me.






One of the motifs in this passage was the fire. Both the fire the man sets up at the camps, and the fire he and the boy carry within themselves. As the man gets closer to his death his fire begins to go out. He loses whatever morals he had, becomes angry and bitter. The boy goes to get more firewood, because he knows how important it is to keep the flame light. And despite any fears the boy may have, he risks going down the road on his own to keep that fire going. Throughout the book is it clear that the boy’s fire is brighter than the man’s.

In this passage I wanted to highlight the man’s protectiveness of the boy. The man wants to boy to know how to survive without him there. Yet at the same time the man doesn’t want to see the boy become independent of him, since the boy is his reason to fight to stay alive. After he see’s that the boy can take care himself the man has to grapple with the fact that the boy can survive without the man. The boy is the man’s reason for living. Knowing that the boy is at an age where he doesn’t need someone to take care of him, the man slowly loses his reason to stay alive. The man fights for their survival throughout the entire book. It is his nature to feel the need to always protect the boy, even if he doesn’t necessarily need said protection. There is a fine line between being protective of his son and being over protective, preventing his son from doing anything on his own. This could make life more difficult for the boy after the man is gone and end up hurting the boy. One of the motifs I decided to use was surviving on the road without a companion. The man worries about what the boy will be like on the road on his own. He fears that the boy will hurt himself and end up like the lightening struck man, will he lose his morals to survive, or only survive with the help from others just like Eli. This fear only makes the man more protective and unintentionally harmful to the boy.



McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 183

Be aware by reading this passage you have opened your mind into what could be a parallel universe from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ..


Holding the boy in his arms rubbing his thin black hair.

Its going to be okay.

Okay ?

Okay .

Close your eyes and go to sleep.

Inhale. Exhale. His eyes are closed. The man lays him down. Feel the breeze that flows across his body. His dreams begin to take over his thoughts. Hear the ocean breeze that runswards the sand. A familiar voice in the distance.

Honey.

Honey, come on.

You’re going to miss the kite show.

Without any words exchanged, the man walks towards her. Holding out his hand, waiting to touch hers. Twirling her around in his hands. Laughter and love fills the air. A countdown from a crowd full of people.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Eyes all over the crowd light up like stars in the sky.

Turn around and close your eyes.

Okay.

Covering her eyes, distracted by the noise from the crowd around her he says turn back around. Down on one knee he was with a little black book. Before the question could be asked the answer came unfold.

Yes I do.

The man go up from one knee and kissed her. Everyone around him became mute. He was the happiest man on earth. Holding hands walking towards  where the ocean meets the sand. There was nothing in view except for dim path of light. She walks towards in extending her hand.

Come with me.

He takes her hand nothing left but footsteps on the sand as their souls walk towards the never ending pathway of light.



Although my part never made the cut, here is my rationale to explain the choices I made for my project ..


The placement in where I choose to start my creative piece  is significant because in the book “The Road”, in  boy’s mind his dream was so strong that instantly he awakened  full of emotions. Almost as  if the dream was really real.  It is interesting because to the man he was unaware that the boy unknowingly had a dream about the man dying. I choose to do a scene about a dream because in the book dreams are nothing but an illusion of reality. Dreams in this book have multiple meanings to them. The dreams are essentially a parallel universe, however each dream varies on the outcome.  Whether it is negative or positive or whether the man or the boy posses the dream. It reveals a new fragment to the plot of the story. 

The plot for the creative piece was very simple. In the book “The Road” the man shows his affection towards the boy in a  oddly way. It comes across however as reader as severely over protective. I wanted to recreate a time in the man’s life where he was once carefree and happy. His wife who is signified as “her” in this section is not mentioned often in the actual book because, she leaves in the very beginning of the book. It is unknown of what really happened to her character, although you have a clue. Therefore I created this flash black in the man dreams, where he was head over heels in love with her. The setting is on the beach, which is a familiar setting in the book. However there are people all around, caught by the attention of the kites in the sky. The man proposes to the women and their full of bliss. But the twist is at the very end it says “He takes her hand nothing left but footsteps on the sand as their souls walk towards the never ending pathway of light.”, this sentence right here is SUPER important. I say this because it lets you know that this is not real. The man and woman are no longer in existent,as it says their souls leave their body.  By context clues you can infer that the man and woman are following the never ending light which would be considered the gateway to heaven. My McCarthy-esque word is runswards which means to run forward and or to run towards.


McCarthy Unabridged - the lost scene

I imagine the passage below to be a pivotal scene cut from The Road that explains many crucial points about both the characters and the situation they are in. 


The graystricken world had gotten to her. The man was not angry with her. He thought it was better to be with the boy himself. Less supplies to gather. One less person to worry about. He slept next to the boy that night for the first time. The man looked at the sky.

Why would you do this to me? Why would you take her? She didn’t mean those things she said. She loved him just as much as I did. You took away her will to survive! You did this!

The boy sleepily rolled over.

What’s wrong Papa?

Nothing. Go back to sleep.

Nothing’s wrong?

No.

Are you crying?

Go back to sleep. We’re leaving in the morning.

Goodnight Papa.


The man and the boy packed up their belongings. The boy looked into the distance, the gray sky seeming deeper and more hopeless than usual.

She’s gone, isn’t she?

Yes she is.

What is she going to do about the fire?

We’ll have to take it for her.

Is it my fault?

No it's not.

She didn’t love me did she?

The man glanced down from the boy’s eyes. 

No he finally said.

Do you love me Papa?

Very much.

I’m going to miss her.

I know.

You’re not going to leave me are you?

We all leave each other at some point. The man and boy continued along the road alone with the man doing his best to ignore anything that would remind him of an obsidian flake.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The rationale below helps explain why I made the choice to include numerous aspects from The Road in my passage.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy describes a world in which hopelessness runs rampant, taking the lives of many, most notably the mother of the boy. McCarthy is often criticized for the roles of women in his books, this one being no exception. The woman in The Road is often viewed as the weak, low point of the book. She is cold, one dimensional, and unable to sympathize with the man’s want to survive. The mother was dismissed when she shouldn’t have been.

This scene comes directly after the woman ends her own life. In the novel, this part is relatively unimportant and skipped over entirely. Adding more allowed the characters to express how they were feeling about the situation instead of the situation just happening with no repercussions or emotion. The man screams up to God, a constant theme throughout the novel, and expresses his disbelief that he would take his wife from him, even though it was clear that he and the boy cared deeply for her, as is evident in the parts preceding this added scene.

The boy cares so deeply for his mother, the first thing he is concerned with after learning about her disappearance is the fire they were supposed to carry together. Carrying the fire can mean many different things and is more or less left up to interpretation in the novel, but it means a lot to the boy and the man. It seems to give them purpose to carry on and survive in a world where nothing has any tangible meaning.

In a world with no meaning to be found, a few questions linger in the air. What is the purpose of anything? Why survive? What are you looking to achieve? Unfortunately, the mother thought the answer to these questions, quite simply, was nothing. She felt like nothing mattered, that no matter what they do as a family of survivors, nothing will bring the adrenaline rush of achievement. Gray will stay gray, and it will never get brighter. The boy explores this idea when he asks the man if he is going to leave him to which the man responds, “We all leave each other at some point.” This is direct foreshadowing to the end of the book when the man and the boy part ways.

Graystricken isn’t a real word, but to McCarthy it would’ve been. Grayness, another common word throughout the novel, represents hopelessness. Depression and hopelessness are common in a world where we’re not forced to scavenge for food. Graystricken is describing how hopelessness engulfs something and strikes that feeling into someone, much in the way grayness takes over the world.


Amelia Stuart--McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 259

He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

This is a scene I imagine was cut before the final publication of The Road on page 259, continuing from the above statement.


I worry about where we’re going, what will happen to us, the ones who eat people.

The boy held his gaze

Where are we going Papa?

We’re going south

What’s in the south Papa?

I wish I was dead

The man came to life and grabbed his son by his shoulders and shook him hard

Don’t say that!

Why not? Mama’s over there, we won’t be hungry, we won’t be scared.

We’re carrying the fire

You killed that man.

I didn’t kill him

You took everything from him

He stole from us!

He didn’t steal clothes off our backs. What is the point of carrying the fire if you only carry it for yourself?

He looked down at the boy, his shoulders lifting heavily with every breath.

He was a bad guy

Everyone isn’t a bad guy! If we were really good guys we would help people. We wouldn’t take everything from people. If you had found blankets and food would you have just left it there?

He knelt to a squatting position and rubbed his legs.

No

Then how is he worse than us?

He rose until he met the boy’s eyeline and looked into his eyes.

What if I promise to pass the fire onto the people we meet, as long as they’re not cannibals?

I want you to do it because it’s what’s right

Okay. We share the fire. And if they’re bad

you’ve gotta take a shot.


---  

For my creative piece, I wanted to use my own opinions and feelings about the book, and speak to the man through the boy. Early on in the book I wondered about the man’s motivation to “go south” but I’ve wondered more about why he insists they keep moving forward. It didn’t make sense to me. I had the feeling that the man was not keeping his son’s best interest in mind, and that he was making both their lives worse by continuing their journey.

The result of these thoughts made me angry at the man, for keeping his son starving and terrified, for this assignment I had the boy confront the man. Because I felt that the boy has always been smart and that he had these thoughts too. I placed my passage just before they went back and returned the clothes to the thief on page 259 because I felt that since the boy was already angry and was bottling his emotions, it would be a good place for him to empty out his feelings towards his father.

I had the boy introduce a new argument; sharing the fire, and how his father doesn’t share the fire with others.  I was able to bring back some of my original idea when the boy says, “what’s the point of carrying the fire if you only carry it for yourself?” This goes back to the theme of morals, and how the boy has more than his father; his father tells him that they are the good guys and that they’re carrying the fire, but the boy doesn’t understand how they can be the good guys if they don’t help others and share the fire.

I added in small descriptors throughout the dialogue. Something I wanted to focus on was the idea of the man “looking down” at the boy, this was a phrase I used when they first started talking. As the scene goes on and the man beings to understand the boy I described the man standing up as if to look back down at the boy, but instead he meets the boy at his eyeline. I put this in to define the transition from father and son to equals, I think that the boy’s speech would have made the man see how smart the boy was, that he was learning from the boy.


U2#8 (Alyssa Eastwood)

We watched Frontline. 
1) The show was about kids and teens withe the internet and there parents dealing with it. 
2)The most memorable thing is when the teen went to the rock concert with all of his friends and they got drunk and his parents saw the pictures they posted. 
3)It is important to watch shows like these so you can see the other side of online that you personally don't experience. It also shows you the things that can happen if you are not careful. It is not important to watch shows like these because if a parents sees one they will get very paranoid and think this is what my kid is doing but in reality the kid most likely is not acting like that.
4)I will keep my future family safe by making a home network policy so they can not go on certain websites and will have to be offline at a certain time every night, etc.   
5)It is important to talk to your family about internet safety so they do not do something they will regret and that will come back to them in the long run. Also to keep them safe. 
6)I would tell them to watch Frontline and also make rules that apply to them.  
stop-think-connect
stop-think-connect

Julia Hood It's Complicated Reflection

Today I read a part of the book "It's complicated. " This book seems to have very controversial views/ ideas from what I've read. It told a lot of information that is in a format that will be likable by many different types of people. 
One thing that I did not agree with was the constant reminder of the interchangeable use of bullying and drama. This is something that I have lived through and I wish that I would have realized that they are not as interchangeable as many people today use it. I had people who I called my friends bully me, but it was just called "drama" and "girls being girls" or "girls being petty" by authority figures who I tried to get help from. This didn't help the situation at all, and made it worse in some ways. 
I saw a lot of people that the author interviewed saying that bullying didn't occur at their school when it obviously did. I think that this is caused by not enough education on the harmful effects of bullying, and what bullying actually is. Many kids just see bullying as physical or direct verbal abuse, not as rumors or talking behind people's back. I look at all of this now and realize how lucky I am that SLA takes all of this so seriously because my old school didn't and I feel a lot safer in this school. I also realize that I am very lucky that I have been properly educated on the topic of bullying and I would like to do more to prevent it in the future.

McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 114

The piece I have written is what I could have believed to be a cut out from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" before all final edits were official. 


Papa, I’d rather lose my life saving a friend than take it by take it  because of the bad guys. We’re experiencing some hard times but we can’t curse that which brings life.

Listen to me. I love you and I know what’s best for you. These people will dismember and dispatch our flesh. We will die. If not now one day.

But I must fulfill my purpose.

Your purpose is to stay alive. 

I want to know who God is. 

If you are not the word of God God never spoke, and word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. 

Papa I don’t understand

You’ll understand after I leave. 

Quivering in fear, the boy took a glance at the pistol that determined whether or not his life would end. Checking his surroundings the boy saw a dark figure running across the field. The figure reminded the boy of himself, small, desperate, scared, and lost. Then, he recalled the other little boy that he saw looking back at him from across the street. 

There’s the little boy. He’s over there. Can we save him?

No those people are guzzling moral machines. 

It doesn't matter we have to save him. He doesn't know those bad guy are out there. 

I’m sorry. We can’t save him.

Just then the people caught up with the other little boy and captured him. The boy turned to his papa sobbing. 

 

Rationale: This explains why I made certain choices for my creative piece. 

Doing this project allowed me to become McCarthy for a little while. I had the chance to analyze a short part of the book and add a piece that feels like it may have been missing from the novel. In the book there are references to christian philosophies. During class discussions we acknowledge them but sometimes didn’t dig deeper into what they meant. For this project I decided to play on the connection we’ve made between the character traits of the boy and Jesus. My goal was to connect the boy and Jesus without making it feel like the reader was reading the bible and to mimic McCarthy’s style of writing while still being unique and add my own flair to the piece. 

In the beginning the man says “If he is not the word of God God never spoke”. This quote is similar to John 1:1 and John 1:14 in the bible  “... the Word was with God, and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. After analyzing I found that the man was saying that the word, God, and the boy are interchangeable. When the bible says “the word became flesh” it’s talking about how God sent himself to the earth as flesh through Jesus. Here is a clear connection to how the book portrays the boy as Jesus. 

Having made this connection I wanted to find a way to incorporate this into the placement, where I was going to insert inside the creative piece. I began skimming through my book and reread the story on page 110. During this part of the man and the boy were looking for food and came across a room where they found naked people who were captured by cannibals. The man and the boy fled and hid. The man insisted on them committing suicide if too close to being captured and tells the boy to “curse God and die”. This phrase is also in the bible in the book of Job. When Job becomes sick and loses his wealth his wife tells him to “curse God and die”. The boy being faced with similar issues as Job continues to persevere until things get better. 

Last, I incorporated the other little boy into the creative writing to show how compassionate the boy is like Jesus. In christianity Jesus died to save everyone from death. Throughout the book the little boy is always asking his papa if they could help someone although he puts his own life at risk.


Zack Hersh — McCarthy Unabridged

Inserted Scene

(The Road 66) They came to an old iron bridge in the woods where the vanished road had crossed an all but vanished stream. He was starting to cough and he’d hardly the breath to do it with.  He dropped down out of the roadway and into the woods. He turned and stood gasping, trying to listen. He heard nothing. They were but ten minutes from the roadrats. Maybe less. Looming trees around them, leafskinned and twisted. Barren branches like tendrils. Scorched, scaly bark. They moved through the carcass of the woods and the man coughed and coughed and coughed and looked behind him frequently but they werent there. Still no time to catch their breath as they hurried through the shadowy grove until the woods were suddenly blazing bright and tormented with loud snaps.


The man yanked the boy’s arm and pulled him away. An ablaze tree fell in front of them and thundered. In every direction trees crashing down. Some alight with flame. This way! He held the boy’s hand tight and darted them out of the way of falling tree. A growl erupted from the ground where tree connected. They ran but the boy was dragging. Papa! The man coughing and weak and exhausted but somehow with the energy to maneuver around the falling trees. One nearly hit the boy but the man snatched him out of the way. Trees still crashing. Why are they falling Papa? They had nowhere else to go. They continued around the trees through the howls and the ripping and the thuds until it was finally quiet.


The man stopped and looked back at the carnage. Hulking trunks splayed across the ground. Smoke oozing into the gray sky. The man held the boy’s hand. The boy was silent. The man pushed forward. He staggered on another half mile or so and finally dropped to his knees and put the boy down in the ashes and leaves. He wiped the blood from his face and held him. It’s okay. It’s okay.


Rationale — An explanation of the decisions made in the inserted scene

The essential theme that shaped and created my cut scene of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was the theme of changed purposes in the new world. What was not dangerous before have become threats, and threats are everywhere. What was devalued or taken for granted before have become vital and necessities. I wanted a scene that revolved around an example of this, which is why I added a scene in which they are in the woods and trees fall around around them. This connects to this idea of changed purposes by having the man and the boy in a dangerous situation where the danger is trees, something that in the old world was innocuous and not dangerous, even were symbols of life and peace, and have become threats in this new world. My scene serves to foreshadow and reflect all the parts throughout the book that have or have to do with changed purposes and the transfer from the pre-apocalyptic world to the post-apocalyptic world by having it revolve around this theme.

My choice of placement has to do with the characterization and character development that takes place. I wanted to develop the way in which these characters behave in the face of immediate danger — how they act under impulses and under adrenaline. They are always at risk as long as they are on their journey but I wanted to develop this side of their characters in an extreme situation. This is why I chose to insert this scene at the bottom of page 66, which is moments after they escaped the roadrats: they are already in the woods, they are early enough into the journey to not be on or near the brink, and having just escaped the claws of danger adds to the intensity of the situation. Since these are the driving forces of the scene, the themes of fear and survival were also addressed, as they act out of fear and desire to survive under the pressure of this danger.

 The motifs of monstrosity and predators are some of my favorites from the book because they connect to the main question and theme of changed purposes and transfer from the old to the new world. Inanimate objects and elements of the landscape often have a monstrous description (serpentine river, warped trees like skeletons), which shows how the world has changed. It creates predators and danger where there weren’t any, or the potential and fear that there might be when they’re not, as they could be anywhere. As such my scene recurred this motif by deliberately describing the trees and the environment this way (tendrils of branches, the trees growling, etc). They have also just escaped real predators.

Obsessed: The Addiction of Sports

Radio Piece by Jesse Shuter, Alejandro Bautista-Garcia, and Kevin Le

Radio Piece can be found here

Article by Jesse Shuter

Our goal for the radio piece was to explore a new kind of journalism and a unique opportunity that you might not find at other schools. By working with Jeanette Woods and WHYY we learned a lot about the radio process. We wanted to explore a topic that we found to be interesting but would also garner the attention of fellow students and we hoped that it would get a positive response. The piece itself talks about the addiction of watching sports, or football in particular, and the power it can have over a student's effectiveness.

ARTICLE:

With the Super Bowl fast approaching it is time to reflect on the football season that has seemingly once again been whisked quickly in and out of our lives. Football is a sport that has a large and passionate fan base, but with passion can also come struggle.


While entertaining and meaningful to many, sports can have an impact other than fun. Sports can also distract people from their lives and duties. Students in particular can see their work suffer due to sports.


People dedicate much of their time to sports, sometimes even whole days. One high school student from Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, senior William Derry, certainly feels the impact of sports on his life.


“On a Sunday I’ll wake up around eight or nine, I’ll watch countdown from about ten to twelve and I’m not going to do work during those times. I’m going to prepare for the game, you know when I was younger I used to go out to get pizza or maybe we’ll throw around the football before the game starts,” Derry said.


“So we’re talking my entire Sunday, besides going to church from maybe eleven to one, is dedicated to watching football. So I would say my Sundays [are] taken over by football.”


William Derry is certainly not alone. The rise in fantasy football, in particular, has caused an even greater impact on workers and students. In fact, in 2015 an estimated sixteen billion dollars were lost to companies due to inefficient working hours as a result of time spent of fantasy sports. This is according to a study done by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.


Micah Henry is also a senior at Science Leadership Academy (SLA). Henry is an avid fan of fantasy sports and not only lets them affect his work, but also his mood.


“You know I had these benchmarks due and like, I don’t know, fantasy football, I lost on Monday night because like you know [Carolina Panthers tight end] Greg Olsen got this touchdown,” Henry said.


“Messed up my whole week because I was winning on Sunday night and on Monday night I lost. I didn’t do any homework because I was watching football all night, so I went to bed late.”


While not everyone is affected directly by sports, other can be affected due to their relations with people who become obsessed. Parents need to continually remind their kids to focus their work and often become responsible for the success of their children in this respect.


Meanwhile students often see their friends fall prey to the addiction of football. Joseff Fillamor is a senior at SLA who does not follow or even enjoy traditional sports. However, his friends become obsessed.


“Yeah, I don’t really watch football that much, but whenever I wanna chill with my friends or something they just wanna watch football instead of going out and doing something. Like whenever I wanna go up to the park to skate they’ll just be like ‘uh yeah I’m watching football tonight, it’s sunday’ and I’m just like damn” Fillamor said.


The lesson to be learned here is not that football can cause a toxic environment or that you should quit watching altogether. The lesson is that football, like all things, needs to be taken in moderation. It is when you let it run your life that you can get in trouble.

Zack Hersh — Quarter 2 Art

The theme of this quarter's work for me was finding inspiration. For three of the four pieces I created this quarter, I had at first no idea of what I was going to make and spent a good portion of time just trying to figure that out — either by thinking it through, talking it out, or physically experimenting with the medium. Unlike pieces I had created in the past, for most of these I didn't have a clear vision of what I was going for even after I finally had an idea, which made seeing the way in which they each unfolded all the more interesting and exciting.

The first piece is a collage, entitled Lens. Collating is a process of creation that I had enjoyed greatly before (see my quarter 1 work here), but I was completely drawing up blanks when trying to conceive an idea. Maybe it was the expanse of options, or the thought of having a concept but not feeling like I would be able to actualize it with my skill level or resources. After a week or two of still having nothing I took it back to the way we would make collages in younger grades, by cutting pictures from old magazines, and began flipping through some such publications and seeing what came. I became interested in the eyes, and how they are all very different, while still so similar, and how much you both can and can't discern from them. The resulting collage was only pictures of eyes of all different kinds, and put together in the almond shape of an eye. The many eyes made up one lens. Of the four pieces this quarter this was the one I spent the most time on by far.

The second piece was an original photo and then editing it with photo editing software. I knew I wanted to work with something I had already taken, and spent the first half of the process just sifting through all of my photos that I could find and seeing what spoke to me. I ended up with a panorama picture of my train station. I used the photo-editing software to sharpen up the image and make it more clean and less bleached, while still keeping the scene bright and sun-saturated.

The third piece was a pencil sketch of a piece of fabric. Before doing this piece I had never really noticed the intricacy of folds of fabric. I tried my best to match all of the folds and ripples in the sketch but found it quite challenging.

The final piece was an illustration of some sort, and this is where I drew the biggest blank. I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to go with this — every idea I had to for something to illustrate I couldn't picture filling a page with a picture to accompany it. Of all of the books, movies, and writing I know I couldn't draw up something that spoke to me. Songs were where I found the most ideas, but still couldn't wrap my head around an illustration for them. However, I had a flash of a thought about my English notebook, that I've been filling with colored marker-pen doodles while listening to discussions in class, and when I started to create the illustration on lined loose-leaf in the back of the notebook with the colored pens I'd been using, the drawing came naturally. The illustration is for the song Pompeii by Bastille, depicting in slashed and blended markings a lone brick arch in front of the massive volcano. After I completed it I realized I wished I'd put the grass farther back and extended it under the arch to show the volcano as farther away, but it nonetheless ended up as my favorite piece from this quarter. I don't feel the detail of the markings and the blended colors fully shows in the pictures, but the starkness and brightness that characterize it are apparent.

McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 27

The passage I wrote below is what I imagined was cut from Cormac McCarthy's The Road while he was writing the book.


He knew he shouldnt have come. Entering the house meant all the memories rushingback to him, but he couldnt help it. Seeing something that once represented his haven in a cold, godless world led to feelings he was not able to describe. He thought that visiting his house would not have a big impact on him. He just wanted to be able to revisit his childhood, his past. The mistake he made was not realizing how dangerous memories can be and how change can affect someone. He didnt know until he was able to see that it was just not the same anymore. Dreams in the world did not represent a child’s imaginings or nightmares. Dreams now meant one or the other: the present or the future. Bad dreams made him fear the world he lives in, but it still reassured him that he was alive. Good dreams let him knew he was giving up. That the end was coming for him.


When it was too late, he noticed that only the house that stood was the present. All of the memories, the events, the happiness were left in the past. His whole life was gone before his eyes. Nothing left. What is there to live for he thought. What is left in this world. Is there hope?  He wondered if this is how weak he has already gotten to think about death so easily. Everything so gray. The world so empty.




Here is my rationale to explain the decisions I made for my project.


For my section, I placed it on page 27, after the first paragraph. I wanted to be able to touch more upon the idea of good and bad dreams and giving up, so I thought it would be most beneficial to place it where I did because the paragraph focused on his memories and dreams. My scene adds more to the man’s character development because the readers are able to see how dangerous memories can be. Just by the man remembering his childhood and recalling his joyful moments, it makes it harder for him to move on and shatters his firm belief of trying to survive in a world where everything is gone. In order to foreshadow how sever his illness is, I made him think about giving up and death since that shows the readers that he is having a hard time trying to keep moving on. Foreshadowing this in his house seemed like an interesting choice since his house only represented what is now “dead”. While the house itself was still present, all of the memories and moments shared in his home were dead along with everyone else he cared about.


The theme I chose is dangers of memory. Good memories from the past seem to be one of the biggest obstacles because they remind the man of what he used to have and what he doesn’t have anymore. This theme is significant in my scene because everything is revolved around the idea of how memories can interfere with trying to keep going. My motif is dreams because I think dreams and memories have a very close relationship with each other. Both have always been a recurring theme since memories hinder the man’s motivation to keep going and dreams only made him fear the outcomes: being alive in a dead world or the end coming for him. The essential question I asked was: What is there to live for? What is the point of continuing to survive? Because there is nothing left, both characters have thought about this question at least once in the novel. Even the readers cannot help but ask this question since there seems to be no hope of living in a better environment in the near future. Even in the novel, there are numerous obstacles that tell them dying is easier than surviving. As for a McCarthy-esque vocabulary, I used “rushingback”. I put these two words together because I wanted to create the illusion of all the memories literally coming back to the man at once.


McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 251

​The passage below is what I have imagined was cut from the top of page 251 in Cormac McCarthy's, The Road. It begins after the sentence, "He fell into a dreamless sleep."

While the man slept motionless the boy remained suffering under a fitful spate of fever dreams. The man was carrying him, stumbling and stopping to cough every twenty counted steps until he finally succumbed to exhaustion dropping to his knees. The boy fell to the ground. The low hung fog compressed them into the earth until the boy was choking on ashes. Stiff and silent. A movement just to the left of him caught the boys and he was instantly blinded by a white unseen before. A dove rustled in the wet cinder and the boy watched rapturous as white wings stretched into the unyielding slate sky. Too soon obsidian spliced the rising light. The mans hand encircled the avian neck wrenching it to earth before the sobbing boy. Eat youre starving the man said shoving the shadowblackened bird into the boys mouth. 

The boys eyes shot open to ashen sky. He laid there listening to his ragged breaths climb up and down the ladder of protruding ribs. Nothing moved in the birdless sky. Dull waves broke against the shore in the distance. The boys lips were cracked from dehydration but the rain had stopped, not that it would provide respite. He focused his gaze on his sleeping father waiting for him to wake.
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Below is a rationale to explain the creative choices I took in creating my "lost" passage. 

I decided to write a dream, because they’re a prevalent motif throughout the book. The relationship between the man and the boy changes towards the end of the book as the man takes more drastic actions to keep the boy safe and alive. I chose to place my creative writing when the boy has a fever. After he wakes up he talks about how he had weird dreams (fever dreams), but he doesn’t want to disclose them. When reading that page, I was curious as to what he dreamt about and if it had anything to do with his father being a good guy or a bad guy.

“Good guys and bad guys” is the theme that connects to the first essential question: Can good people do bad things and still be good? The man has walked this line a few times. He won’t share food which can be considered a bad thing, but it is for the longevity of his son’s life. In the dream I wrote, the man kills a bird, but it’s because his son is starving. The bird motif was important for me to address because it has symbolized freedom and innocence. The man in the dream sacrifices that to keep his son alive, which is a comment on another essential question: Is there a time to stop surviving and die? The boy would never sacrifice something as pure and rare as a bird just to stay alive a little while longer.

This dream is foreshadowing the scene with the thief that is about to take place and is reflective of the way their relationship has evolved. In the next scene the man is brutal to the thief and essentially condemns him to death because he threatened the life of his son. In that moment he is a bad guy. Light and dark are also important motifs because often McCarthy indicates that the man lives in the grey space in between. In the dream, he kills the bird to save the boy even though the boy protests. The father forces the boy to live even if it goes against the boy’s own moral code. 

My McCarthy-esque word could either be spate, rapturous, or shadowblackened. Spate is just a very uncommon word and I feel like that is something McCarthy has mastered. Rapturous is another uncommon word and it has a biblical connotation. It is also a surprisingly aggressive word even though it means extreme joy. And shadowblackened is not a “real” word, which we have seen McCarthy do before. It could mean that shadow and dark are permanent, which is the effect the man had on the bird. He already ruined it just by touching it. 

It's Complicated Reflection by Nick Ryan

Nick Ryan
1/28/16
Blue Stream

Reflection

This chapter in It's Complicated was very controversial but, informative. It brought up so many good points about cyber-bullying and bullying itself. When I was reading this, I started to question what I defined as bullying. The author tells her audience about Olweus' definition of bullying, Abigail and Ashley's story(among many others such as Taylor and Chris), and how we describe bullying.
The author kept telling her audience that teenagers such as me, use "drama" as a replacement for the word bullying. I started to think, "Wait I do that don't I?" Then, I started to wonder where have I done this. I realized that I use the word "drama" to describe what could be described as acts of bullying(not in this school of course.) Then, I started to think why do teenagers do this?
I started to think about our motives behind calling bullying "drama." I thought maybe it's because we just came up with a new word for bullying, like a slang word for it. I soon began to understand our motives. I think it is because the media makes bullying look so horrible and inhumane, we start to reject the word. So, whenever we see what would be bullying, we get a little bit scared. We go into denial about the situation and call it drama. This was the conclusion I came to while reflecting on reading this book.

McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 83 by Sergei Mass

Explanation:


The piece below is what I would've imagined Cormac McCarthy having in the final copy of The Road, but it was not placed in the story. I felt that the story was missing the essential component of why exactly is the man continuing his trek down the road even though he knows that there is not much to live for. I felt that the explanation for this would best fit in a part where only the man is awake and the boy is asleep, but earlier in the story which gives support for the use of page 83. It was quintessential for the boy to be asleep so the father could drift off into his thoughts without an interruption from his son. I imagined this scene to be a flashback with the man and his wife were discussing what would be happening after stuff went down with the nuclear winter. The man and his wife were meant to have a back and forth so it showed a sense of tension in a situation like this. I felt that the man in the whole book was walking the road to give the boy a life and show him the world while being by his side. I felt that, that message was not flat out stated and was not revealed much and it was needed to be brought out in this piece.

Life is the main theme of this piece; the rest of the novel is very dark and gray, but with this I wanted to bring some light into the book. Although it does not scream “flowers and unicorns everywhere” and “ding dong the witch is dead”, I wanted to show the value of life and others lives in the piece.

The style aspect of this was hard due to the lack of quotation marks and the straight to the point language, and when I read a book, I usually come across a lot of beating around the bush and wordy sentences. It was tricky to be less wordy with my piece and to be straight to the point. I wanted to be blunt, but not too blunt that it was very boring to read.





Creative Portion:


Insert at page 83 after “Yes because we are carrying the fire.”



The man sat and thought to himself in the wee hours of the morning as the boy rested beside him.

Are we really carrying the fire? I feel that I am failing the boy. I want to show him the proper life, but god, look what is around me.

He looked through the forest as if he was looking for the answer all around him; he could not seem to find it.

He imagined the conversation he had with his wife just before she left. She was pacing back and forth, wondering what was going to happen to her, the man, and the boy. Her palms were growing clammy like the dew in the morning which the man and the boy would wake up to.

What are you going to do when the shit hits the fan? How are you two gonna survive.

We will… we will have to make due with what’s left.

What do you mean what is left? There will be nothing left.

The boy has quite a life to live, even though this shit happened. Look you have to realize that. You need to stop being so negative. I want the boy to live a somewhat normal life.

How do you expect to do that?

I don’t know… I guess it will just come when the time comes. I’ll teach him about life, i’ll show him the world; shit I’ll do the best I can. I need to do this for him. The boy means the world to me. I know my condition is worsening, but i’ll have to keep on going for the boy.


*End of piece*


Kyianna U2 #8

  • What TV show did you watch in class?

  • Today in class we watched a show called Digital Nation.

  1. What was this show about?

  • Digital Nation was a show that shows the different ways to use the internet. It shows us all the ways the internet can be used. It was people of different ages using it and the dangers that it can come with.

  1. What is the most memorable thing to you about this show?

  • The one thing that I can remember was that it showed how the internet can really have a negative effect on you.

  1. Why/Why not -  is it important to watch shows like these?

  • It's important to watch shows like this so it can teach you what not to do on the internet. It also shows you how to trust the internet when it comes down to online safety.

  1. How will you keep your future family safe online?

  • I will make sure that they are on websites i approve of. I will make sure that i have a code on my computer for the safety and for the websites they can not get on. I will also want access to there accounts for anything.

  1. Why is it important to talk with your family about internet safety

  • I think it's important so they don’t find anything online bad about you or about what websites you have been on. I really would just tell them not to trust the internet.

  1. What advice would you give to parents that don't know how to keep their children safe online?

  • I would tell them to just make sure you are mindful for what websites your child is on. Please make sure that they are being respectful online.

  • Find a copyright-less photo/image to enhance your post

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McCarthy Unabridged: The Road Page 260

The passage I have molded below represents an opportunity that I have capitalized on in the hopes of establishing a deeper understanding of a character in the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy.


Creative Piece

The man focused on what he perceived to be the wind without answering the boy's statement. He drifted on into his own thoughts forgetting about the boy and the world around him. The man opened his eyes shortly afterwards only to find the boy gone. There was a camp fire set up despite the fact that the man had no tools to light one himself. He quickly arose and began to panic in search of his boy only to have a shadowy figure approach him. The man quickly aimed his flare gun at the figure.

Where’s my son

A young handsome man arose from the shadows with a face that seemed oddly familiar to the man.

Is he important to you

Are you an idiot

I’m whatever you want me to be

did you take my son?

If I did

Then you’ll die

What gives you the right

My son does

He’s just a boy

He’s everything to me

Would you kill for him

It’d be the right thing to do

The fire

What

You carry it don’t you

What kind of bullshit-

Don’t let it consume you otherwise it’ll burn out

Wait who are-

It’s your serah after all


The man awoke to the sound of the boy yelling at him

Papa you’re coughing blood

It’s fine

It’s not

I said it’s fine go back to sleep I have medecine.

The man ignored his own blood in favor of pondering what exactly he just experienced.


Rationale:

My rationale behind the creation of this passage is that I wanted to further define a motif often present in The Road. Throughout the book the boy and man have conflicting ideologies of righteousness and perseverance which leave them at odds with one another. Despite their differences however the man and the boy still agree that they are both “carrying the fire.” This phrase is important to both the man and the boy as it drives them forward in their pursuit of survival. For my passage I wanted this motif of fire to be defined more clearly for the man and thus I had the man have a dream where he comes into direct contact with his own personal “fire.”

For my dream I wanted the man to realize that the fire he possessed was defined as his right to deal justice and his integrity as a human being. To do this I had the man placed in a scenario where he was given the upperhand as a the judge, jury and executioner. I did this also bearing in mind that the man was already recently placed in a similar scenario where his boy believed he made the wrong choice. I had the shadowy figure in dream be one who didn’t seem threatening to the man to have him further question if killing him was the right choice if he had taken the boy. This was important to me because it allowed me to show that the boy’s well being dictated what the man perceived as justice and integrity. The boy was fueling the man’s fire. I wanted this also to be shown as a serious problem for the man which I did by having the shadowy figure mention that the man’s fire could consume him. This was to show that if the man focuses too much on the boy then he could wind up hurting the boy along with himself in the future.

At the very end of the passage I had the shadowy figure mention that the man’s fire could consume him. At this point I had the man refer to the fire as the man’s “serah.” The purpose of this word was to represent the man’s convictions and and approach to life. The man’s serah up until this point in book was to isolate the boy from the world in order to survive. I wanted this be the point in the book where man question if his “serah” was right. The man constantly brushes off the righteous morals of the boy throughout the book and I used this dream to have the man question if the boy was right to have his morals.



McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 276

This passage is one that I have imagined as a piece of the road that was cut, prior to the book's release;

In the morning they walked along the river, following a small trail of old footsteps that mixed the sand with mud and grime. Hollowed trees littered the riverbank and the excess of water had long since drove the trees into the murky grey water. A small village stood ahead, with homes that sat covered with ash and half flooded. A tarp sat in the middle of the village covering a three-legged stand. The man lifted the tarp to find an old painting of a man and a dog running down a green road with the joyful sun smiling down on them. A tragic reminder of the bright and simple past.

Can we bring it with us?

No, it’s too big for the cart.

Okay.

The boy looked at the buildings around them as they stood and swayed in the blackened swamp.

Should we look through the home?

No, there's nothing here.

He left the tarp covering the painting and walked away, the boy looked at the painting for a moment before following him, the faded blue tarp left on the stand to guard the ancient oiled canvas. They made camp further down the trail, the boy was still looked back towards the sunken village.

Papa, are their any more paintings?

Maybe

Can I make one

Yes, when you're safe

Okay

The man felt a cough building in his long-damaged lungs and turned away from the boy as his throat released a stream of ash and dead air.


This is my Rationale to explain why I feel that these choices should have been made;

In my piece, I started out with a description of their location, as most of the Road segments begin. As the piece fits in on page 276, I mentioned the tidal river with the broken bridge and used it to set up a broken flooded environment where they are forced to go around, following a path left by previous travelers. I decided to bring in a village in order to provide a place for the painting to feel natural and show a subtle piece of character development for the boy.

I choose to add in the painting to show a small remainder of hope in the barbaric world of The Road. Additionally the painting would work to give the boy an understanding of why to live on, showing him a small image of the world before and the idea that their can still be beauty in this world. The painting also allows a closer look at the boy who is shown to be quite creative at some points such as towards the beginning when he paints his face-mask with a piece of charcoal. The boy also asks if they can keep it, given that it’s his trademark response to almost all of the new things he finds.

Another smaller moment I added in was the boy asking if they should search the houses. The boy has constantly expressed fear when it comes to searching the houses, but here he understands the need to live on and is willing to take a chance in order to live on. This also sets up the ending where he is willing to take a chance and join the group. However the man is more guarded and disagrees with taking the chance as he knows he doesn’t have much time left and doesn’t want to take the chance and have his luck finally run out.

The boy later asks the man if their are any more painting and if he would be able to make one. The man’s response of “Yes, when you’re safe” rather than “when we are safe” is a subtle foreshadowing of the man’s approaching death that the boy doesn’t catch on. Finally the man’s cough shows how close he is to dying at this point.

A McCarthy-esque vocabulary word that I used was murky, I choose to use it to describe the river they pass by and I feel that it’s a good description of the greyed and damaged world that the story takes place in.

Q2 ​Artist Statement

 As an artist, I work hard to create drawings and paintings that speak to me about beauty that exists. Every artist has an inspiration mine is just straight out beauty. The word beauty these days is used so easily used, leaving no real meaning. Yet my art is to define the true meaning that lies right beneath our eyes. I try with every finished piece of art to create beauty that all are starting to neglect. I merely do not just want to capture an image but to define it. Each painting or drawing has something of mine in it not only that I made it, yet that their is something in their that can help define me as a person. When I work with a pencil I know that this pencil can create so much. I begin with a image in my mind and soon look at real life examples. I know a piece is done when I know that there is something that hints something about me and true beauty. When my work is going well I am filled with a sense of feeling good and knowing that my work has paid off. When I want people to see my work I want them to see a good job and attract allure. Hopefully all can see some good in my work, as I do. For trying is also a main key.
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McCarthy Unabridged: Page 25

Creative piece: 

She stood there, on the edge of the woods. The blade in her hand was gray, and dull.


Don’t do it, he said.


She looked at him, blankly.


If there was another option, we wouldn’t be thinking about this. They’re going to rape him. Or kill him, or worse. But maybe this was supposed to happen. I wouldn’t be able to watch them suffer anyway.


But maybe he wouldn’t suffer. He’s young. He still needs someone to protect him. I’m going to die, you’re going to die. Why kill yourself?


There’s is no hope. Nothing is going to change. He is going to die. It’s going to be long and painful. He will see things no child should ever see. You’re going to let him suffer through that for you’re own selfish desire to live. I can’t stay. I can’t stay with you, and I can’t stay with him, she said.


Crying was something the man rarely did. He could feel his eyes burning. He watched the red blood slowly well up on her wrist. He watched her go pale, and all the life disappear from her. He wanted to comfort her, but there wasn’t anything he could have done.


She was going to die.


Goodbye.


Rationale:


As Cormac McCarthy never explicitly stated what happened to the boy’s mother, I chose to to write a story about what happened to her. It’s pretty commonly theorized that she commit suicide because she saw the situation as hopeless, or that something was going to happen to her son and family. She didn’t want to live to see the day that any of that happen.


It’s commonly accepted as human nature that if people can see the end, or they can see a way out of things, they will continue. And from the standpoint of biology, the goal is to continue the human race as far as you can. Suicide is a human idea. We are the only species capable of planning it’s own demise out of pure psychological misery.


This is not even anything that is ever explained to the boy and McCarthy knows that death is never going to be explainable. You don’t die and live to tell people about it. You can’t explain something you don’t understand because you’ve never experienced it. The boy never understands what happens to his mother, and honestly the man probably doesn’t understand either.


However, it’s understood that in this world that the only end goal is to avoid dying. It’s not to advance yourself, get more money, or have nicer and flashier things. It’s literally not to die. So to them, suicide is to fail ultimately and I think she knew that.




Luke's Podcast final product

Luke Sylvia_1
Feminism and Identity is the topic. 

Script: https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1rnmwxpqPzkHnn3UIbj4CGl0EHS1rlmQnXZHOto9cGu8/edit?usp=sharing

Entering this project my goal was to try something new. I didn't want to do a subject that I would be on board with and I wanted to do one where I'd actually learn instead of doing one I'll contradict. I've known many feminist but often times it has came up but this time I wanted to discuss it with someone who would know more with the experience. So I decided that I'd break the cliche of doing your own parents and work with a friend of my mother's who I've known since birth. It was interesting especially because my mother and her went out and fought for many of the same causes. So my ultimate goal was to learn something new. The work ended up going well as I had trouble cutting from 51:09 to 12:51 and it was disappointing I couldn't add more.

I experienced a lot through this. One thing is that I need cleaner audio as I had to clean it up myself which made it difficult. I originally had two takes but one wasn't as good. The discussion overall went well. We remained on topic and afterwards I learned a lot about their life and family afterwards. Another thing that went well was addressing each question, as they were unavoidable and we clear that I could understand them to which question they correlated too. Another struggle was dealing with background noise. At home I have a pair of brothers who decided it was dinner time and you could hear them a little. I really feel like I learned about feminism and why so many view this patriarchy in the way many people who believe women's rights see it. Finally, it has given  me more insight to an issue that could be hard for me especially as a male to understand

I believe music is distracting

Reflection for second slide.

Untitled presentation (2)
​The main critique of my slide was that they had a hard looking at the picture because it was cut of at a weird spot.  The slide was not really proportioned correctly.  I fixed this by replacing the picture. I was told that the picture was good and did good job drawling your attention but it was not complex enough that I needed to stare at it.  After thinking about the comments on my slide I started to agree with what they were saying.  I learned that  I needed to proportion it a lot better.  The other main change  I had was making the words to closer the picture.  This helped it be easier to read and then look back it at me.  I also removed my name from the slide since that was not needed.  

 

Desmond O'Donovan, Q2 Art Portfolio

​This quarter I did a lot of nature related drawings. It started with the Fern drawing. I like how it turned out, but hated drawing. I have to draw plants a lot for the backgrounds of my animal portraits, and I find them tedious to draw. Ferns especially, are just a long continuous pattern. The block print was supposed to be nature inspired, so I picked an animal to use for y negative space drawing and print. I decided to choose an animal that could be well represented by negative space. a pure black raven worked well. 

The Golden Ratio Collage was my favorite piece to draw, and I think it is the best one that I did. I've never done one before, but I really grew to like drawing patterns and shapes. It was hard, but fun to create. A lot of these pieces were pretty difficult to execute, but I appreciated the challenge. I also liked experimenting with color for this one, because this was the only drawing that I did in class this quarter that used color. 

McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, page 49

​The below passage is an imaginary addition of what Cormac McCarthy might have added to The Road before the final edition of the book was published:

She paced the dark kitchen while the man sat staring.

Will you just stop trying already? You dont always have to try and help people.

But I do.

Stop it. No. You need to survive for yourself, and let me worry about us as she held her stomach. There is no me and you anymore. There is the smart and ignorant.

Please.

Please? The want to live is an individual barrier. Surviving isnt good enough. This is my life choosing and your life is revolving around choosing to burden me. Your life should be defined by yourself, not me. I am done once he is out. There is no point. There will never be a light to give you hope and I have lost hope too long ago.

She leaned on the gloomcroaked wood. He looked at her with sodden eyes. But you are my purpose.

No. That’s not true.

Without you there is nothing. There are not that many people left.

So?

So nothing. They dont mean anything but you mean something.

What happens when I am gone? There will only be those who are unknown, lonesome roaming with no particular destination.

She leaned her head down to lean against her hand. He stood up to reach out and comfort her but she pushed his grey familiarness away.


​The below passage is a rationale to explain the choices of the imaginary addition of what Cormac McCarthy might have added to The Road before the final edition of the book was published:

After the line “Who is anybody?” on page 49, I decided to place a flashback with the man and woman because it encompasses the change in the man. In many early flashbacks with the man and woman, the characterization of the man is to plead, and the woman’s tone is harsh and unattached. Later in the book the man becomes more like the mother, not exactly unattached to the boy, but more protective which comes off as being hard on him. Since the placement is early in the book, it had to encompass the man’s want for the woman, and the woman’s loss of hope and will. With the man’s want for the woman to stay and survive together, it got me thinking about what the woman means to the man. The boy obviously means a lot to the man, but the woman was the man’s main purpose to live, and to care about who he was. Once she was gone,  he didn’t really identify as anyone, and the identity of anyone else didn’t matter. So one of the essential question is who do you persist for and what happens when it’s gone. This explains the actions in from the flashback to when the man and boy pass the lightning struck man. What this leads into is the theme of the passage: the purpose of living. The man and woman don’t see eye to eye on surviving. I chose to continue this argument of living because the man believes there is some good left out there, but if he truly believes that nobody has an identity, then good and bad people don’t exist, which would mean origin doesn’t matter to the man. Although it is evident in the book the man constantly reflects on the past, and his past matters a lot to him. So the plot of this passage is to show the love the man has for the woman. The woman is apart of the man’s identity, and they are fighting in this scene because they need to figure out why to live and for what reason. The boy stemmed from the woman which is another reason for the man to continue on. The last part of the scene that is crucial is the motif of grey and light. I decided to choose the woman as a light for the man, but everything to due with the woman is dark. Reason being is the woman has lost hope, and everything around her is dark. Without the woman in the man’s life, the greyness becomes greyer. Grey is unclear, so when the woman is gone identity is not a big part because the man is nothing with his light.


McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 287

CREATIVE PIECE

*This a short piece adding onto the ending of The Road because I did not enjoy how the book ended.


It is now nightfall. The wind is slowing down. The man and woman tuck the boy into many blankets near the fire to keep him warm.

It is time for you to go to sleep, says the man.

Goodnight.

If you need us, just give us a little shove.

The boy suddenly falls asleep and wanders into this childish dream. The boy’s vision blurred out and changes into a beautiful playground. The boy is jumping around seeing all of the colors that he barely sees everyday. He saw stuffed animals, toy cars racing, and other children his age. The boy is smiling so big that he is ready to burst into joy. He runs as fast as he can to other children, but they seem to get farther away as he is trying to get closer. The dream is suddenly turned into darker colors and interrupted by a spirit.

Papa?

Yes it’s me. What have I told you about having happy dreams?

I’m sorry Papa I am just confused.

It’s ok. I’m not mad at you. I just want to protect you. I miss you so much. I’m sorry I had to die in front of you like that. I love you my son. These people will take care of you. Never give up.

The boy wakes up from his dream and rushes over to the man and women and gives them a huge hug and says thank you.


RATIONALE

*Here is my ideas and decisions on why I chose to make this scene.


I wish The Road ended in a different way instead of the way Cormac McCarthy ended the book. I wanted it to continue and have at least another scene with the boy and the new man with his wife. I decided to create a short scene for the ending of the book (continuation of pg 287). Throughout the story of The Road the main point of view was focused on the man. I wanted the scene to focus on the boy’s point of view because since papa died, the boy was on his own and he was able to meet up and became allies with the new man and his wife.

One of the main themes I wanted to use for my addition to the story was survival. For survival it was a main point in the book because we don’t know what happened or what made the world like that. People were eating other people and trying to find food. The man and boy were heading towards the east coast trying to survive and find shelter and food just to live. This leads onto the other theme and that was dreams. Dreams are mostly throughout the book and usually the man and the boy have bad dreams and I remember in the book page 189, the man said to the boy that if you have bad dreams that you are not giving up and you are surviving but if you have a happy dream nothing dark at all then you officially given up on life.

The themes of the short scene help me lead up to these questions to ask. Is surviving enough? Can dreams predict your future? Since the boy has lost his father and now is with the new man and his wife, I want the creative scene to show that the boy can survive without his father. I want to make the scene where the boy is camping out with the new people and have the boy talk the ghost of his father. That brings it to the next question about dreams because in the story the bad dreams keep the man and boy survive. So I decide for in the boy’s dream it will start off happy meaning that the boy will give up on his life, but the ghost/spirit of his father will stop the boy from doing so. I still want the ending to show that there is still hope left. The boy may have nothing else to live for but he still has a life to live and keep learning how to survive and start a new life with a different family.