Mccarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 220

The Passage that I have created below is a passage that I have written and feel that could have partook a role in the plot of this book. It examines the man and the boy talking briefly about the mother, but it dives more into the symbolism of her leaving them, and

Creative Piece

The man was beginning to drift off to rest.

Papa?

Yes.

What was she like?

Who?

Mama.

The man was silent.

Well…?

Why do you ask?

I heard you mutter her name when you were resting.

Go to sleep.

Okay.

The man woke up before the boy. He salvaged what was left of the fire to prepare their breakfast. The boys eyes creaked open only to find the somber beach he drifted off on.

Papa?

Yes?

You never answered my question.

The man handed the boy the boy his meal. Here eat this.

The boy stood up frustrated. He slapped the food out of his hand. Why won’t you tell me?!

Damnit. The man shouted. You really want to know about her!?

Yes. Shouted the boy.

She was a quitter! She left us for dead. There are two kinds of people in this ashen world we live in. There are the people that have hope and don’t.

Okay.

There are people that aren’t afraid to fight for what you have. Those people are the ones that make it. All you are is a hopeless wanderer trapped in the obscurity of the never ending grey shadow of the bezaleel. Do you understand what I am saying?

No.

What I am trying to say is never give up. You’re the last of all our hope. Always carry the fire. You’re the last of the good guys.

Okay.

What about you Papa?

What?

Are you a good guy?

I don't know.

Okay

Rationale

So, what I decided to address the theme in this book of “Good Guys, and Bad Guys” and the idea of “not giving up. I chose to address the idea of good guys and bad guys specifically because I felt like I would be able to achieve that from the scene where the man remembers when he was dreaming about his wife. This scene stuck out to me because I wanted to write more about the man’s wife just because I felt like she wasn’t mentioned enough in the book, but I chose this one specifically because it was closer to the end, and there had been more controversy that had occurred in the book, and the father had built up a relationship more with his son that the reader would be able to see and understand some of the references that I made in the passage. The scene from the book that I wrote about was right after the scene of the boy and the man on the beach and the boy had gone swimming. He comes out and they are sitting by the fire. This scene was supposed to be a “don’t poke the bear” scene. For the majority of the book, the father had managed to keep his cool with the boy, but in this one I wanted it to show another side to the man. The boy asked his father a couple of questions about his mom, and the man sent him signals not to ask, but the boy still asked.

I chose several motifs to represent this book, in my passage because the book itself is filled with them and there are so many juicy ones that you could choose from and honestly I couldn’t decide between them. Since this scene is happening between the father and the son, I wanted to use the motif “Okay” because that is a common word that is used a ton between the two of them when there is simply nothing else to say in conversation. They have become numb. “Okay” is symbolic of how they communicate. Another motif that I choose to write about was the one that was addressing the greyness that surrounds them. Mccarthy throughout the whole book is always addressing how neutral and gloomy the world is, and so I thought it couldn’t be a real scene from the book, if there was no “grey” reference. And in all of this grey, there was the fire which is supposed to be symbolic of hope. This is what the boy is supposed to be carrying inside his heart, and he should never let it sizzle out (words from his father)