McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 53

Creative Piece:

...wished them godspeed till they were gone. He never heard them again.

The Man often thought about that day. It was the last day he remembered hope. He never told the Boy about the birds for the fear he might be even more disappointed with the everygrey world. Where did the birds go? Where they even there in the first place or did he just imagine them. He thought the birds must be with the Woman. Somewhere warm and peaceful. Or was he wrong? He didn’t know what to think. He wished the birds were a message from God. Something to tell them they were all right, that everything would one day be good. If the birds could survive that far so could they. Yet they hadn’t seen a bird since. He thought their raspy calls could be the Woman calling out to them. But he never heard that sound anymore so was it just goodbye? If God was really there why would he taunt them like this, thought the man. He liked to sit and think about it but he couldn’t think too hard as to alarm the boy. The birds were just the fingertips of God dragging all the color out of the sky as he waved so long for the last time.

Rationale:

In this scene you get to see a hidden, deeper side of the Man. You can see emotions and deep thought from him and his curiosity with religion. I chose to place this piece in this section of the book because symbolism in this book was huge and when I read about the birds flying over and the man never seeing them again it made me think about how birds were literally the highest beings as they could fly, they were closest to God. That made me think that the birds represented God’s presence, or anti-presence in the book. I chose the theme of God and religion because I wanted to hint at the question that I asked myself the most while reading this book. “Why are they still going?” I wanted to see inside of the Man’s head and see how he felt about this hard journey and if there was still positivity in his head. I think that religion was a quiet but pushing force in why the Man tried so hard to keep himself and the Boy alive. I had the Man reflect on this experience because I wanted to leave the readers with something to think about for the rest of the book because McCarthy never really addresses this subject again and I think it is more helpful to understand some of the Man’s future decisions in the book. Another question to me was “Is there a God?” referring to the Man. So I wanted to answer that so that the reader could get a good look into the Man and his past personality. In my creative piece I used the word “evergrey” as a touch to their surroundings. They are in the woods, surrounded by trees that used to be green but are no longer. Now everything is dull and grey so instead of “evergreen” like an evergreen tree I changed it to evergrey as a sense that the world around them and likely never changing, as evergreen trees are always green. The reason I chose this passage to be about the man is because The man is the one who speculates the most about God in the book so I think it is appropriate that these be his thoughts.