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In “The Road ” by Cormac McCarthy, there are significant mentions of “carrying the fire”(83) and good versus bad guys. Starting from the very beginning of the book, a child leads the man towards a dream. In that dream he sees a creature— “it’s mouth dripping from the rhinestone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sighless as the eggs of spiders’ ‘. As the book came to its end, there was continuous mention of the “creature”. These creatures symbolize humans— mouth dripping with hunger and greed. The dream was a message sent from God to the man, foreshadowing the future.

The man mentions his kid as a “warrant”. (5) Warrant means authority and justification which all connects to the dad trying to justify every action as for the boy’s own good. He continues to claim that it was his “job” (74) and that he was “appointed to do that by God”. (77) My assumption is that he was meant to die but God needed him to play an important role in saving humanity. There was a mention in the book about wanting to die but too scared of death. I believe that was how the man felt when he was able to die so he agreed to God’s suggestion. On page 12-13 when the boy was asleep, the man whispered “Are you there? Will I see you at the end? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul?” Analyzing this quote, he was obviously talking to you God— “Will I see you at the end?” was the man asking once he died, will he be able to go to heaven and see God after his duty is fulfilled (he knows full well he was going to die)— “Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul?” was his way of questioning God’s actions. Maybe it is because humans will never understand what God is doing.

From context clues, God seems to be trying to destroy the world he created and rebuilding it as a punishment to humanity. Again, we don’t know why he is doing so. Believers of God: prophets in the bible also had moments where they would question God. On page 170, Ely said “There is no God and we are his prophets” which means that he doesn’t believe in God but the “word of God” (such as morals and the basis of humanity) exists within people. After the man died and the boy was left alone, he met people who claimed that they are the good guys and carry the fire.

“The Road ” is a book that is woven with descriptive and morbid words and events, that creates a truly harrowing story. The two main characters trek across a burned and dead Earth on a voyage to nothing. They take the reader with them as they go, and every little thing is expressed with the utmost of detail. The characters are nameless, and the journey ends without a destination. Although the destination throughout the story is never really decided on, one thing these characters did stick to was the road. The road wasn’t a single solitary road, but a series of different off-chutes and main interstates that made their journey. Because all the reader knows is what the man knows, mapping this trek would be next to impossible. However, a map doesn’t just have to be the physical route they went, so this map is of something a little different.

I decided to guess the area they started out in and how their journey laid out. New York state and New Jersey was my best guess, so that’s what’s on the map. I decided to document most of the times that the dad has an internal monologue and turn those moments into symbols. Then, I guessed a route that seemed accurate and drew those symbols on the map to where they could have happened. The first symbol comes from page 75 when he says, “Golden chalice, good to house a god.” The man is of course talking about the boy here, saying how he sees the essence of god in him. Skipping a few, on page 114, he thinks, “Can you do it? When the time comes?..Curse God and die.” I drew the gun for this moment. The gun holds so much power, they protect it with their lives and in this moment he is willing to use it despite his god. In the third to last one, the boy gets sick and the man says this: “You have to stay near, you have to be quick. So you can be with him. Hold him close.” I picked the blind monster in the beginning to signify that everything wrong that happens to them is really just up to chance and there is nothing deciding their fate. Sickness, the world dying, hunger, they’re all blind. McCarthy shows the ups and downs of their trip in these small looks into the man’s mind, but overall it shows his slow decline in hope and climb in desperation. In the beginning he seems hopeful, “Golden chalice, good to house a god”, but by the end the man has completely lost hope and seems strung-out: “He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.”(261)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy can be imagined and interpreted in many different ways. The element I chose to follow was the shelters the man and the boy stayed in. They must constantly move places, going further South and avoiding danger along the way. Most of the time, they slept in the woods with a fire that just barely lit for warmth, and ate what the man could salvage. There were many instances when the man went out looking for shelters with the boy, but they had to be careful not to be seen. One of the first places they found was a run down and wrecked gas station; “He went through the drawers but there was nothing there that he could use.” (6)

On the right side of the map, it shows the first places the man and the boy had been, each place the man looked carefully for food and resources for the both of them. It was difficult considering everything had been either destroyed or ransacked. Continuing forward through the woods and run-down houses, the man found a hatch. “Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands.” (110)

This was not the first or the last time they had encountered other people. People in either the same or worse situation than the man and the boy were a threat. They were starved, cold, and anything could become a resource. They had to stay protected, but throughout the novel McCarthy shows many examples of the man taking risks that could be life threatening. Going down the hatch could have easily been a trap, a dead end, and anything could have happened. It seems that the man took the risk because there was a chance of warmth, a chance for food; safety for the boy. The second time they came upon a hatch, the boy was hesitant; but the man was going to take the chance. Anything they find could have been useful and allowed them to continue pushing forward. “Crate upon crate of canned goods. Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots.” (135) Taking the risk and seeing what was down the second hatch proved to be helpful for them. In their tough situation, it was crucial to take the chances the man did for safety and survival. It was not only for himself, but for the boy he was determined to protect.

The world of The Road there is nothing but a “Cold. Desolate. Birdless.” (215) wasteland. There is nothing alive nor anything with color, and this emptiness has seeped into the hearts of the main characters, though mostly the father. Their hearts and minds have become as cold and as desolate as the wastes around them. With all they have seen, all they have done, there is nothing else to do but cut yourself off from the pain and emotion, and this is exactly the father wishes for, “If only my heart were stone.” (11). And at some point he is able to cut off a big part of that emotion and the wasteland is then “As gray as his heart.” (27), but not letting yourself feel and cutting off that portion of your heart will inevitably lead to loss of one’s identity and sense of self. Like the world around them these characters lose all sense of identity and become nothing more than a husk, nothing but an animal looking to survive, and most of the time that is exactly what they have to be. They do not have the freedom to be anything, and the moments when they do have that freedom are fleeting and ephemeral. The father says it best himself, “I’m not anything.” (64), these characters even lack one of the most important parts of identity - a name. At no point in this book do we ever learn the names of the boy or of the father, and in the end they remain mysteries, much like the wasteland they inhabit, cold, and gray, and desolate.

The Road by Cormac Mcarthy has many themes establish and develop so picking one to track wasn’t easy, however after the final reading it was. Since early in the book the man has been sick but we are never told the cause. Despite the relative mystery behind his illness it is safe to assume it has some relation to the state of the world. With no clean water and limited access to food maintaining health is no easy task. This is prominent through the health of the child as he has grown and lived through this world, he is often described as thin and malnourished. We see the boys physical struggles described on pages 38 and 74 as “The boy was so thin it stopped his heart” or “The water was so cold the boy was crying”. It is safe to say their collective health is on a steady decline, there are moments that they were doing well but the man is frequently coughing. The lowest point in terms of health was about mid way through the book as they faced starvation almost killing them. On page 118 the man could barely climb a ladder even after eating he is noticeably weak, the boy notices on page 133 when he asks “How many days to death?”. There are moments of rejuvenation in finding more recourses as described on page 144 “He’d been ready to die and now he wasn’t going to and he had to think about that.” even in the progress the man is admittedly defeated as he knows he is only adding time to the clock. Eventually we begin to see just how critical his situation is on page 237 were “He woke coughing” “Coughing. Coughing. He bent over, holding his knees. Taste of blood.”. Readers can only assume this means the man is close to his limit, the man knows this too on page 237 “He thought about his life but there was no life to think about”. Continuing in his poor state he eventually passes on page 281 the page that inspired me to track their conditions.

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a masterfully written novel that delves into many themes, like human nature, good vs. evil, relativism, and dreams. The theme I chose to make my lit log about is the dreams and how they reflect the man and the boy’s journey. In making my lit log, I wanted to take Cormac McCarthy’s writing and interpret it visually. I wanted to show the chronological progression of the dreams as the story went on from the cave dream at the very start of the book to the boy’s dream nearing the end of their journey. I decided to depict each dream in rough, worn drawings to match the dead post-apocalyptic world the story takes place. I achieved this by using chicken scratch, loose line work, and sketching pencil techniques. I also edited the drawing’s contrast, exposure, and color to get my envisioned look. Each dream is numbered in chronological order, with dotted arrows winding and pointing between each dream to depict the descending and winding nature of the story. Each dream represents a checkpoint on the road of how the man or the boy interprets what they have been through unconsciously. I decided to draw the man with an obstructed face to depict his moral ambiguity. I decided to draw the boy with simple cartoon features to show his innocence throughout the story. As you can see at the end of the path in the drawing, I didn’t illustrate the last quote, as the last dream mentioned in the story was not described. I did this on purpose to represent the end of the last piece of escapism, fading into an exchange of words.

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The Road, a book by Cormac McCarthy, is a dark story of a father and son trying to survive an apocalyptic world. As readers, we see their journey through countless unfamiliar backgrounds and we see their mostly depressing story. Where everyday of survival for these characters, is a battle with themselves, and the crazy world around them.

When reading The Road, one is aware that happy moments are treasures in the stories of the main characters. When often seeing them struggle to keep being alive, we can’t help but to dig deeper into the moments where the father and son are at ease.

It’s no coincidence that these good moments are a sign of safety. McCarty uses these moments to show readers that characters are finally somewhat safe. We see this when the son can just live as a normal child, learning to thank people and God with–“Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff.” (146)— a prayer. And the father, just a father for his son, “You’re doing good, the man said. You’re doing good.” (39). The author’s strategy is compelling. Showing that with environmental safety, we can learn more about the lives and perspectives of characters outside the world they live in.

When reading, it almost feels surreal seeing these characters just live after experiencing the most traumatic horrors of their lives. As readers you grow to appreciate and desire more of these moments for the characters. On The Road, various types of safety are displayed for readers to uncover and analyze. But after reading the book from start to finish, we thought it would be important to show the perspective that explores the idea that good moments equate to safety. By showing specific experiences of the characters, we as readers can observe the different types of stability represented in the book.

more detailed examples below:

Throughout The Road, the man and the boy constantly find corpses and limbs scattered around the country. In our map, we have shown their travels and what they have encountered while scavenging for supplies. They first come across a RV littered with corpses that were rotted and dried. Then, they came across a pool of blood and guts inside of bushes in the woods. After that, while scavenging the father found a walk-in cooler full of corpses. They continued moving after that and eventually found a field full of rotted human heads on spikes. After going into a house, the man and the boy discover a man on a mattress missing his legs with the stumps burnt and black. After escaping the house and doing more scavenging, they find a corpse floating in the water that flooded the basement. They then find a decapitated human head in a store. Moving from there, they had a run in with the roadrats where they found an infant gutted and being roasted on a spit. Lastly, they discover bodies burnt and mummified on the road itself which they have to walk through. These bodies that they discover tell us a lot about the world and how society has fallen. It also says a lot about how the environment is destroyed and how humanity was infected. When the world was dying, firestorms swept through and burnt people alive. That is what the man and the boy discovered on the road with the mummified corpses. Every other corpse or body part they found after that had signs of humanity. People began eating other people, even babies. They stuck each other’s heads on spikes and stuffed bodies in freezers. It shows what humans will do when they are pushed to their limit and what they do to survive. The death and destruction in the story represent the fall of society and the loss of morals. It is a dying world filled with the worst of humanity and the death of innocence.

The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a timeless piece of literature that puts into question numerous aspects about morality and human nature as we know it. The setting takes place in an abandoned version of the Earth, coated with ash and debris everywhere the main characters, the man and the boy, turn. Throughout the novel, the two characters are forced to make heavy decisions that will not only change their present and future, but will also affect their righteousness. The boy, who is the son of the man, is often seen as compassionate and empathetic no matter the situation. His behavior is striked as out of place as the norm of their current environment is every man for himself and doing what you have to do to survive. This can be observed in multiple senses such as when the boy saw another child in the road who was alone and begged his father to help him, and another where a stray dog followed the man and boy for miles causing the boy to plead with his father to share their food with the animal. The child is so upstanding that his father frequently compares him to God, stating “If he’s not the word of God, God never spoke.”(5) The boy’s compassion is so strong that it gives the impression that it is unwavering, but that is false.

As the novel progresses, we see the light in the boy’s eyes begin to dwindle, his father saying “Something was gone that could not be put right again.” (136) Readers can see the mental as well as physical change in the boy as he begins to more closely resemble his father’s vocabulary. He begins to act like the man, think like the man, and even ideas that the boy was so against in the beginning of the book, he now finds himself rethinking.

This is exactly what I have decided to make present in my moral map. I have taken my top quotes from the book that I believe have contributed to the moral changes of the boy, and mapped them in a circle around a pistol and a fire. The pistol is meant to represent the ride of morality’s final destination, when the father died and the boy began to use the gun as protection, which is an act he did not understand before. Then, the fire is meant to constitute as the boy “carrying the fire” as the man would always say. The quotes and symbols are surrounded by a sad and gray environment with trees of ash.

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy explores many themes through the relationship between the man and his son. During their journey, they encounter lots of enemies. This includes not just other humans that they find along the way, but silent enemies too. The man constantly acts in the name of survival, and in contrast, the boy needs constant reassurance that they are still good, due to his extreme compassion. We wanted to show that with our map. Along our road, we drew the moments that made the boy question the morality of their actions. The very first person that they communicate with on the road turns into a violent event. After the man shot another person, the narrator describes the boy as “Lying in his lap with no expression on his face.” (page 68) This part shows how truly shocked the boy was by the man’s actions, he could not even react. Later, they run into another horrific scene, of which the boy states they would never eat people “Because we’re the good guys.” (page 129) He again has the same reaction after they find a large supply of canned food, asking if they can eat it because those who left it are the good guys. Finally, he asks his new companions whether they were good so he would know whether it was okay to go with them or not. The motif of good guys vs bad guys throughout “The Road” made it hard to follow who the enemies were, and who you were supposed to be rooting for. We wanted to represent that confusion in our artwork, showing all the different kinds of people that were encountered along the way.

link to our artwork:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLMl5l21pelmmvRJ3ZaUEt1dSWl3XluxyAoSgm5S7KI/edit?usp=sharing

While reading The Road, we noticed that the man and boy often perch themselves on top of hills and other high-up places, and look out at the vastness of their post-apocalyptic world. As we tracked these moments, we started noticing patterns that explained this behavior.

As they look out from their resting places, McCarthy often describes the boy and man’s view as being extremely desolate. At one point the man “sat in the leaves at the top of the hill and looked into the blackness. Nothing to see. No wind.” (188) The pair are often being consumed by darkness. One way we see them battle this darkness is with fire, both physically and metaphorically.

Fire is a symbol McCarthy uses to represent perseverance and hope, and this is emphasized whenever the boy and man look out from a hill, since most of the time they are looking for a light. In one scene when the man is looking out from a hill in the night, the narration describes how, “In the past when he walked out like that and sat looking over the country lying in just the faintest visible shape where the lost moon tracked the caustic waste he’d sometimes see a light. Dim and shapeless in the murk.” The man is trying to find a sliver of life in his new bleak and deserted reality. We found a connection between this moment and a flashback of the man’s: “A gray day in a foreign city where he stood in a window and watched the street below. Behind him on a wooden table a small lamp burned.” (187). In this moment, before the apocalypse, the man physically had fire with him, whereas in the book, he was always looking for it.

After noticing these patterns, we decided to make a map following the boy and man through their journey with a specific focus on highlighting the parts where they rest atop hills or look out from high ground.

Map Key:

1) p 187: “He thought of his life. So long ago. A gray day in a foreign city where he stood in a window and watched the street below. Behind him on a wooden table a small lamp burned.” 2) p 9: “they went up to the top of the hill where the road crested and where they could see out to the darkening country to the south, standing there in the wind, wrapped in their blankets, watching for any sign of a fire or a lamp.” 3) p 19: “They walked out and sat on a bench and looked out over the valley where the land rolled away into the gritty fog.” (looking at a dam) 4) p 43-44: “When the bridge came in sight below them there was a tractor-trailer jackknifed sideways across it and wedged into the buckled iron railings. It was raining again and they stood there with the rain pattering softly on the tarp. Peering out from under the blue gloom beneath the plastic.” 5) p 81: “At the top of the hill he turned and studied the town. Darkness coming fast. Darkness and cold.” 6) p 104: “The site they picked was simply the highest ground they came to and it gave views north along the road and overlooking their backtrack.” (hiding from bad guys) 7) p 160: “We can stop now./On the hill?/We can get the cart down to those rocks and cover it with limbs./Is this a good place to stop?/Well, people don’t like to stop on hills. And we don’t like for people to stop./So it’s a good place for us./I think so./Because we’re smart.” 8) p 188: “He sat in the leaves at the top of the hill and looked into the blackness. Nothing to see. No wind. In the past when he walked out like that and sat looking over the country lying in just the faintest visible shape where the lost moon tracked the caustic waste he’d sometimes see a light. Dim and shapeless in the murk. Across a river or deep in the blackened quadrants of a burned city. In the morning sometimes he’d return with binoculars and glass the country for any sign of smoke but never saw any.” 9) p 193: Trying to find people: “If we can get across the creek we could go up on the bluffs there and watch the road.” 10) p 206: “They stood looking out through the tall windows at the darkening land.” 11) p 221: “At the end of the strand their way was blocked by a headland and they left the beach and took an old path up through the dunes and through the dead sea oats until they came out upon a low promontory. Below them a hook of land shrouded in the dark scud blowing down the shore and beyond that lying half over and awash the shape of a sailboat’s hull.” … “Let’s just watch for a while./ I’m cold./ I know. Let’s move down a little ways. Out of the wind. He sat holding the boy in front of him. The dead grass thrashed softly. Out there a gray desolation. The endless sea crawl.” 12) p 267: “He stood looking out. A steel dock half collapsed and submerged in the bay. The wheelhouses of sunken fishingboats standing out of the gray chop. Nothing moving out there. Anything that could move had long been blown away.” 13) p 276: “He scuffled together a pile of the bonecolored wood that lay along the shore and got a fire going and they sat in the dunes with the tarp over them and watched the cold rain coming in from the north. It fell harder, dimpling the sand. The fire steamed and the smoke swung in slow coils and the boy curled up under the pattering tarp and soon he was asleep.”

The man’s past is something the book briefly touches on compared to some of the other themes but It is just as important. We never get a full summary of his life before but instead, we get moments and glimpses into his life that help us understand his actions in the book, and what he is teaching the boy. In my map, I split his memories into ones about childhood, love, letting go, and the world. The gray bubbles are the man’s thoughts on memory, the quote “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” tells us how to interpret the things that he recalls, that these are not things he wants to remember”(12).

He avoids remembering his past so much there was even a movement where he takes out his wallet and left his every possession from the time before, even a picture of his wife. This is then immediately followed by his and his wife’s last interaction, a painful and sorrowful memory of her leaving him and the boy. In the book, this is the largest piece of his past we get and this is probably an event that plagues the man every night, he wonders why he is even still going and maybe agrees with the wife’s point that “The one thing I can tell you is that you won‘t survive for yourself“(57). Her words cut him deep like a blade.

Cormac McCarthy has used memory in this book to show how the man is struggling to understand this seemingly new world he is in, except this is not a new world at all. He does not just get to forget even though he left his stuff behind, instead his memories become his penance and it somehow becomes easier to live in this bleak, colorless reality. It is unclear whether the last passage is the man’s memory but it tells us that destruction is the pattern that leads to life, and this is a cycle that no one can escape.

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a haunting and dystopian novel that depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which a father and son navigate a desolate, gray landscape struggling to survive. The novel’s color palette is seemingly dull and barren because of the ash covered environment. However, there are a few significant instances in which vibrant colors make an appearance in memories, dreams and storytelling. To interpret these colors, we created a color wheel of scenes in color to illustrate the unique color palette of the story and how these scenes are significant to the overall meaning and conveyal of the story. The most significant color on the wheel is the muted gray that pervades the novel. This gray reflects the ash covered world symbolizing the aftermath of the catastrophic event leaving earth lifeless and dry. The absence of color underscores the bleakness of the characters’ surroundings and the harsh nature of their journey. In the wheel there is orange which represents the sun and description of the snow. “Everything was alright. As if the last sun were returning at last. The snow orange and quivering”(31). The red represents the blood on the snow from the man’s illness, “On the gray snow a fine mist of blood”(30). The pink signifies “A thin rose gown that clung to her breasts” (131) that was depicting the woman in one of the man’s memories. The green speaks bride coming out of a “green and leafy canopy”(18). The white represents “combs of ivory and combs of shells” (18). The black signifies “where lay a black and ancient lake” (1). Blue being used to describe “He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him”(5). Finally, gray represents the “still grey serpentine of a river” (6). The color wheel interpretation highlights the occasional appearance of color throughout the novel. The novels palette becomes a nuanced representation of the character’s journeys, emotions and fragile beauty that coexist with the barren world.

The element we chose to explain further and analyze would be Memories. The closest thing to a clear explanation provided in this book is what we learn through flashbacks and dreams. Using our map for guiding this landscape, we chose six stops that each took a look into the aspect of memories, showing the author’s intention to observe how a human mind would work in a world like this.

“Early Memories of His Wife,” takes us back in time to introducing to a past character. A character who must have played an important role in the father’s life is introduced to us on page 18 “In his dreams, his pale bride came to him out of a green leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white.” This quote shows how memory is very limited. Through this dream, we can get a glimpse of the man’s brain as we see flashes of a world that was once vibrant with life but is now only a memory.

Stemming off from that is the “Introduction to Boy Dreams” we enter the boy’s dream world, which is primarily shaped by scary dreams. We believe that McCarthy purposely did not include details of these dreams to point out the Boy’s resistance to telling his father about them. The boy’s character is then deemed weaker but it also shows how truly alone these two characters are in the relationship that they have formed.

The boy’s dreams and the man’s memories clash at the third stop, “Intersection of Memories and Dreams,” which creates a connect between the past and present. This is an important spot that influences not only the characters bond but also the path of their difficult journey across The Road. The quote “The cold of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a lot. Recite a litany. Remember.” (31), shows the connection to their emotions. The “cold” stands for the bad reality of their situation, something that has a constant sense of suffering. And the phrase “moved something in him long forgotten” refers to an awakening of his memories, a part of him that had been buried by survival and time.

“Flashbacks to the Past,” is where McCarthy uses flashbacks to piece together bits and pieces of the man’s past and then connect to the present. The character’s current state of emptiness is very different from these flashbacks. The way the author writes acts as a way of shifting readers from the depressing present to the happy past where everything is in good shape and not the constant battle of survival.

“Colors in Dreams vs. Reality,” shows the author’s difference between the colors in dreams and the dark and gloomy world. McCarthy does this by using expressive language and vivid imagery. We come across a quote in the book that says, “and the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you?” (21) This quote mixes the deep meaning of reflecting on death with the life of dream colors.

Finally, and at “EndPoint”, dreams and memories both serve as a deeper look of human nature and story elements. After exploring the challenging roads of a world in collapse the characters find themselves standing at the endpoint, which is the point where the past and future meet. Here, the detail of dreams and the depth of memories combine to provide a window into the strong human spirit.

In “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, the man and the boy set off on a journey to the south in a post-apocalyptic world. Through dead bodies and abandoned towns, the two come across very few people and ultimately have to rely on each other. As I followed their adventures, I noticed the common theme of reassurance. Due to the many scary things in this world, the boy is in a constant state of fear. The man comforts and reassures the boy many times throughout this book in order to move on in their journey. They only have each other which is why it is key that McCarthy shows that the man genuinely cares about the boy. The connection between a father and son is incredible and is showcased by the level of comfort and security that the man provides the boy. But also the man often gaslights the frightened boy to justify his actions and their choices as a whole. In many moments, the man has to find ways to survive and collect supplies. He is so worried about their lives that he often has to lie to the boy just to explore abandoned places in order to not starve. Alongside this, the boy’s maturity continues to grow as the story progresses. As he starts to understand that the world is not so innocent, the boy begins to be a key part of the man’s decisions. The man is no longer making decisions for the boy and instead the one sided relationship becomes a partnership. The naive and innocent times of the man comforting the boy has now turned into the boy processing emotions and understanding the severity of their situation. As shown below, the map determines three key ways that reassurance is represented in this book.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This diagram shows how we decoded the theme of dreams in The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. We found quotes about dreams, whether they are references or direct quotes from dreams experienced by the characters. By looking at thematic textual evidence and finding similarities and differences between the quotes, we were able to build a mind map that shows the connections between these scenes and references, and come to our own conclusions through analysis. The black cloud-like shapes contain our quotes, which branch off from labels categorizing the dreams, or mention of them, in The Road. Closer to the center are general themes of these dreams that are easy to understand from a reader’s perspective. Using this organizational structure, we can analyze a category in relation to the theme of dreams in the text: The boy’s dreams act as foreshadowing moments that will appear in the dystopian world we see in McCarthy’s novel.

From the way we’ve organized our map, you can trace one single quote from the outside in, to see which ideas and categories it symbolizes and falls under. For example, “Rich dreams now which he was loath to wake from. Things no longer known in the world […] Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning with a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts”(131) is a quote that falls under the often-recurring dreams of the man’s wife, which we’ve placed under the general theme of his old life and the world before the dystopia we see in the book, all within the mention of dreams that often occurs in The Road.

This organization system has allowed us to find common themes in dreams with each character: we’ve noted that the boy’s dreams are most closely associated with complacency and helplessness, and that the man’s dreams of his wife are often colorful, which is a motif closely associated with death. When the man lectures his son on dreams, he is most often foreshadowing later events in the book, such as his own death, or giving up and surrendering to your dreams, an idea also closely linked to death. Lastly, any dreams having to do with monsters or beings of any sort explore the symbol of blindness, which has biblical connections we don’t go into here.

In “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, we see the man and the boy’s experience in their run-ins with others. Often, these encounters are scary and come down to ‘kill or be killed’. In our map, we tracked how the man and the boy’s encounters with others has demonstrated how people have abandoned the idea of ‘morality’ to survive.

This idea connects to the boy and the man’s self-label of being “the good guys” by how they differ from others. However, in some encounters we see the man’s lack of morality because of his lack of empathy, unlike the boy. Through all the characters we meet in this book, it becomes apparent that the only character who hasn’t abandoned morality is the boy. Multiple times throughout the book, the boy demonstrates his empathy for others. First, with the man who was hit by lightning that he wanted to help so desperately, then again when he saw another little boy and ‘needed’ to find and help him. This is especially shown in their encounter with “Eli”, the old man, when he insisted on sharing the little amount of food they had with him (meant to include in the picture). Throughout the “The Road” the boy shows empathy and care for others in a world that has given up on humanity.

(More description in the picture)

The three major houses in the book seem to connect to the comfortability between the man and the boy. It seems to be like a milestone and a way for readers to reflect on how far the man and boy has come. It is interesting to see how their dynamic changes throughout the book. To talk about the houses, I decided to draw the cell house, the bunker, and the luxurious house. I felt like those were the moments you can tell how the power of the man has shifted and slowly balanced out to where the boy has a say in the decision making. In the cell house, the boy does not want to enter the house but the man insists “It’s okay. We have to take a look.”[106]. What they found in the house were naked people getting ready to get eaten so I think this sort of traumatized the man to be more cautious. In the bunker, the man was more thoughtful of the boy’s feelings. The boy “had his fist clutched at his chest and he was bobbing up and down with fear. The man dropped the shovel and put his arms around him.”[135]. By the luxury house, the man softens up the boy’s feelings and takes more of an emotional approach to ensure the boy is okay. The man asked, “Are you scared?”[204] and the boy responds “Yes.”[204]. The houses definitely show a change in relationship dynamic between the man and boy. The man adjusts to the boy as the boy values more civil ideas like helping others and being afraid.

The story starts with describing a setting in a cave with an otherworldly monster as it lurks from across a body of water. Though as readers we first don’t understand this scary creature, at the end of the book we come to understand this creature is death. Something the father is extraordinarily afraid of at this time. A few scenes later the boy and the man have a conversation about what the man would do if the boy dies. He tells the boy that he would kill himself so that he could be with him.This conversation should point the readers thoughts in the direction that death is a very normal or sensitized topic for them that they have learnt to be able to think about freely and in a different way. After this we get a flashback of the father talking to the boy’s mother. The mom is going to kill herself soon, and the man is obviously upset about this as he wants to live to help the boy survive. We can start to see themes of the man seeing death as “giving up” or quiting, as it leaves the boy out stranded by himself. Our map then jumps to a scene where the man is afraid the boy is going to get caught and eaten. We can see him prepare the boy to kill himself. This is obviously horrific to read, but it shows how the father sees the evil in the world. It’s one of the first times where our main character recognizes there are worse fates than death. This leads into the shortest quote, “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up.” Though not mentioning death, readers can see the implications of the fathers meanings behind the “good guys” something he mentions often. The good guys are simply his fear of death, manifested in an idea. The ending of our map is where the man accepts his fate. He comes to terms with death. The man even starts to envy the dead. In the story, the author allows the father to grow into trusting his son to survive, seeing the responsibility in his child. Not seeing death as “giving up,” rather passing on the torch. “The fire.”

My map is the journey of the symbolic meaning of the pistol and “the good guys”. My map leads you through the different scenes in the book that shows when these concepts were introduced to us as readers and later expanded on their meaning. The quotes are used as labels to help guide the scene in the book that corresponds with the symbolic meaning being shown. The symbolic element used in “The Road” was an aspect of the book that McCarthy would plant and make grow as the story moved along. In the beginning of the book when we are introduced to the pistol, the first meaning we get from this is that it is used for survival. Then later down the line, we begin to see that it represents death, its importance and prevalence being a foundation for the father and son. The pistol was used for protection, to teach the boy what to do if he is caught by “bad guys” (to shoot himself), and to symbolize power. The idea of “good guys” is shown to us when McCarthy reveals to us that the father and son use the phrase “we carry the fire” various times to represent that they are the good guys in this mischievous world. I focused on the symbolism of the pistol and good guys because they both contradict each other. The father tells the boy that they are the good guys, but the boy holds more empathy compared to the father who has matched himself to the cold world. An example of this would be when the boys and father got their cart stolen. They found the thief and the gun was used as a threat, and symbolized death and fear. The father didn’t shoot the man as he got the cart back but ordered him to get undressed and take his clothes. How does this make them the good guys if people in the same predicament as them are doing what they would do? Stealing is morally wrong, but as the world is home, morals dissolve as well. The notion of good guys and the symbolic meaning it has played within the story can be questioned with the symbolic meaning of the pistol and the value it holds throughout the novel.

Billy’s Vote

Pages 100 - 126

The ward had been slow all day, nothing to do but continue our Monopoly game. We’d been at it for a few days at this point, I don’t even know how many days it’d been since we first passed Go. Mac was the banker. I think Harding made him banker, said he’s smart with money. He’s smart with money alright, just not any of his own! Lost maybe $20 by then playing poker. No, I didn’t lose it. I got robbed!
Cheswick’s got a funny look on his face, the kind he gets before he throws a fit and stamps his feet at Miss Ratched. 

“Martini, roll the damn dice!” Martini ain’t paying him any mind, he’s got one dice in his left hand and the other in his mouth. I don’t think he even realizes he just chews on stuff. His mouth is like a vacuum, one of those big fields in space NASA says is sucking up light. I saw it on the news last week, the space programs aren’t just to win the race against the Soviets. They also seen big fields of nothing swallowing light, massive chunks of space gone in a flash. That dice ain’t so different, its shiny surface approaching the black chasm in the back of Martini’s throat.

“For god’s sake Martini don’t swallow the fuckin’ dice!”

Mac screams as he reaches into Martini’s mouth and yanks the dice out.

He’s like a father, yanking a tooth out of a petulant toddler. He wipes the dice off on his shirt and clacks them together in his hand, rolling them for Martini. Martini couldn’t care less, he’s drifted somewhere else now. I don’t know where he drifts when he’s got that blank, vacant stare. I wish I could see what he sees. We played for about an hour. Longest damn hour of my life.

“Could all acute ward patients report to the day room? Group therapy shall begin in 3 minutes.” Miss Ratched’s soft voice echoes over the loudspeaker. It’s not very loud in the tub room, almost faint. Like a spirit drifting in and out of the room. Maybe that’s what Martini sees. 

We scoot chairs to the dayroom, clear the tables, and all sit down. Miss Ratched is holding her folders and that notebook. That damn notebook. Mac calls it the “God damn motherfuckin’ book of the devil.” I wrote down something he said on Tuesday, he started blabbering about one of his past “flings” I hate when he does that. Can’t talk about girls like that, Mother warned me so.

“M-m-m-miss Ratched? C-could I talk a-a-a-about myself today? I-I-I-I just feel li-like it.”

She nods and we begin. I don’t share often, and usually when I do I talk about Mother. This time was different, I had other things on my mind. Mac talks about the military a bit. Got me thinkin’. I was almost an army man. Almost.

I felt like I talked for days, my throat dry as a desert by the time she asked me to get off the topic of my stutter. I couldn’t help it. I got lots to say, but my throat don’t got the time to say it. It’s in a hurry, it wants all words vacated and closed up. “Spit it out! C’mon, say it with your chest! Speak up, boy!”

I’ve heard that kinds of stuff all my life. Nothing’s new. Never new stuff on the ward. Miss Ratched moves the topic along. Now she wants me to talk about the girl. Mother never liked girls. Says they take me away from her.
“So, Billy, do you think your Mother is overbearing in a sense? I mean, me and her are old friends and I’ve never gotten that sense from her, but perhaps you could shine a light on your perspective.”
“I-I-I-I-I just f-f-f-feel there’s got to b-be a better way to be a p-p-p-p-parent! I don’t w-want to be just an e-e-extension of h-her! I’m n-not no o-octopus arm!”

“Yeah, Billy’s his own man!” Cheswick pipes up and stands on his feet, the little brat he is. Biggest middle-aged brat I’ve ever seen. I hate it, he doesn’t let a man fight his own battles. Ain’t nobody needs a little puppy like him chirping at everyone everywhere. 

“S-s-s–s-shut up Cheswick!” “Calm down Mr. Bibbit, our meeting is going to conclude soon. No need for hostility. Save your thoughts for the next meeting.” She intermittently puts her finger to her lips and shushes me, like she’s blowing candles between her words. “Now with that, I believe this meeting shall come to a close if nothing else is to be said.” Mac’s not happy, he’s still got something to say. He always does.

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, there does happen to be something. Remember that vote we had a day or so back – about the TV time? Well, today’s Friday and I thought I might just bring it up again, just to see if anybody else has picked up a little guts.”

“Mr. McMurphy, the purpose of this meeting is therapy, group therapy, and I’m not certain these petty grievances–”
“Yeah, yeah, the hell with that, we’ve heard it before. Me and some of the rest of the guys decided–”

“One moment, Mr. McMurphy, let me pose a question to the group: do any of you feel that Mr. McMurphy is perhaps imposing his personal desires on some of you too much? I’ve been thinking you might be happier if he were moved to a different ward.”

She cuts him off again, but this time ain’t nobody listening to her. She’s got that voice of daggers, but her words ain’t touching Mac. He’s a mountain of a man with skin hard as rocks. Mac kept arguing, he wanted that vote. In a way, we all wanted it. I put my hand up this time, I knew I had to. All us acutes did. I didn’t mean it as disrespect to Miss Ratched, I swear I didn’t.

But I felt like it told her something, something I’ve wanted to say for a long while. I had lots to say, and this time my hand had the time to say it. 

Why Billy?

I used Billy Bibbit’s character as a speaker since I feel a personal connection to him somewhat. Billy as a character struggles greatly with asserting himself to his mother and Ratched, and it’s specifically told he was institutionalized at the suggestion of his mother to Ratched, although he is a full grown adult and is not permanently committed. His character is something I personally relate to when it comes to assertion and confidence. In my writing I wanted to create a descriptive scene and show the amount that could go on in Billy’s mind as a character yet still preserve the very limited he speaks about due to his reservations. Billy is thinking a lot but not talking much.

My artwork takes place during the staff meeting at the ward. The staff are all giving their opinions on how to deal with McMurphy’s actions with the TV incident. Most of the doctors and nurses decided that they should move Murphy to the “disturbed” group. One staff member, Alvin, did not agree. He was met with instant backlash from his colleagues. “Here he comes, all two hundred and ten red-headed psychopathic irishman poids of him, right across the interviewing table at you.” (135) They provide the hypothetical scenario I have chosen to depict in the artwork to attempt to scare him into changing his views.

The significance of this scene is its impact on the rest of the staff members, especially Alvin. He says “I’m afraid i’ll have to withdraw my suggestion… if only for my own protection” (135) This scenario he poses is completely theoretical. McMurphy physically had not attacked anyone in the ward. He hasn’t punched any staff in the ward. Yet this theoretical scenario is believed to be true and destined to happen to everyone in the meeting. It preys on people’s natural thoughts of self preservation. This is something people do in real life. They provide scenarios that aren’t real and haven’t happened yet which changes people’s actions and opinions. This is a manipulation technique, and as it is helpful to be aware of theoretical scenarios that could come to pass, people should live in the moment .

I wanted my artwork to portray that it is all a theoretical scenario. One way I’ve seen this achieved is through comic books and thought bubbles. This drove me to go with the animated comic book style. The cloud around the image is supposed to represent the thought bubble, the way the whole scene is inside the peoples heads. To add onto the economic book style I added the “POW” for a more dramatic punching effect. To keep the image as accurate to the book as possible I gave McMurphy a large build and curly hair.

Everyone in the Ward is working, doing their chores, Bromdon specifically is cleaning but what makes his chore so special is where he is cleaning. The staff around the Ward decided to let him clean the staff room because Bromdon has tricked everyone into believing that he is deaf and that his disability allows him to be in the staff room because he supposedly can’t hear what the staff members are saying/planning. Before Bromdon goes to clean the room McMurphy asks If they will know that he can hear and that he’s been hearing every conversation they had around him. This shows how only McMurphy knows his secret and he can trick everyone except the known trickster, McMurphy. The way Bromdon describes the condition of the meeting room and it seems unreal and disgusting, on page 131, “The things I’ve had to clean up in these meetings nobody believes me; horrible things, poisons manufactured right out of skin pores and acids in the air strong enough to melt a man. I’ve seen it.” this shows the types of things going on behind the scenes where the rest of the patients can’t see. Why do they trust Bromdon with this job? Was he the only option? Because he can still see and talk not being able to hear won’t stop him from letting others know about what goes on back there. Also is this what he is cleaning real? I started to think this because of the question of whether or not Bromdon is a reliable narrator because he sees thing comes into play here and I am not sure if the air from acid has melted a man. The staff has gotten used to him cleaning there for such a long time they aren’t even bothered by his presents and they treat him like he is invisible as described by Bromdon on page 131, “I move around my chores, and they see right through me as I wasn’t there”. This also means he hasn’t told anyone about what goes on in there because if he did they would find out and realize that he is lying about his hearing. That is why I think maybe he told McMurphy about what is going on or McMurphy’s high intellect helped him figure out that Bromdon is playing a trick. All of this leads up to my art piece where I drew Bromdon cleaning up what is supposed to be acid and a skull is seen which represents the melted man, I also made sure that Bromdon was colored in lightly because he seemed invisible over there. With the staff, I put them all around a table and Big Nurse looked small but was the only one standing to show her power over everyone there because she even said she gains full control when she is in the meetings. All of these details add up and make a scene that you would see if you were in the staff room and seeing what goes on in there.

I chose to create a late 1940s era monopoly board with quotes from the book scattered throughout and a clock in the middle. The book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, By Ken Kesey is set in the 1960s, but I assumed that the psychiatric facility would not have the most up to date, or new board games, which is why I used a 1940s Monopoly board for my inspiration. The clock in the middle showcases squiggly hands both pointing to the three on the clock to illustrate the ways in which our narrator, Chief Bromden, often gets lost in time. Like on pg. 103, when Chief states, “There’s long spells- three days, years- when you can’t see a thing.” I wanted to show Chiefs loss of time because I think that it is very significant to a question our class has posed a few times in various discussions: how reliable is Chief Bromden’s narration? From the very beginning of the story we are questioning if what we are being told is the truth of what has happened, or it’s just Chief telling us what he believes he saw, early on in the book he addresses this, “It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”(8) This leaves the reader questioning whether or not we can trust Bromden’s narration throughout the rest of this story. On my Monopoly board I scattered different references to the story throughout the classic Monopoly squares. I color coded these squares to group different topics that are related to some of the main characters together. I used the color green on the “Work Farm” and “Casino” squares because both of these squares are relevant to the character, McMurphy. On each corner of the board I included a main reference included throughout the book that has been mentioned more than once. The Nurses Station, the Shock Shop, and the Broom Closet. All of these locations are essential to the facility, and have been mentioned in multiple scenes throughout the story. In the fourth corner I replaced the class Monopoly “Go” square with a “Do NOT Go” square. I chose to include this because a lot of the characters within this story seem to be trapped in the psych ward, with no choice to leave, and no life waiting outside for them even if they did. I chose to include squares that are present within the actual game Monopoly because I wanted to signify our narrator’s constant fight between the real world and the world within his head. It is clear that Bromden is constantly trying to differentiate between the psych ward and his present, and his past memories. This creates a confusing plot and leaves me wondering sometimes if what Bromden is describing actually happened, or if we are just inside of his head. I wanted to create the same kind of confusion on my board which is why I mixed in Baltic and Mediterranean avenues with the Columbia River Dam.