This piece of writing is a personal interpretation of what would have been from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had it not been edited:

Creative Piece:

The fire continues to pierce the dense night even as the boy sleeps. It's soft glow surrounds his head casting a shadow onto the man. Yet he still feels its warmth. The gun lies in the dirt between the two. One real bullet remaining. The man lays staring at the golden reflection of the fire die down through its silver barrel. He feels a pounding on the back of his eyes as they climb up to the boy’s face. A soft quiver jolts through his hands and gets more sporadic as he reaches for the gun. He holds it loosely by its bloodfelt grip. The gun tumbles its way to the boy’s forehead. He takes aim. The gun drifts from position to position across the boy’s forehead. Powerless to hold a single target. He released his grip and droped his arm. He looked into the face of his sleeping son. A lone tear drifts down the man’s cheek. He shifted himself to look at the ever present void above him. The glow of the fire sits in the corner of his eye. You’ve taken my son from me, the man croaked. Or maybe you’ve always had him. The man looks to the yellow glow. I guess we have to thank you for the bunker and the boat, he says. At least I know you’ll be safe. The man closes his eyes. He feels the soft glow of the fire from the direction of his son. It soothes him to sleep.

Below is an explanation of the different factors that make up the piece above and how it would fit into the overall story:

The Rationale:

The passage above is meant to round off the world of the book The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I chose to add to the end of page 277. This moment is the perfect opportunity to insert more information on the father’s acceptance of his inability to kill his own child in the name of protection. On the page itself the father is dying and he notes how his son is an honor to all prophets. I feel this to be the moment that the father is most understanding of the implications of his son’s value as an important figure. The page overall sets up a great contrast between the son’s importance and the man’s fleeting life, helping to expand on the conflict. Should the man kill the boy to protect him, or allow him to live to spread his hope to the wasteland?

I began by drawing a connection between the boy and the fire, mentioning how fire keeps going even as the boy sleeps. The fire itself is a symbol of hope and positivity, and throughout the story we see how this boy spreads this through his kind actions. The man also believed the the boy has something special in him as well, but he often alludes it to be in a more spiritual manner. The fire is portrayed respectively as a light in the dark, alluding to the boy being a hope in the dreadful world. Even the lifeline of the boy is shown to be connected to the fire. As the man looks at the gun, to kill the boy, and  the fire is seen dying in its reflection.

The story then moves into developing the character of the man,  justifying his later acceptance towards the predicament. He attempts to shoot the boy. Every step the man took from picking the gun up to aiming it is dreadful for him, to reflect the father's feelings towards attempting this action. Even when he has the gun aimed, his sickness makes it hard to aim. This man comes to the conclusion that God is protecting the boy from his death, of course this is kept open to interpretation as to why he could not kill him. The man believes since his son will be protected from anything, including his own father, he no longer fears for his safety.

The scene shows the hopelessness of the situation and how the man must accept his son’s responsibility to carry the fire. This rounds out the character more and explains his latter actions to accept his son’s survival even after his son wants to die with him. In the end he sleeps sure his son will be safe.

In the final version of The Road, much of the boy’s dialogue has been cut out, that is until now. This is his story.

There’s fog covering the road, blocking the view. A figure catches his eye, standing behind the tree staring at him. Coldly. A rush of wind behind him, there’s another figure. The last thing he feels is the cold metal of the barrel against his head and the sweet release of worries. Papa, I’m coming, he says. Silent. If there is anything that can describe this moment it would be...barren. This world is devoid of life, of love, of purpose. This world is barren. Beside the resting boy is his papa. The man died yesterday, but the boy couldn’t bring himself to leave his side. Papa I can’t go on like this, said the boy. He sat up and stared at the fire crackling in the dark. The dreams have taken over, clouding his vision of any hope. His hand slides over to check inventory. Pistol, water, gas, he says softly. He picks up the gun and looks into the chamber staring at the round. Cold, smooth, instant. A frigid wind blew through the site, but the boy sat unbothered.

You’re stronger than this.

Papa, I want to be with you and mama.

Mama and I are on a journey.

Can I come?

Who’s going to stop the bad guys?

I don’t know.

You. You carry the fire, the way into the light. I believe in you.

The voice was gone. He placed the gun down and stared out to the road. I carry the fire, Papa, for you.

McCarthy Unabridged

By: Ameer Forte

Being Human - Giknis

2016

• PLACEMENT: My excerpt will be inserted into McCarthy’s “The Road” on the very first page. Right before the very first paragraph.

• The passage below is what I have imagined was cut from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road before the final edition was released-

Creative Piece:

The unforgiving blows to the surface landed like that of an astrobleme sinking itself into the atmosphere. He would pray to God most nights. He would ask him to protect his family to keep them alive. And if that wasnt possible to at least let the child inside the womans womb live. The woman resented that the man did this. She believed that God was only a barmecide part of life humans made up to make the bad in the world easier to cope with. She said to him:

Why do you bother? There is no God.

Yes there is.

How do you know?

I just do.

What God would let this happen to us? I’ll curse his name and die before I ask him for anything.

Dont say that.

What has he done for us?

Hes given us faith. Hope.

In what?

He gave me that child. That child is a gift from God. That is how I know. That child is my hope. My faith.

When the man was sure the bombs had stopped falling he opened the cellar door to find that the remains of his house were just rubble. When he opened the door he was climbing outside for the first time in so long he had forgotten what the sunlight looked like only to find color had been vacuumed from the sky. When the woman made her way out of the bunker the man saw the darkness in the world corrupting her. Dimming her fire. But when he looked at her stomach he saw the light. He almost thought he saw God himself.

• Below is a rationale explaining the choices I made and why regarding this excerpt-

The Rationale:

My scene is meant to be placed on the very first page, right before the opening paragraph. It is set in the past as an opening prologue to the current timeline of the story. I chose this placement because I think that a small backstory on how The Road came to be should be in the beginning of the novel. I also chose to leave out apostrophes and commas at areas they would typically belong because I think Coric McCarthy would have written it this way, in his unique style.

I chose to create this scene in The Road because it includes two very important themes that also stay consistent throughout the novel. God. Is there one? Does it matter? And the light vs. the darkness. Throughout my excerpt the man and the woman grapple with their views of God. God is an important motif in the novel which is another reason I incorporated this theme in my excerpt. I chose to make the man a believer of God, although throughout the novel I don’t think that that is so clear. But I chose to do this because I do think that the man views the boy as holy and I interpret that as him viewing the boy as a gift from God. All through the novel he believes that God entrusted him to protect the boy. “He knew that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” (Pg. 5) Here is just one example of that.

This holy view of the boy the man has is also the reason I included the latter part of my scene, where the man looks at the woman's stomach (which is bearing the boy) and sees the light. As opposed to him looking at the woman and seeing the darkness. I believe the purpose of the light in this novel is to show hope within someone. When that hope is lost they become corrupted by darkness. The scene in the novel where the woman left the man and the boy to, we speculate, kill herself, is a scene where I feel the woman lost her hope. I chose to show a little of that beginning in my scene with the man seeing darkness.

The essential questions I addressed are, what is the role of God? What happened before this world? And what made it occur? The first question I answered when I brought out in my scene that the role God to the important characters in my scene (those being the man, the woman, and the boy) is the light and the provider of hope in a world otherwise dark and hopeless. The second and third questions I answered in my first sentence, which was describing a nuclear war going on. That’s what was happening before the current timeline and what caused The Road to come about.

The passage below is something I believe should have been written in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road before the final edition was released.

•          •          •

The creature was watching their every move. A fearsome creature, from the certainty of there being that which was unknown. The cave was was dark. They could feel the very cold death creeping upon them. The black moonlight shined inward through a thick blanket of snow, slowly covering the entrance of the cave to the brim. The boy pulled the blankets over him. The man lie there, being the creature, and he was carrying the fire. The fire was the breath of the creature and it was a monochromatic grey, dying breath. A blanket of ice covered the cave. The breath was the only heat source for the creature and the boy and without it the boy would freeze. As the breath slowly withered away the creature’s heart beat slower and slower. A pitch black silence began to fill the room. The creature was dead. The boy held the creature in his arms and sat there crying for a long time. It was cold and dark. It was bright. A light shined from roof of the cave. Some misshapen creature, slimy, slick, uncertain fell through. It resembled the previous creature. It’s breath was fire and the fire lit the room.

The man woke up coughing. He didn’t check for the boy. He knew he was fine. He wiped the blood off of his mouth. The boy lie awake.

I had a dream

About what?

The boy didnt say anything.

I had a dream too it’s ok

ok.

Below is my rationale to explain the choices I made for my project .

My story includes the dad, the boy, and the man that comes after the dad dies. The boy in the dream is portrayed as the boy (naturally) and the two men are portrayed as the creature(s). I chose to portray these characters this way because throughout the book there are many “creatures”. The creatures are the things that bring uncertainty, which brings danger. These men are mortal, so they are nothing but unpredictable creatures placed upon this world. The boy however is not a creature, rather something closer to an angel. He is filled with motives that show nothing but compassion.

This section goes on page 260 of the book between where the boy said “but we did kill him” and where the book said “In the morning”. I feel like this is a great place to add a dream because it is evident that the man is dying more and more; further in the book we see the man slowly giving up until he reaches his death, and in the book dreams portray things that happen in the future. I wanted to make this the man’s dream (since the book is mainly through the perspective of the man), and a happy one because in the book happy dreams mean you are starting to give up (which the man is). The dream stylistically follows the general decrepit themes of the book, however for the man this is a very happy dream. This is because naturally the man is worried about what will become of the boy when he dies. This dream is reassuring him that everything is going to be alright (as far as the boy goes), and that his god will come through as he has many times throughout the book.  Presumably it is the god that will bring this miraculous coincidence of someone coming to carry the fire and protect the boy after the man dies. This explains some of the man’s actions later on in the book, and explains why he doesn’t check on the boy in this scene nor the scene after.

The conversation is also very important. It adds yet another scene where the boy is distancing himself from the man. It also hints that the boy knows the man will die soon (through this distance). The man is tried relating to the boy when he said that he had a dream too. Stylistically I’ve found the book to use single quotes, but mostly just not in the contractions, so I’ve tried to match that with the word “didnt” (as well as match a few other stylistic choices).

The following passage​ is what I have imagined was cut from Cormac McCarthy's The Road before the final edition was released. It takes place on page 143, in between, "There was no gun and there wasn't going to be one," and, "When he woke the gaslamp overhead was hissing softly."

As he sat on his bunk, he listened to the high winds that surely signaled the start of another storm. Minutes later the rain began. It created an odd noise. It sounded nothing like the familiar sound of rain on the roof of a house. It sounded more like footsteps on the soil above. Thousands of footsteps hitting the ground over their heads. The sound of thunder was muffled, a thunderhum. It was unsettling but also kind of calming. He liked it, so he sat and listened.

After a while it was difficult to keep his eyes open. He had just begun to drift off, but the repetitive nature of the thunderhum and the rainfeet was interrupted and it caught his attention. Actual footsteps? He walked over the the steps and put his head up to the ceiling. Footsteps. Against his better judgement, he swung open the door.

Is anyone there?

There was movement in the dark. He saw a shadow and a pale face. Their eyes met his. Her eyes met his. Her eyes met his. It was her.

He was drenched to the bone already and re-entered the bunker to grab a tarp and the battery lantern. He decided to wake the boy. He was shaking him.

Your mother.

Now the boy was shaking him.

Papa, wake up.

He jolted upright.

She’s out there. I need to see her.

Papa, there’s no one to see!

Realization struck. The man, embarrassed, said, Go back to bed.

The boy did.

(250 words) (McCarthy-esque words: thunderhum, rainfeet)

This is my rationale, explaining why I made these choices for this project.

In my passage, I wanted to focus on the boy's growth over time and how the man acts in contrast to him. I was really interested in the motif of dreams that McCarthy used and decided to give another peek into the man's dreams. The man is constantly dreaming about his wife so I definitely had to include her in it. This reminded me of the incident with the little boy, on page 85, where the man tried to convince the boy that he was imagining things. I thought it would be interesting to have the tables turned this time and make it so that the man is the one who is convinced there is someone there when he is only dreaming. The man is sleep-talking and his voice startles the boy out of his sleep, so he immediately wakes the man. Once the man realizes that the whole previous ordeal with his wife was a dream, he is embarrassed and tells the boy to go back to bed.

When the boy saw the other little boy the man said, “There’s no one to see,” so I made sure to have the boy say the same exact thing to the man. The man remembers that outburst and is not happy that now he is on the other side of the argument. What makes the man even more embarrassed is that in this case, he was most definitely having a dream whereas the boy very well may have actually seen someone else.

The boy springing right into action and knowing how to handle this situation shows his growth and maturity. This passage also highlights the man’s deteriorating mental state. He said that good dreams are bad news and he has been having so many dreams about his wife that it’s clear he isn’t doing so well. The man’s poor health and state of mind is dangerous to the boy since the man’s judgement is not very reliable.

I placed this passage in this location of the book because I wanted there to be no mention of it when they both wake up again. The man completely brushes that off his shoulder and hopes that the boy has forgotten it too. he doesn’t want the boy to be worried about him or realize how unsettled he was by the dream.  

This is how I imagine the ending should have happened. I begin with an excerpt from the final pages that serves as the end of a chapter. The chapter after, indicated by the 3 dots, is my new ending for the book.

Nicholas LePera

27 January 2016

McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 287

. . .

It had been several weeks on the road traveling with his new family. The boy had still not fully accepted the passing of his father and he often woke in the night looking to see if he were there next to him. Each time he quickly brushed off the sadness knowing that this is where papa would want him to be.

The days lived out had hardly changed and he and the others ran the same procedures as before when scouring the wastes. Each creaking door, rustling leaf, and supposed footstep was analyzed and each item surveyed for use. While food continued to be scarce the group still found ways to make miracles out of each closely portioned meal. From time to time they encountered small bands of bandits, but only once were forced to take action.

As each day passed they settled the night in another town, village, or brush of foliage. The days slowly began to get warmer, signifying they were getting closer to what may be salvation. While hopes arose, they also had to prepare for the worst. For if there were to be salvation, there would certainly be villains ready to fight for it.

The boy sat for supper on the side of the road, as was customary. With nothing to clear his mind the boy looked to the sky once again and spoke to his father for the last time.

Rationale:

While Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is deemed a masterpiece by many, I feel as if the closure of the novel is not in an optimal state. The new family adopted by the boy is mysterious. The kindness shown by them goes to show trust, but can also be used for deception. As a reader I felt as if it was left unclear as to whether or not the boy was with a truly moral group. The state of their resources and whether they would make it or not was a topic that would often pilfer the satisfaction given by the book.

By rewriting and continuing the ending I was able to better tell the possible scenarios that they would encounter and their chances of surviving said encounters. This is something I know many may disagree with, but it is an acceptable uncanonical ending that still maintains the grim themes, and tone created by the vocabulary of McCarthy. The continuation of the basic survival procedures the man taught the boy go to reinforce one of a few motifs touched on in my piece. The tactics and caution of searching the environment for resources is one that buffers the proof that this world is almost certainly devoid of moral.

This continuation of procedures not only adds to the motif but also serves as evidence that the man succeeded in training and preparing this boy to live on without his father. While the boy is apart of a new family, he is not helpless and tasks himself with continuing life as his father taught him. This new group “carries the fire” despite not understanding the meaning of it. As a reader, fire is the hope, and ability to move on against all odds which is what they had done. The fire they held in their hearts allowed them to trek endless miles and scour in the hopes of finally catching up to what may be the last of the sane people left in this world.

When bringing the story to a close I use the boys speaking to his father’s spirit as a means of furthering the idea that the boy has rapidly matured and can survive on his own. Something that is mentioned often in the story is that thinking of the good ol’ times, or the past, is simply a means to your downfall. The boy had this pressed on him many times, and while he still loves his father, he finds it necessary to move on by removing these sentiments.