Doomsday

So far, after reading the first 150 pages of The Road, I find that the most striking aspect of the story was this one line — “are we still the good guys?” One of the elements of Apocalypse we frequently discuss in class is the concept of the Good “us” versus the Bad “them.” Traditionally, the Bad “them” is to be punished and suffer the wrath of God (or some other divine power) with the coming of the end of the world and the Good “us” will survive to see New Jerusalem. It is this one belief, that this father and son are the good guys who “carry the fire” that give them any will to go on in a dead, soot-covered, post-Apocalyptic world. The son’s constant question, “are we still the good guys?” is very important after seeing the pair abandon a dying man and a lost young boy to their own devices. It is obvious that in a world where most humans did not survive, there may have been some major changes in morality.

In this story, everyone who survived is living the same horrible life, and there seems to be no real  reason to believe that there hope. The father seems to safely guard the dream that the American South is their New Jerusalem but I have a feeling (from what I have heard about the book before reading it) that this is an empty hope and that they will reach the South only to find everything decimated. In this manner, The Road resembles “On the Beach” more than The Book of Revelation. I almost believe that the most rational thing to have done in this circumstance was to commit suicide– just as the boy’s mother and everyone in “On the Beach” had done. So, this makes me wonder about suicide in times of extreme crisis. Is there a time when suicide may be the best thing? Is the father putting his son through unnecessary suffering by insisting that they keep going on the Road? Is this kind of survival instinct something that should actually be admired, or is it bordering on delusional? Maybe I will be proven wrong later in the book, but for now, I have no hope for these characters.

This week, I was intrigued by the difference between coping methods in the post-apocalyptic worlds of The Albertine Notes and The Road. Everyone in The Albertine Notes seems consumed by escapism. The junkies are obsessed with using the drug, the dealers are obsessed with selling the drug, and even the Resistance movement is singlemindedly fighting in the past and the future to stop the spread of the drug. No one, it seems, is very interested in rebuilding present-day Manhattan, or even moving away from the wasteland and starting over.

I get this. When everything falls apart (even on a non-apocalyptic scale), it’s tempting to hide under the covers, self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, or food, obsess over controlling the little things, and refuse to acknowledge reality.

What I don’t understand is, in The Road, the father’s total rejection of the comfort of his dreams. He is living in a terrible, horrible, post-apocalyptic world, and he is “learning how to wake himself” from dreams of a world with flowering forests, birds, and bright blue skies. He mistrusts good dreams, believing “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death” (McCarthy 18).

I understand he has a responsibility to his son, and he can’t afford to get lost in a dream world, but I find it hard to believe that the best solution is to sleep with only nightmares for company. In a world where every-day waking life is a nightmare, wouldn’t it be more beneficial (to maintain humanity, sanity, hope, etc.) to take solace in whatever small comforts are available? I don’t think that’s a luxury, or too indulgent. Or is it just too much of a slippery slope?

Where do I begin? “It was a dark and stormy night….It was another dark and stormy night…The dark and stormy night eventually gave way to the dull glow of the grey sun, shining in the grey sky, refracting pathetic streams of light through the ash strewn air…”  I feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

“The Road” offered little recourse in a cold, grey and overall hopeless world. Before reading the book I glanced at the back and read some of the reviews. I initially believed that this was a story of hope in the face of  extreme desperation and adversity. Unfortunately, after going through the first 200 pages I found myself cold, shivering, hungry and in a somewhat gloomy state. This book actually reminded me of the ordeal I went through reading “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. As Ivan went through his day wrapping his frostbitten hands in scraps of cloth, I found my hands becoming colder and my mind wandering further and further into the depths of a Soviet gulag. The major difference in reading this text was knowing that there was life and hope after the gulag and the other devastations brought with Stalinism. In “The Road” the reader is left in a a state of suspense. The reader is completely unaware of  what exactly happened to the world. We are only given a peek into the devastation and the extent of its effects. McCarthy’s approach left me with very little to look forward to. Why would anyone do this to me? Yes I am taking this very personally. Why bring the reader to such a despairing state? This is a place absent of decency, morals and to an extent  basic humanity. I could only see humanity through the small child as his father ravaged by the burden of living slipped further into his “animal”instinct to survive. I guess in a way the author presents the apocalypse as a the end of society, law, ethics and values. Everyone is left to wander shiftlessly through the grey shroud surrounding them nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to. Not to get all philosophical but is this what Hobbes may have imagined when he described man in the state of nature? Life for the man and his child and whoever else managed to survive truly was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” I would love to believe in the resilience of the human character but McCarthy and Hobbes are an eerie reminder that without the strappings and conventions of modern society and on a very basic level civilization, we are all quite pathetic. I am not entirely sure if we should thank them for this sobering reminder or sweep their dismal rants under to be remembered only in an academic context such as now.

I wonder how this would translate onto film?

The Road does not follow the apocalyptic paradigms of the traditional apocalyptic tale or our postmodern readings. McCarthy seems more concerned with the human condition in the midst of total infrastructural and social breakdown, particularly how moral conviction and love perseveres alongside the primal brutality of humans and the wild.

This new world, or America, is a harsh landscape, cold and gray and laden with strange mutilated and barbaric men. The search for food and shelter, death and perpetual pain move the story along. Morality in the face of this total desolation is what keep’s our attention and emotions, at least mine.

It’s curious to see how what happens when the prophet, judgment and the us & them are absent from the story. Which is not to say the death of billions or being brought up to heaven isn’t emotional, but I can’t place myself on either side. I don’t consider myself an evil sinner yet I surely haven’t accepted Jesus. I can’t place myself in Revelation’s duality thus Revelation, vs The Road, feels rather weird.

—

“God” is mentioned thrice in the first half, I think, and not as an enactor of doom but as the whiff of the empty bottle. God is gone, or, God is with the pair’s every step.

I want to elaborate on the point made before in class on how to portray God in a fictionalized account. First there is the reader’s personal perspective on religion. While one could read the Man’s questions as misguided belief in a Godless world, another could see the Man wrestling with his Creator. There is also the issue of trying to describe God’s form and intended actions without coming off hokey.

McCarthy does not seem to be lauding or criticizing religion, rather using God as view into the Man’s heart – why does he persevere? Who does he blame? Who does he get angry at?

“The Road” is an irritating read.  I’m not partial to this (post?) modern, pared-down style, with barely a comma or quotation mark in sight, missing apostrophes, and in general, almost stream of consciousness style that makes it hard to make sense of who is talking.  I gather this is the point of such writing.  It leaves a dry, bitter aftertaste.  This probably means the book’s affect is effective.  If the form gnaws, then the content bites.

The content of the novel, though, is not particularly sensational.  Simply, it’s a listing of the everyday lives of father and son as they make their way to the south:  Breakfast.  Lunch.  Supper.  Sleep and repeat.  Every detail of their existence is painfully amplified – or reduced – to the small tasks: build a fire, warm the food, find the cart. Each is rendered as though each decision will determine whether they will live or die.

These acts of survival are carried out by two unnamed people, trekking through a wildnerness amid traces of a civilization past.  The anonymity creates distance.  But these nameless, faceless people could also be me, this could be you.  This could be the story of the Others — the Bad People.  But in this climate it is every man for himself — and his child, maybe.

The conversation in the novel is reduced to the essentials, and it’s often  ambiguous who is talking.  The father is constantly concerned that the boy is not talking. It’s as though speech/communication is the last quality that allows them to hold on to some humanness.  Much of this conversation revolves around questions of mortality.  The boy is always afraid they are going to die. At the same time, he sometimes wishes he were dead and reunited with the mother. (Freud would have a field day!)  Why do they want to stay alive when there is nothing left? In a way I was angry at the wife for abandoning her family but maybe she was right after all.  If they have each other, do they have enough?

This seems to be a theme in apocalyptic narrative: the idea that humanity is worth saving for the few worthwhile human connections that exist.  We’ve seen this in Watchmen with Dr. Manhattan and in The Albertine Notes.  And I don’t mean this  in terms of the Elect, though that is a likely source for the idea.

I do not entirely dislike the novel.  There were tender moments and images of beauty against the stark, bleak background.  This too is probably a feature of the novels themes.  But again I return to the question: against such devastating nothingness, no redeeming ending, a forever stretching out endlessly — of what purpose are these tiny connections, who cares and what does it all mean?  This novel cries out for this type of reflection. It seems needy.  I haven’t yet finished it (I’m halfway through) and am looking forward to blogging about the END.

In “The Road,” McCarthy portrays a protagonist who is resentful towards the wrathful God who created his post-apocalyptic world he has been condemned to with his son.

The nameless man and his son are wondering around a desolate, torched land trying to reach the coast. He addresses his creator: “Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God (11).” His angry plead to understand what has happen shows he has a complicated relationship with God. He seems to believe that there is a heaven that he will be going to but he’ll be extremely angry when he gets there. He’s talking to God, therefore he thinks there is a possibility that he exists. Perhaps it is a God who is a watchmaker like in Watchmen.

His relationship with God has been transformed by the atomic disaster but so has his relationship with people. We know very little about the protagonist but there is a hint that he was a doctor. Though he has taken the Hippocratic Oath he still passes by the lightning stroke man that is dying. He has rejected his role as a doctor where he is now no one but a father to his son.

The man has a sense of reverence for his son as he feels he is charged to protect him since he is the only good left in the world. He refers to his sleeping son as a “golden chalice, good to house a god (75).” While parents tend to have strong loving feelings towards their children, this relationship is more intense as they are literally each other’s world. There is another interesting scene of transferred divinity is the when the pair finds a house stocked with food. They pray and thank the people, not God, for the food that probably saved their lives.

They are living in a Godless world epitomized when the boy catches a snowflake in his hand and “watched it expired there as the last host of Christendom (16).”

I’m sorry for dropping off the face of the planet (or the blog) for the past few weeks, but I’m back, and I will do my best to catch up. Thoughts on The Road to come later, but in the meantime, I thought I would post this link: http://stuffchristianslike.net

It’s modeled on the popular blog “Stuff White People Like“(which, according to the site, “investigates, explains, and offers advice for finding social success with the Caucasian persuasion” and has had 63,055,199 hits since Jan. 2008).

Similarly, Stuff Christians Like calls itself “your field guide to all things Christian.”  It’s written by a preacher’s kid, and has more than 650 entries. Of course, many of them mention the Apocalypse, but a few of my favorites are:

#482: Talking About The End of The World: Which includes predicting the second coming, identifying the antichrist, overemphasizing 666, awaiting the rapture, decoding Revelation, and the apocalypse as entertainment

#89. Knowing where not to be during the rapture: Or, “Ugh, I wouldn’t want to be here when the rapture comes.” Introduces the concept of “rapture proof buildings,” which apparently include nightclubs, bowling alleys, and movie theaters showing rated R moves.

#64. Fearing the rapture would come before you lost your virginity: A female commenter posted that she had been afraid of the rapture occuring between her engagment and the wedding. So apparently, “girls fear for the wedding, guys fear for the sex.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html?ref=weekinreview

In particular, the last paragraph in which the author sums up his position is very interesting.  The author doesn’t discuss the implications of religious societies – fundamentalism/persecution/often apocalyptic paradigms – this he leaves open and acknowledges that individual societies can use them for good or bad ends.

“Our city was outside of history now, beyond surveillance (144).” The post-apocalyptic NYC is after the period of recorded events and what is happening will only exist in people’s memory. The memory of the surviving New Yorkers becomes the true landscape of the post-blast New York City.

It’s interested that the widespread use of Albertine suggests that people are trying to escape their presence in their memories. They are willing to risk experiencing unpleasant memories to get what they were after, whether it’s Kevin trying to recapture moments with a childhood crush or Cortez enduring a traumatic experience to find Addict Number One.

The value of memory is explicit in this narrative. Lee says,“Nobody wants to have anything to do with a forgetter (186).” Those with perfect recall are the most respected. Cortez wants to disguise the origins of the drug and those who know or trying to discover it are seen as valuable and targeted: Addict Number 1, Kevin Lee, and the Brooklyn College professors. People are disappeared by being murdered in memories, but the characters are not time traveling but traveling in their own mind and the collective unconscious of the city.

Chuck Klosterman says, “Life is rarely about what happens but it’s about what you thought happened? Which has more validity in the story? The real events or the memory of events? It seems with the disappearing of people that the memories are more real than the actual presence. The novella reflects on the imperfection of memory that society relies so heavily upon.