A co-worker of mine is reading "The Road" right now. Last night she told me she was alarmed at the discovery of a first-person passage in the book but she didn't have time to explore it. Then today she sent me this urgent e-mail.
Hi Kim
i checked out that passage again (page 87 in the paperback) and now it is clear to me that it is Papa speaking (the night before i'd had a glass of wine before picking up the book, and anyone knows drinking and reading don't mix!).
but it is still a departure from the form, because while there is use of "I" in dialogue, this is a first person observation. perhaps it is establishing the father's point of view -- all i know about this from rob is that if we hear a person's thoughts, that person cannot die.
I love this book!
susan
Thoughts on this? Hehe
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2 comments:
I don't remember that passage! I'll have to go and look.
I don't quite get what she means about how hearing a character's thoughts means they cannot die.
Yeah, it's a weird passage, for sure. I noticed it, but it was too early in the book to give it much thought. Now that I've read the whole thing and see that that's the only instance of it, it does seem bizarre.
I think maybe she just means that a first-person narrator can't die because how can they be narrating events that happened if they are now dead? That's what's weird about "Sunset Boulevard," the dead narrator. It would require some kind of framing device to really work (like a found diary or letters or something like that). In any event, I'll quiz her on the subject and report back!
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