A couple passages seemed to deify the boy in a way. Do you think it was just the normal love of a father for his child (not, granted, that these were normal circumstances), or did you feel there was something else going on?
The couple that I noticed:
The night after they shoot the guy, the father replenishes the fire as the boy sleeps: The boy didn't stir. He sat beside him and stroked his pale and tangled hair. Golden chalice, good to house a god.
Then when they meet the old man:
When I saw that boy I thought I had died.
You thought he was an angel?
I didnt know what he was. I never thought to see a child again. I didnt know that would happen.
What if I said he's a god?
The old man shook his head. I'm past all that now. Have been for years. Where man cant live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. So I hope that's not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it's not true.
Then after they give the old man something to eat, at the boy's insistence:
The old man says: Why did he do it?
He looked over at the boy and he looked at the old man.
You wouldn't understand, he said. I'm not sure I do.
Maybe he believes in God.
I dont know what he believes in.
He'll get over it.
No he wont.
And THIS floored me. They come across the next guy in the road and the boy wants to help him, too.
Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die.
He's going to die anyway.
He's so scared, Papa.
The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared.
The boy didnt answer. He just sat there with his head bowed, sobbing.
You're not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.
I nearly wept when I read that. I am the one. What did you take it to mean?
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8 comments:
i want to reread that before commenting, can you give me a page number? (it has been three months since I read the book)
Oh yeah! It actually crossed my mind to cite the pages, but I thought you guys might find that a tad too booknerdy. Hehe. I'm glad to know you wouldn't!
The first passage, about the golden chalice, is on page 75 of the Vintage paperback edition.
The rest, in order:
p. 172
p. 173
p. 259
As for the last section.."i am the one" I wonder if it is more a recognition that the boy knows his father will not be with him forever. He has to be the one to worry about everything because he senses he will some day in the future also be alone.
Or that he is the one that has to remind his father of their humanity...pushing him to be generous and kind. In that way maybe he is deified.
Also I just noticed that the theif on the beach was "castout of one of the communes" and his fingers were cutoff, I presume beacuse he also stole there and was punished by being exiled.
I suppose that is a hint at the people that will rescue the boy in the end, that there are these stable communities with a justice system. I was so caught up in the terror of their loss that I missed the clue to the "good people" out there.
Oh, I hadn't made that connection either between the thief and the good people. Good call.
I'm beginning to see a pattern in McCarthy. I've read only three of his books, but in each of those there's a story set in a pretty hellish world and an example of love so profound that it seems mystical — beyond contemplation. In "No Country for Old Men," it's between a husband and wife. In "The Road," a father and son. In "All the Pretty Horses," between two cowboys.
These are very interesting passages. Each of those had stood out to me, but I didn't think of them together. I wonder if the boy is sort of deified in the man's mind because the boy is his whole world, his only hope, his reason for living, literally.
I think you may have a good point, ael, about the boy knowing that he would someday be alone. The book says he would often lay awake listening to his father coughing, and he seemed to have a sense that the man was sicker than he let on.
Interesting, too, about the thief being cast out from a commune. I think I read right over that part. And "one of the communes" -- that makes me wonder, why didn't the man and boy go live in one of the communes, if they knew they existed? Could they just not find one?
Yeah, deifying him because he's his whole world makes sense. The woman, just before she killed herself (she looked at this as taking death as a "lover" — which struck me as bizarrely romantic in the circumstances, the argument they have about this) she told him that the boy would be all that would stand between him and death. And she was right. The miracle of the child, which nonethless did not stand between her and her "lover."
The good guys keep trying, the man reminds the boy when he wants to give up, when the boy says he just wants to be with his mother. (You mean dead? Yes.)
The man has faith that the woman lacked, and his faith is rewarded in the end. Or is the boy's coming across the good people just as the dad died a mere coincidence?
If they had come across a commune of good people before that, then the ending wouldn't have seemed so ordained, would it? (Maybe ordained is the wrong word. But it wouldn't have seemed so special, I don't think).
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