Jade+H

Plot Overview: __The Road__ by Cormac McCarthy is about a son and a father walked through burned down America. They have a single gun with one bullet, and a rusted cart full of out dated food and clothes they looted. It tells there story through sickness, faith, and trouble looking for the good people left. The father and son walked down roads following a torn map they have numbered, with a motorcycle mirror on their cart to look for trouble. The story starts out with the father and son sleeping in a cave waking up at the crack of dawn every morning to set out on the road, to scavenge abandoned towns for anything left. They are n a journey to the beach to find warmth because surviving another winter is impossible. However they always run into trouble on the roads. It is life and death struggle every day. In the story they are forced to kill, or steal for survival. While on the road they hear noise and dash into the woods, and they are followed. They run into a man who stole everything they had and he was forced to shoot him in the head, and run. This leads them to more journeys through ash filled towns trying to find any food left. In one town they found a shelter where they stayed for four days eating and they bathed. They took as much as they could and set back out on the road. The setting is dark and rainy or snowy. They are forced to build fires and both father and son get sick constantly and almost die. Anyone survivors are usually cannibalistic and killers, and they eat people and anything they can find. They traveled through a house where they found a door hammered shut where down in the basement they found fifteen starved naked people begging for help one was missing his leg and the smell was unbearable, and they ran. Later on that night they heard screams, and realize they were harvesting those people, and eating them by night. The father and son run into horrific scenes like gutted infant carcasses, and burned people into pavement. The two eventually reach the shore, where the go through homes, and boats for anything. The father becomes sick, and dies. Leaving the son alone that morning, but a man shows and takes him in. In the end the young boy found the “good guys” Character List: **The Father:** The father is an older man. He is heartbroken by his wife leaving after the birth of their son. He has a single pistol and looks after the son feeding him before himself. He tall and starved he in uncertain and has doubt of survival. **The boy:** The boy is no older than four years old. He is dependent on the father, and quiet. The boy knows no other world than this ash filled, and burned down America. He is on the brink of death. Quotations: //“He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call on languor and of death.”// **(Said by the Father)** Explanation: This was said by the father after he dreamt about his wife, which happens very often. The wife was pregnant at the time of the world coming to an end. She has the boy and shortly after committed suicide, she truly believes they would never survive and they would die. The father does not like the frequent dreams of his past loved. //“On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell has hideous.”// **(Said by the Father)** Explanation:  This quotation shows what people do in a time of desperation and survival. They harvest people and use them for food in their own house. This is proof of how people are mostly cannibalistic, and disgusting. //“There was some discussion about whether to even come after you at all. You can stay here with your papa and die, or you can go with me”// **(Said to boy by some veteran)** Explanation: This was said to the boy from an older man bearded and scarred along his face. This happened after the boy stayed with his dead father for three days in the cold all alone. This is where he found the good guys. They said there was a few of them they had warmth, shelter and other children. Essay Questions: Personally I would never. I wouldn’t really know my final answer unless I had to live it. You never know what you will really do in a desperate need of survival. I don’t think I would as of right now. In a world like that I would either want to die, or I would scavenge for food best I could. The thought of eating an infant or people disgusts me. There something unsettling about it to me. I would just eat as little as I could to survive, and drink water. If this ever did happen and if people were close to distinction I think we could figure out a way. In these situations everything goes into chaos there’s no direction. I would look for a shelter or anything. If the world was burned down and ash filled I believe people should work together and build a new life. Resorting to cannibalism will destroy what’s left of the population and what happens when people run out of people to eat? They go after each other and they turn on each other. To me it personally would. If you lost all of your loved ones and you were by yourself I wouldn’t want to live. In an empty America that used to be beautiful and full of life and color I would be lonely. What would life have for you anymore? You would just suffer each day and all you had to look forward to what your next meal would be. There are no animals, no one you can trust it’s a survival of life and death for everybody. What you once knew would be gone, and it wouldn’t return to normal. Life would lose meaning to me I wouldn’t want to live in woods and act like an animal myself just to survive not even for more than a year.
 * In a post-apocalyptic world would you resort to cannibalism? **
 * Could people come up with another way to live besides cannibalism? **
 * Would life lose value to you in a burned America? **