ELIT 48C Class 40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lich59xsjik

Whale/WalesWhere/wearWhite/wite

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Whale

Chair Poet?

 

'I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.'

Bob Dylan

Agenda

The Road: Postmodernism? Or something new?

The Age of TerrorThe apocalypseThemes

DiscussFive minutes!

Set in a conceivable future, after a global catastrophe, The Road tells the story of a father and a son as they tread along a forsaken highway awash with marauders and cannibals.

It is perhaps the most chilling commentary of the post-9/11 world. The post-apocalyptic setting plays upon the public’s fear of terrorism, pandemics, genocide, and weapons of mass destruction.

We can also hear the poetic passages of desolation and are reminded of Dante’s descent into hell or T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

McCarthy also wrestles with the ever-present question of the existence of God: the father tells the boy, “There is no God and we are his prophets.”

The Setting The Road is set in some undetermined location. There is mention of distant mountains, several rivers

and creeks, the Piedmont (a plain that runs along the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains), and a coastline.

The landscape and the air are soaked in thick, gray ash.

Vegetation has been destroyed. There are no fish in the water.

When snow falls, it collects the ash in the air and falls to the earth already gray.

What caused the devastation of the land? Provide the clues you used to come to your conclusion.

The land is completely dead [. . .] most of the people seem to be dead too. [G]ray ash [falls] from the sky. [. . . ] “[Marchers” are] “dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks”. The narrator also described “slaves in harnesses” who were pulling “goods of war.” [P]regnant women [wear] fitted dog collars.

[I]n the first years of the devastation, it says that the roads had people, but they would be “wearing masks and goggles” (15).

extreme war

Post-nuclear-war: “The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window…He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and then turned on both taps as far as they would go. (52)”

At first I was confused about the mentioning of a bathtub, but with a little research, I found filling a bathtub with water is one of the smartest things you can do in the event of a nuclear disaster. It can store large amounts of water for you, which will be beneficial once the neighborhood’s (or world’s) plumbing ceases to function. Also, the shear of light, low concussions and “a dull rose glow in the windowglass” reminds me of bombs being dropped in the area.

nuclear-war

I suspected the disaster was nuclear war, so I did a quick perusal of Google results for “effects of nuclear war.” I scanned quickly through the first five or so articles, and learned that a nuclear bomb would cause an EMP, which would account for the clocks stopping. The rose-colored light they saw in the story could have been caused by thermal radiation. Then there would be a fireball and possibly firestorms. Many people would be killed instantly or burned in the resulting fires, which we see in the mummified, dried, burned bodies everywhere. The articles hypothesized that the dust and ash from the explosion would enter the stratosphere, blocking out the sun, which we see in the book when the boy asks if he flew high enough, could he see the sun.

Nuclear War

War plus Volcano I believe that there were two explosions: one was a

bomb, most likely of nuclear proportions, and the other, was a natural disaster, a volcano that erupted. ‘In Yellow Stone National Park, there is a “super-volcano,” that, if it erupts, would have the force one-thousand times more than the Mt. Saint Helen eruption of 1980’ (World’s Largest Volcano-Yellow Stone National Park). Also, this story was written in 2006, a short 10 years after the Cold War- a peak in the nuclear arms race. My hypothesis is that both of these explosions occurred. First the nuclear explosion, another country bombed the U.S, and due to the major explosion, unearthed the volcano that sits beneath Yellow Stone causing another eruption that increased the amount of devastation.

“Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it” (17). They being whatever survived and reverted to such a primal state. As such, I refer to the “I Am Legend” scenario I just mentioned. The humans who were infected are mutated to the point that they only have their motor functions and the base desire to mate and eat like animals.

I agree with Carlos in that the destruction is more of a biological one than perhaps a nuclear one. Although there’s a lot of talk about the dismal quality of the land, it all seems to still be intact, “Everything as it once had been save faded and weathered”.

biological warfare

BURNING Still, it feels like the land was burned—that somehow

people did this, people all over just began to light the world up, a global inferno, taking out the electrical grids and then the water, etc, and the forests too. It could have been an asteroid, perhaps, or a super volcano, or something along those lines—both would explain the endless ash just as well—but then there wouldn’t have been lurking and hidden suspicion, there would have been blatant mass preparation. And when it did happen, everyone would have known. Most convincingly, the father would have a better story to tell his son: the universe happened, son, and this is what became of us. Instead it’s an endless tale of ‘I don’t know,’ and of being the good guys, of avoiding the bad guys.

The question is which of these disasters came first – the great spiritual loss of morality, or the earth’s physical rejection of life? Did the loss of morality cause the disaster, or did the disaster cause the loss of morality?

Following this line of thought, the biggest mystery is whether the catalyzing catastrophe was man-made (such as WMD) or from without, such as an unforeseen natural disaster (my bet would be on a massive meteor impact) (there are even two or three references to aliens in the book, such as when the father sees his son as looking like an alien – a child of a world shaped by aliens maybe? Even if not directly relating to aliens, it invokes schema for outer space).

Massive Meteor

I would assume that the devastation has been caused by a war within the United States. I don’t think that the United States was attacked by any other country, but instead by their own corrupt government. There are a few reasons why I think this. The first is that the father in the story has classified people as the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. He does not mention any other country or any type of foreign presence that could have caused all of the devastation. The second reason for this is when the man and his son find some food, but the father worries that it is poisoned. I think that perhaps whatever radical government was in charge, was attempting to kill off groups of people by poisoning them. The final reason that I think it was a corrupt government, is the fact that people were expecting all of this to happen.

American Government Attack on the people

End of Days Tuesday: The Road: Concepts; Symbols Wednesday: The Road: Postmodernism; Critical

Theory; The American Dream; Introduce Essay #2

Thursday: The quarter in review; Self-Assessment; Discuss Exam #3

Monday: Optional Class: Make-up Exam #1 or #2 8:30 am showing of The Rocky Horror Picture

Show Thursday, June 27: Final: 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Exam #3 Due electronically before class: Essay #2, Essay

revision; Honors project.

HOMEWORK Read The Road: to the three/quarter point: page

72 in the online version. Stop here: “One vast salt sepulcher. Senseless. Senseless.”

Post # 38: Discuss one: Examine the concept of trust and mistrust in the

The Road. Analyze the symbol of innocence and how it

pertains to the son in The Road. Introduce another concept or symbol

Start thinking about your next essay. Some possible prompts are posted. Remember, you can pursue any topic you would like as long as it concerns a text or texts from the second half of the quarter.