9/17/19 Chloe Chong Period 8

9/17/19 Chloe Chong PD 8

9/17/19

Chloe Chong PD 8

Aim: How does McCarthy demonstrate the tenacity of love in a time of despair?

Do Now: Let’s make a list of brutally honest list of the joys and sorrows of truly loving someone.

As someone in class mentioned, truly loving someone is the highest of highs, but it also the lowest of lows. When you're with them it’s amazing, but when they're gone everything feels empty. When they suffer, you suffer too but their love is worth everything.Some people said it’s like a love-hate relationship. But either way, when you truly love someone, the joys and sorrows are reciprocals. It is a dichotomy. The greater the emotional value the higher the risk because we care about them the most. When you don’t care about something then you don’t care. But when someone has meaning to you, they can easily hurt you because you leave yourself vulnerable to them by loving them.

Love in a Time of Cannibalism 

Exploring monsters— the vampires, the zombie, they share the desire/need to eat humans which seem gruesome to us. How does cannibalism compare?

“What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I’m sorry, he whispered, I’m sorry” (198)

As Ms. Fusaro put it, the infants on the spit was much like the rotisserie chickens in Costco. That is a horrifying visual for us. Monsters— such as zombies and vampires— are detached from moral standards. For them, eating humans is the only way they can survive. Humans, however, are different. They understand that the person they are eating was someone to someone. They know they could’ve been someone’s mother or brother or friend. Zombies eat humans because they don’t have the consciousness to decide not to. Cannibal humans have the ability to empathize but they choose not to. Getting down to it, they are eating something of the same species. Even the monsters we know don’t do that. Vampires don’t eat other vampires. Even zombies don’t eat other zombies. 

Who are the monsters? That is the essential question. The answer? We are. Humans will always be the monsters. 

Because we’re the good guys, right?

Cormac envisions a post-apocalyptic world in which “murder was everywhere upon the land” and the earth would soon be “largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes” (181).

Why the children? How is this vision of cannibalism so much more grisly and repugnant? What is the statement about the future?

Children are innocent. They are the universal sign of purity and helplessness. Usually when people kill other people, they have some sort of justification, whether it be in defense or to avenge someone. We see no such justification in killing children. 

By depicting humans eating their children, McCarthy is telling us that there is no future or hope in that world. Children are supposed to be the future of mankind. Parents give their kids their all in hopes that their kids will grow to be better than they are and so on. But when you eat your own children (as the tribe did), McCarthy shows that they are also eating their future. They have given up. This is the downfall of humanity. 

Cormac McCarthy… on his son

Lastly…

McCarthy was 66 years old when he had his son. As any writer would, McCarthy uses parts of his life and experience in his book. Essentially, the child is his son. Through the book, the child continues to have compassion and empathy. All in all, McCarthy is trying to show that as much as the father in the book was trying to teach his son on ways to survive and such, the boy also taught him what it means to be to stay human. 

Reflection

The Road is a book about a journey in a post apocalyptic world. In this lesson, we learned a lot about love and what it means to be human. We learned core themes of this class. We answered the question, “Who are the monsters?” The monsters are always going to be the humans, even when it’s not explicitly stated. We will always be the true horror. Knowing that, we must be mindful of the choices we make and remember to be kind and compassionate because while humans are bad, there are good parts of us that keep us human. I also learned that while love is one of the best things someone can have, it can destroy you in just a blink of an eye. If there’s one thing to take away from this lesson, it is to appreciate what you have because who knows? Maybe soon we will be thrown into an apocalyptic world much like the boy and his father’s with the only thing left being the love and memories we have of each other.