In the article there's a line; "Hemingway often voices this pessimism, but it is nowhere to be found when his protagonists are in the natural world" there's an interesting connection between masculinity and the connection with optimism and hope in nature. I'm reminded of The Swimmer where nothing brought Neddy more joy than thinking he was exploring un-mapped terrain and swimming this great river. His illusion came crashing down and it was reveled that it was all artificial and factory made. The sadness of the destruction of his hometown isn't a hopeless sentence to Nick when he sees the fish swimming freely nearby. In The Road, it is never revealed whether or not the catastrophe that turned the world into what it has become was natural or man-made. I feel like an natural disaster explanation lends itself more towards this narrative. Now it is not Man's fault that we are forced back to nature and savagery, it is a betrayal on the part of nature. And once people are forced back into the wild, it becomes harsher still. This takes the humanity away from the population, the ties that bind them are meaningless when the world around them has rejected their way of life and forced them into the wilderness.
What are your thoughts on what happened to the world?
What are your thoughts on what happened to the world?
Wow that's a really interesting perspective, personally I thought it'd be man made but I can see why you'd think that becuase it does lend itself to being a natural disaster, because nature does often bring a sense of calm and clarity to man. But seeing as the father seems to get no peace from his surrounding your view seems highly plausible. I thought maybe what happened was more of a man made senerio and that might be why the father is so distrusting of everyone and there's a constant search for other "good men" because maybe bad men distroyed the world. And this caused him to not have faith in anyone around them. But McCarthy gives so few details it's difficult to really know what happened. It makes you wonder if like in "Recitatif" by Toni Morrison there really was an idea of what happened or if McCarthy doesn't want people to know because he doesn't want it to matter.
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