Hello gentle readers or thin air, I have finished another book. "Wow," you say (well, thin air would probably just breathe it) "it's only been 4 months since your last entry and you've finished another whole book--I'm so impressed." Yeah yeah yeah, I know--I get it. I have read other books since then (although not many), but I just haven't felt compelled to write about them. This one was different...
First I must out myself as a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. I know it's bleak. I know it's full of desperation. I know we still see humans screwing each other over, despite it being in their best interest to band together. Yes, there is darkness, but in that darkness, there are sparks of light and it is that light, that small smidgen of hope when hope is seemingly absent that piques (is that the correct word?) my interest. Second, I must say that I made sure that I posted a photo of the book that had the "winner of the Pulitzer Prize" label rather than "Oprah's book club" label. My loathing of "Oprah's Book Club" labels sullying the covers of books everywhere may have had something to do with that, but I also thought it was good idea to illustrate that this book won quite a prestigious award.
In this book, we see father and son traveling the bleak, barren road together. The apocalypse is never fully explained, but it has destroyed most of humanity and all of nature. The father and son are in it together--they only have each other. They are very aware of the thin thread that holds them together--that something could come along and sever it at any moment. The father has very little hope to offer to his son and his honesty is sometimes brutal, but his love for him and his desire to protect him is very real. In addition to searching for food, they are, in a sense, moving just for the sake of moving. The father knows that there is more than likely nothing better out there, but one must strive forward. Who knows, maybe there is something good out there. More than likely not, but life is about movement. We can sleep when we're dead, right?
Unfortunately, it seems that the handful of other survivors they encounter on the road are not very nice people. In fact, they just might eat you (probably even your brains), so father and son must steer clear of them. It makes it difficult to trust anyone. At one point in the book when the boy wants to help an old, starving man, the father does not want anything to do with him. He eventually relents and gives him some of their food, but treats the man with suspicion, bordering on contempt. He has his son to protect and they must survive at all costs, even if it means not acting in particularly charitable manner to someone that may or may not want to eat them.
Although the man knows that his boys' willingness to see good in other people and give them the benefit of the doubt, could be their undoing, he admires the innocence and purity of his thinking and does want to protect that to a certain degree. I wish I had the book here with me, so I could find a quote or two to illustrate my points. He also tells the boy stories and tries to explain things that don't exist anymore. For instance, there is talk of birds, at one point. The boy has never seen a bird, so in his mind, they are only as real as his father explains them. I feel a sense of urgency in this--that if the father does not pass along some of these memories, these entities will cease to exist. But does it matter anymore? Sure it does...I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment