These next pages constitute a very hard time for the man and his son, because they have been trying to survive for many days in a very harsh and cold environment, with no food and little sleep. The boy can hardly walk much farther, and he keeps asking when they are going to die. The man is starting to lose his hope of surviving much longer, but does his best to hide the truth from his son. It is in that situation that they get to a house in the outskirts of a town, which they rack for anything they could possibly eat or use in their journey. They found some things, but nothing very useful. Meanwhile, the boy was terrified grabbing on to his father, pleading him to go out of the house. The man tries to convince his that there is no one inside, but he never expected what he would find.
The man was searching the whole house, when "he crouched and stepped down again and held out the light. Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands." (110) It is a very unexpected and freaky scene, where the reader doesn't know what to make of the fact that there are naked bodies in the house. It got worse when "they whispered, Please help us." (110) They start following the man, and other men and a woman run behind him. It accounts for a very scary scene over all, but nothing terrible happens. The man and the boy hide in a safe place.
I think that seeing these naked bodies was exceptionally scary for the man because seeing their thin and decaying bodies, he might have realized that he probably looked like that too. He didn't want to accept it, but he also needed help, and he was also dying of hunger and cold. He didn't want his son to see that, because he was trying really hard to convince him that they weren't dying, that they were going to be all right. Now that he had seen the bodies, it was hard for him to believe it. This scene also shows the reader that there are other survivors of the apocalypse, but no one will make it very far. Still, I think the man has kept his pride, because he asks his son to kill himself if he was ever about to be killed.
The Road makes the reader think about the end of the world as we know it, and of the impermanence of life. We are awakened to the lucky life we have right now, but we are also told of the possibility of it ending unpredictably at any time. A reminder of this occurs when the man was walking near an old town, and sees billboards that had been painted white, and "through the paint could be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements for goods which no longer existed." (128) Advertisement is a very important aspect of our daily lives, as we are bombarded and affected by it every single day. The lack of advertisement describes the end of that normality, of our known materialistic world. Returning to a basic animal life, ads are no longer needed.
There are many books that try to warn people against the dangers of surrendering to society, but I have seen that The Road has been very effective in this. While a futuristic utopia might not get to us enough to change us, the idea of a very possible end of the world is always with us, and the fear of losing what we have maintains itself in the back of our heads for as long as we live. I find this book to be a very realistic yet eye-opening book about the end of life as we know it.
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