The End - Monday's Lesson

The End
Arriving at the End of The Road
Where do you think the end of The Road begins? Is it when the man and the boy arrive at the sea? Or is it after the man dies? With the welcoming of the boy by the woman? Or only with the final paragraph?

1. Share your thoughts about where you feel the end begins. (You might want to look back at the work you did on the structure and development of the novel, particularly the structure line on page 13.)

Here are some of the ways in which a writer can bring a narrative to a close, and the functions he or she might want it to fulfil:

1. tie up all the loose ends
2. solve a mystery
3. look forward into the future lives of the characters
4. underline the moral or message of the narrative
5. return to the chronological beginning of the story
6. prepare for a sequel
7. shock or disorientate the reader
8. allow characters (or the narrative/authorial voice) to reflect on all that has gone before
9. stop abruptly, in the middle of the action
10. round off the action satisfactorily for all the characters
11. raise further questions in the minds of the reader
12. undermine what has gone before
13. produce a ‘twist in the tale’
14. provide an explanation.

2. Which of these types of ending do you think best describes the end of The Road? Responding to the End
The end of The Road has divided both readers and critics, provoking some very strong responses. For some readers, it is an optimistic ending, while for others it is an ending filled with despair. For some readers it is an ending exactly appropriate for the novel, bringing the story to a powerful climax; for some it is a ‘cop out’, a ‘Hollywood’ ending.

1. On your own, and in no more than 25 words, write your response to the end of the novel. 

Symbolism in the Novel

A symbol is an image that comes to represent something else, a big idea or emotion or theme. For instance, the heart is often used as a symbol for love, or the dove as a symbol for peace, or green as the symbolic colour for envy.
In The Road,there are a few important symbols, that recur throughout the text. They have a literal meaning in the text but they also come to represent something much bigger. The symbols are not always as straightforward as the heart example above. They may have all kinds of meanings and connotations and be open to interpretation.
The Road as a Symbol
Probably the most important symbol in the novel is the road. It functions literally and symbolically, as well as structuring the narrative.
Use the approach below to explore the importance of the road in the book.
1. Read these ideas about how the road figures in literature more generally, to put McCarthy’s use of it into a cultural and literary context. Then think about how McCarthy’s use of the road connects with this tradition.

1. The road or journey has often been used as a metaphor for life itself – the journey from birth to death.
   
2. In American culture, the road is an important symbol. America is a large country and crossing the continent has been seen symbolically as representing a pioneering spirit – striking out into the unknown – or searching for oneself. Many classic American novels (and films) make a journey by road the focus for the narrative, for instance John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road or the film Thelma and Louise.
   
3. The epic journey has a much longer literary and cultural history. Going back to Greek literature, in Homer’s The Odyssey, Ulysses goes on a long journey and encounters many tests and trials, both physical and mental, before returning to his homeland. The epic work The Divine Comedy by the Italian medieval poet Dante shows the poet on a journey in the afterlife, to Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, shows the pilgrim Christian leaving his home in this world and travelling to the ‘Celestial City’. Gulliver’s Travels is a fantastical journey to other worlds, in which the main character discovers more about his own world by contrast with the societies he encounters.
   
4. The journey as a structure for a novel implies a particular kind of pattern, where there are episodes along the way. The journey involves meeting new challenges and dangers, the chance of luck to bring fortune or difficulties, and is often structured around a struggle for survival, away from the routine and security of a home environment. 
   

Other Symbols and Metaphors in the Novel Wednesday's starter

1. Look at this list and for each one, first explore its literal importance in the text and then its possible symbolic meanings. Do the meanings vary or change in the course of the book?
Water, cleaning and washing
The mountain
The sea
The colour grey (gray American spelling) Ash
Fire
Sight/sightlessness
Seeds
Music/musical instruments Animal imagery
Religious imagery
The Coca Cola can
2. Add any other metaphors or symbols that you have noticed during your reading. 

Voice and Point of View

The Road is written in the third person, in the voice of an omniscient narrator, with the characters referred to as ‘he’ or ‘the boy’. However, within this, McCarthy manipulates and plays with the narrative voice and the point of view from which the story is seen. Here are some of the things you might find interesting to explore in relation to the narrative voice of The Road:

• –  3rd person voice, omniscient point of view
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the man
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the boy
• –  unattributed dialogue (i.e. without ‘he said’)
• –  decontextualised dialogue (without commentary from the narrator)
• –  unattributed thoughts (i.e. without ‘he thought’)
• –  not signalling where the narrative ends and dialogue or the thoughts of a character in the first person begin
• –  dream sequences related without a clear sense of whether it is in the third or first person
• –  3rd person free indirect style where the reader not only feels he/she is seeing events from a character’s perspective but that it is in the character’s own words, not those of the narrative voice.
  To explore the narrative voice of The Road you will need photocopies of the extracts suggested on page 28.

After Reading – Voice and Point of View
Extract 1: page 32
On this road there are no godspoke men. ... By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.
Extract 2: page 87
They never heard the dog again. ... The dog that he remembers followed us for two days.
Extract 3: page 122
He’d no idea what direction they might have taken and his fear was that they might circle and return to the house. ... He held the child and after a while the child stopped shaking and after a while he slept.
Extract 4: page 298
If I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you. You’ll see. ... He went down the road as far as he dared and then he came back.
Extract 5: page 306
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. ... In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

1. In pairs, look closely at these extracts and talk about what you notice about the voice and point of view, exploring which of the possible techniques listed on page 27 are being used, and to what effect.
2. Next look at each extract in the context it appears in the novel. Is the voice characteristic of this section of the novel, or is it noticeably different? What is the effect of the choices McCarthy has made at that particular moment in the novel?
3. Skim read through the novel, selecting three short extracts of your own where the voice or point of view strikes you as being particularly interesting, illuminating or challenging.
4. Share your extracts as a class. 

Structure and the Handling of Time

The overall movement of time in The Road is chronological, as McCarthy describes both the passing of the seasons and the passing of individual days. Within this structure he plays with the relationship between chronological and narrative time. He expands or contracts time, integrating flashbacks, memories and dreams. The narrative is both unspecific about when it is taking place and very detailed in its references to ‘night’, ‘morning’, ‘evening’ and so on.

1. Skim through the novel, looking for examples of any of the following types of reference to time:
   
   • –  references to the passage of the days (look for ‘in the morning’, ‘in the evening’)
   • –  markers in the year (for example October, Winter)
   • –  passages in which narrative time is telescoped (for example ‘three days later’)
   • –  points at which narrative time expands (several pages devoted to a few minutes)
   • –  references to ‘before’ (and flashbacks)
   • –  points at which time seems to be suspended
   • –  more abstract references to time.
2. In groups of four, share your examples.
3. Together draft a short statement on McCarthy’s handling of time to feed back to the class, focusing on anything that seems:
   
   • –  particularly interesting
   • –  unusual or surprising
   • –  central to the themes or overall impact and so on.
   1. Structural repetition
   2. Make a note of two or three key phrases that you find particularly illuminating or interesting in what he says.
   3. Practise integrating these into a short piece of critical writing to explore the ways in which his insights have made you think differently about the handling of time or have extended or challenged your views.