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On Tuesday, Professor Sample mentioned we’d discuss names on Thursday. I was absent on Thursday, but it did get me thinking about the lack of names.  I personally like it. By choosing to identify the characters as ‘man’ and ‘boy’, McCarthy inspires many thoughts:

1) loss of language (continuation, as we discussed this in class before). Formal and developed language have proper names. Saying ‘man’ and ‘boy’ make the reader focus more on their roles, not their identities. For example, the ‘man’ is supposed to be the resourceful one, the protector, because the ‘boy’ is small and dependent. The boy calls the man ‘Papa’ to emphasize his critical dependency on this man.

2) Why bother? I mean, they are the only two people so if they are talking, it’s obviously to the other. This connects back to loss of language. There is no reason to have titles when there is only 1 other person on Earth for you. It goes back to instincts: this is my boy, this is my papa and that’s it.

3) I think if the boy was named Steve or something, we would formulate a different image of him. I remember a passage in the book, that the boy had big eyes in a starved face, making him look like an alien. This made me think of him as a very ghostly child, one that fits his mundane and empty world. If he was named Steve, I’d imagine him to be a modern boy stuck in a dusty barren landscape, and he would be very out of place. The boy was born after the disaster, and never lived in a world where there were enough boys around that they all needed specific names. Since he was born after the disaster, never saw other boys, why does he need a name?

*Hm. Speaking of never seeing other boys, the main boy was really upset when he saw that boy. His papa said ‘you didn’t see a boy’, and he cries ‘I did, we could go back, what will happen to the boy?’ This made me wonder if there really was another boy. It’s entirely possible, and maybe he was just hiding? But I kind of had the idea that the boy imagined this other boy, because he is lonely and him and his father don’t have much in common. His father comes from a world that he knows nothing about; he doesn’t understand his father’s references etc. I also think the boy imagined this boy and was concerned about him “but what about the boy?”, but the boy was really worried about his own self. Gradually through the book, the boy knows that his father is dying and the world is dangerous. Maybe by seeing this other random boy, the boy is projecting himself, “what about me? what will happen if its just me?”

1 comment

  1. I agree, specific names would counter the entire spirit of the novel. The sparseness of language, the paring down of details — this would be upset by mentioning names.

    I also wonder if there are some connections to the Book of Genesis, i.e. Genesis 2:19, “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” And so the lack of names is Genesis in reverse, all of Creation come undone.

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