“She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. She would do it with a flake of obsidian” (p. 58), said the narrator of the Road. The wife of the man who was supposed to take care of the boy decided instead to give up by committing suicide. When I say “supposed” is to emphasize the idea that the man’s wife failed in protecting her son. Thus, I find it very ironic that the man’s love for his son was stronger. I am not suggesting, however, that men love their children less than women do. I am just wondering what would be the effect of this story if it was the woman and the boy who took this journey of going South to escape the cruel northern cold and strived for survival.
As we already know she is the protagonist who is already dead. And she is described only through flashbacks. The selfishness of her actions suggests a mental illness because by committing suicide without taking in consideration her son’s needs is just abnormal. The horrible conditions that the man, the boy and the man’s wife went trough in “The Road”, are beyond trauma or mental illness. I am wondering if it is possible to survive such conditions in real life. However, applying some psychological elements such as trauma to this book, it could be possible that the man’s wife or the boy’s mother developed some type of mental illness due to the horrible conditions of her life.
According to The Black Hole of Trauma article, “the development of post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, as a diagnosis has created an organized framework for understanding how people’s biology, conceptions of the world, and personalities are inextricably intertwined and shaped by experience”(p.4). The key words from this passage are biology, conceptions of the world and shaped by experience. From this perspective, it is safe to assume that she was emotionally weaker than the man or the boy. The three of them were subjected to the same life circumstances and conditions and she is the only one who developed a mental illness and succumbed to it. This fictionalized character has frightening parallels to reality. The article does not focus in suicide but rather the different symptoms, solutions types of therapies, and so on. However, most suicides are because of mental illness and PTSD is clearly a mental illness.
I would agree that the wife probably was suffering from PTSD. In “The Black Hole of Trauma” it says that “Most people who have been exposed to traumatic stressors are somehow able to go on with their lives without becoming haunted by the memories of what has happened to them” (5). This makes sense considering that the man and the boy were both able to go on living. They were obviously affected by the disaster, but they did not give up like the wife did. They have “the human capacity to survive and adapt” (4) which she does not.
Clearly she is emotionally weaker than the man as you pointed out, however, I’m not sure how to feel about the boy. On the one hand, he was very small when the disaster happened, and so he remembers next to nothing of the old world. While he is very scared of what’s out there, it seems to be caused at least partially by the way that his father acts. The man is clearly scared out of his wits but he keeps moving and living, for his son. The thing that bothers me is that we never get a sense of how much the son remembers. If the man wasn’t so scared would the son be scared? When they find the old train the man “made train noises and diesel horn noises but he wasn’t sure what these might mean to the boy” (McCarthy 180). This reminds us how little we know about what the boy remembers. Knowing that he may not remember much, I am not sure if it’s emotional strength or the instinct to follow and listen to his father that keeps him going. Actually, it’s probably both. But is he stronger than his mother? I think he probably is, but there are some questions I would need answered before I was certain of this.
I’m really reluctant to label the man or the woman “stronger” or “weaker,” respectively, and not just because these labels are stereotypes of men and women. Talking about the characters in terms of emotional or physical strength seems to be doing them a disservice. As “The Black Hole of Trauma” makes clear, one’s response to trauma has very little to do with innate “strength.” There are a host of other factors that influence how one assimilates or accommodates the trauma (or not).
And to be really perverse about it, one might argue that suicide was the more difficult decision, and it required more force of will than simply moving restlessly, aimlessly on, like the man.