Category: Reflections

On pg. 161, the boy embraces a stranger “distant on the road,” “a traveler not one for looking back.” By the time this old man sets out on his own again, the boy is similarly described as not “looking back at all.” This parallel detail bookends Ely’s time with the The Road duo and (excluding the… Continue reading Ely

I find it very interesting that even though the man and the boy in The Road have experienced a very significant amount of trauma, they do not display the typical symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that are highlighted in this article.  I would attribute this to the fact that it would be hard to… Continue reading The Road and PTSD

When it comes to the traumas of life, we all encounter these unfortunate situations in our everyday and in order to get through the seemingly mindless dilemmas we must learn to cope with these events. But what happens when, due to such drastic circumstances, a person remains unable or unwilling to emotionally cope with the… Continue reading The Trauma of the Road with No End

“Many survivors seem to be able to transcend their trauma temporarily and harness their pain in acts of sublimated creation; for example, the writers and Holocaust survivors Jersy Kosinski and Primo Levi seem to have done this, only to succumb to the despair of their memories in the end.”  Black Hole of Trauma This excerpt… Continue reading Road Trauma

Undoubtedly, The Road presents a myriad of possible catalysts for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the population of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic North America. “The Black Hole of Trauma” presents statistics describing possible grounds for the development of PTSD: One out of five of “23% had been…witnesses of violence against others,” (5) and developed PTSD, while “76%… Continue reading Surviving /The Road/ as Vehicle to Prolonged PTSD

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” (12) The Van Der Kolk / McFarlane reading provides an interesting lens to view McCarthy’s Road through;  obviously, sources of potential trauma are ubiquitous in this narrative.  It seems to me that there are two possible avenues in applying the… Continue reading The Road: Trauma of the Psyche, Trauma in the Landscape

It seems as though “trauma” is an inadequate word to describe what the characters from The Road have been through.  Trauma of this magnitude has never been experienced, especially over such a prolonged period of time, therefore in a psychological manner if would be difficult if not impossible to predict what kind of effect such an experience… Continue reading The Road and Trauma

“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”… Continue reading The man’s wife and PTSD

It seems as though “trauma” is an inadequate word to describe what the characters from The Road have been through.  Trauma of this magnitude has never been experienced, especially over such a prolonged period of time, therefore in a psychological manner if would be difficult if not impossible to predict what kind of effect such… Continue reading Last The Road Post

After reading “The Black Hole of Trauma”, I have a couple of thoughts when relating this to “The Road”. The main thing that keeps running through my mind is that I really don’t see very many PTSD symptoms in this book. Sure, the theme of avoidance is prominent in this book, and there certainly are… Continue reading “Black Hole of Trauma” and “The Road”

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… Continue reading last blog on The Road

While the man and the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road certainly experience traumatic events, I feel like they do not succumb to trauma itself. They experience intense emotions such as sadness, fear, and even terror but they do not let these emotions and traumatic events cloud their judgement. Instead of succumbing to post traumatic… Continue reading Trauma in The Road

(p. 48-49) Soundtrack: Prelude by Nanase Hikaru The camera pans along a wooded ridge edging a valley plain, through an uncertain darkness lit by smoke-obscured flames across the plain. It reaches a small space in the woods of the ridge where a bare camp—a blue tarp pitched precariously upon some branches and sticks stuck in… Continue reading Confessions