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 stress, the man and the boy remain strong and continue on their journey to the coast. For example, during their travels, they come across a house where humans are harvested for food by cannibals. In the basement of the house, they discover gruesomely injured people, specifically a bleeding man without legs. They are nearly captured by the cannibals during this scene in the novel. However, once they reach safety they continue with their journey. In the article The Black Hole of Trauma, the author writes that people who overcome trauma do so by becoming preoccupied with the horrific event.<\/p>\n
“Having involuntary intrusive memories is a normal way of responding to dreadful experiences. This repeated replaying of upsetting memories serves the function of modifying the emotions associated with the trauma, and in most cases creates a tolerance for the content of the memories” (5).<\/p>\n
On the other hand, people who succumb to post traumatic stress are those who fail or are unable to integrate the traumatic experience. I feel that the man and they boy in the McCarthy’s novel do not fit into either category because while they retain their humaity in spite of their horrible experiences, they become desensitized to these events. They learn to live with these memories and experiences. They do not become preoccupied with the traumatic events and they do not appear to have “involuntary intrusive memories” of the traumatic events. They are not portrayed as traumatized victims but rather they are portrayed as strong individuals. This is especially seen in the boy at the end of the novel. Throughout the book, the boy was terrified of strangers because of their past experiences with the cannibals. However, once his father dies and he comes upon strangers, he shows no fear. McCarthy writes that “Someone was coming. He started to turn and go back into the woods but he didnt. He just stood in the road and waited, the pistol in his hand” (281). In conclusion, it seems that the characters in The Road are not traumatized by their past memories and experiences because they remain strong and continue on their journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}