Close Reading: The Road

While reading The Road, the feeling of being helpless and alone is a recurring theme throughout the story's text.  The scene in the text that I came across putting this theme on display was the scene depicting the man who had been struck by lightning and was slowly crawling across the ground in front of the boy and the man (49).  This scene produces a strong contrast in the character of the man and the boy.  Both of them have been together, but alone, in this world and seen the same things, but the way that they respectively react to the struggling man shows how the two differ.  The man does not care to help the man who is generally incapable of sustaining life for too much longer.  The boy, however, feels that they should help the man.  The world that they now live in has, in a way, stripped the man of any humane feelings towards anyone other than his son, which is understandable.  The naive and genuineness of the boy is shown to shine through the despair of which they travel through day in and day out by him wanting to help this man, whom they do not know nor know what he is capable of.  The man knows that no one can be trusted in this desolate world but the genuine child shows evidence that the humane world that once was, still lives.