Question
The road
Question 1
By this part of the book we realize a theme is that “death is without reason or pity.” Describe how that’s a theme in the book using specific examples and also explain your own thoughts on that sentiment
It is easy to tell that the largest part of the essay talks about death without a reason or pity. This theme of the book is widely spread throughout out the story considering that there is no life in the city and the man and the boy are struggling to keep it together and live another day. From the extract above the theme of death is shown by the boat on the beach that has no sign of life after all the people on bound died from a rough and bad sea. Moreover, as the man is walking along the shore, he sees a corpse and wishes that he could cover it up for the boy not to see, but by now the boy had seen too much of the bad things (Kerouac, Dillon, & Audible, Inc, 2016,). From the events that have occurred in the story, I would say that the author was right to say that much of the death in the story had no choice, reason or pity since most of the people perished for nothing and nothing could have been done to save their lives.
Question 2
Why doesn’t the man ultimately trust the four strangers they see, the three men and the pregnant woman? Was there something to determine they were bad guys vs. good guys? Is it because they can trust nobody? Or does the man refuse to bring in anybody into the life of the boy that could leave him again? What exactly do you think is going on?
The primary reason the man did not trust the four strangers was the fact that he could not trust anyone and he believed that all other people were bad guys except the boy and him despite the lack of a measure to differentiate good people from bad guys. Given all that has happened between the two of them, it was hard for the man to trust anybody else apart from his boy and himself (Kerouac, Dillon, & Audible, Inc, 2016,). Lack of trust was also the main reason he was carrying his gun around and ready to shoot anyone who would attempt to come between him and his boy.
References
Kerouac, J., Dillon, M., & Audible, Inc. (2016). On the road
