"They walked through the dinningroom where the firebrick in the hearth was as yellow as the day it was laid because his mother could not bear to see it blackened. The floor buckled from the rainwater. In the livingroom the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile. Possible a cat. A glass tumbler by the door. The boy gripped his hand. They went up the stairs and turned and went down the hallway. Small cones of damp plaster standing in the floor. The wooden lathes of the ceiling exposed. He stood in the doorway to his room. A small space under the eaves. This is where I used to sleep. My cot was against this wall. In the nights in their thousands to dream the dreams of a child's imaginings, worlds rich or fearful such as might offer themselves but never the one to be. He pushed open the closet door half expecting to find his childhood things. Raw cold daylight fell through from the roof. Gray as his heart.
We should go, Papa. Can we go?
Yes. We can go.
I'm scared.
I know. I'm sorry.
I'm really scared.
It's all right. We shouldn't have come." (pages 13-14)
Fire has burned through the world and left a trail of death and destruction. Humanity is struggling to survive with what remains from the burned ashes and remains. A father and his son trudge through this post-apocalyptic world as they travel south to avoid the fridgid winter that is slowly creeping up behind them. This passage is from the point in the story where the father and the boy find themselves at their old house from before the great fires. The house has been damaged beyond repair as they walk through the house. McCarthy used imagery such as "the bones of the small animal" and the "firebrick" to give the reader the feeling that everything is lost. The farther traces through his memories of the house and its former self as it is compared to what it is now. The purpose of this is to show how far deep this catastrophic event has gone. I got the feeling of sadness while the father walked through the house, remeniscing about his childhood although now his hopes of survival and keep his son alive are bare.
Our depictions of the future reveal the way humans mistreat the environment and nature and how we take things for granted. When the fires tore through the world, everything changed and people were forced to either starve or find their own source of food which even leads to cannibalism. In today's time we tear down trees and plant-life, pollute our own air, and contaminate our own water in order to take some of the daily complications out of our lives. Humans should take care of the environment they are in if we are to live on; else we find ourselves in a burnt world with no way out but death.
No comments:
Post a Comment