The Road Blog 11

“They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken
everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He
was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face
against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What
is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What
the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on
the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding
him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry” (103).

The man and the son continue on with their journey when they notice a smoke coming from the woods. Though, the son once again believes that they should not follow because he believes it’s a trap, but yet his father insists that they continue onwards because they’re running out of food and water. The people run as they reach the campsite since the father was holding a pistol, when they reached the campsite they noticed what the people were cooking – a headless infant baby who was all charred up from being cooked. The boy then claims that he’s sorry for not showing any signs of fear or remorse when they previously saw dead bodies – clearly seeing a dead infant being cooked had struck fear within him.

Everyone in this novel is attempting to survive in anyways that they can. They will even resort to eating an infant who can’t even fight back since that’s the easiest decision they could ever make. Babies are the most susceptible to inequality because they’re not fully grown they can’t even defend themselves nor comprehend what’s going on. A few years ago a mother had placed her baby boy into a microwave and killed him for her own entertainment. How is a baby supposed to fight back? – They can’t because they don’t even have the power or the ability to do so. Why? Because they’re just growing – they depend on their parents for nurture, but clearly a baby who’s only a few months or a few years old won’t be able to do any harm. In present day people even murder their babies because they claim they can’t take care of them properly, however, there’s something wrong with that statement. First of all, they can just put their children up for adoption or have another relative take care of their child for the time-being. Compared to kids, teenagers, young adults, and elderly; babies are the most fragile. Being a society where some individuals accept abortion (not going to get into the debate of it) where the infant never sees light. Although, others will claim that since the fetus was never fully developed and not technically alive (some state that once a baby is conceived it’s alive); thus abortion is fully understandable and legal. A baby doesn’t have a say in whether or not they want to live or not – they can’t even talk, so they’re deemed as unequal to everyone else.