The Road Blog 7

“He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He
rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he
walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he
crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes.
He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at
the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you
eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God” (6).

The man who’s in charge of taking care of his son (both their names are unknown at this point). The father begins questioning God because their basically the only or few of the only sole-survivors of a post-apocalypse. No matter where they go they’re the only ones left in the world; basically this man is trying to survive with his child. Due to the apocalypse there’s barely anything left which forces them to travel constantly looking for supplies: food, utensils, shelter, etc. It’s clear that this child isn’t old enough to understand what’s going on because he still relies on his father to read him bedtime stories – usually as children grow older they don’t ask their parents for bedtime stories. Being a father he takes the role of trying to keep his son intact – he even goes as far as telling his son that if his son dies, he wishes for that to happen to him as well. No matter what they’re going to stick together as that’s the only possible way that they can survive. However, it doesn’t seem like they’re the only survivors because if they survived – it’s possible that other humans or other life forms survived too. Basically the two are trying to survive at all costs – the father is there to confront his son while the son is aiding his father’s sanity.

The man is trying to reach out to God and blaming him to be soulless because God let the chaos occur, resulting in a deadly situation where the whole world is practically gone. In reality because God never shows himself to the world, people can only have faith in him, but this man who’s obviously powerless against the situation is clearly unequal to God. God has the power to change the world whereas the man can only live on Earth and try to survive along with his son, but for how long? Each time he calls out to God, he will never see God in actuality because it’s only his belief that God exists. Just because he believes in God doesn’t mean that he will show up to this man – the man isn’t considered a Messiah, a messenger, or anything else – he’s only a survivor. This is basically a game of survival; in which if God does exist he won’t help the man since its survival of the fittest, so mankind may have destroyed them. God who transcends mankind isn’t going to willingly help one person live; thus again it shows the inequality between human and God (power). This shows that those who believe in any form of Gods or some deity are powerless against them – they offer so much and yet gain nothing back in return (it’s all an illusion inside their heads). When something goes wrong they resort to God for help, but they don’t receive anything, then they start to blame their God. Even if they blame God, they will still never see their deity because humans aren’t comparable to those who have power, that’s why we tend to look up to those that do; thus being exploited.