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I do not know if I am supposed to respond here or not, but just in case, I am going to submit my comment anyway.

“We were a pairing out of an Aesop’s fable…They were the ones who brought the truth and beauty to the party,” (Patchett 20).

This passage in Ann Patchett’s novel illustrates the difference between the two different groups in society, the apparently beautiful and those not. The first would be represented by the grasshopper and hare, while the latter would be represented by the ant and tortoise. The grasshopper/hare type of individual is the one who is idolized, and yet the ant/tortoise may have truth and beauty that goes largely unnoticed by people. Ann shows us how she and Lucy are the tortoise and ant in society making a journey in a world where the grasshopper/hare people soak up all the attention. Patchett is not entirely one-sided in her view though, as she pays due to the idea that both types of individual need each other very much to survive.

“On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?” (McCarthy, 32)

Well, to start I am not sure what McCarthy means by “godspoke men.” It is my impression that there is not any other life. I have convinced myself that the road is a symbol for some sort of journey, which obviously this man and his son are embarking on. This still doesn’t help with the “godspoke” portion.” Unfortunately I saw the previews for the movie version of The Road, but all I remember were these creepy zombie-like beings (the man refers to them as “bloodcults”.) The man then says they “must have all consumed each other.” (McCarthy, 16) Whether this is figurative or literal, it matters not. These people, if that is what they even are, are clearly immoral and dishonorable beings. Perhaps godspoke just refers to good willed and caring human beings, which no longer inhabit the earth due to the bloodcults.
Next point: McCarthy needs to use quotation marks. In addition, who says query aloud before they ask themselves a question? Another thing bothering me is McCarthy’s general style of writing. It is as if he is writing a poem or some other type of creative piece. “Dark of the invisible moon.” (McCarthy 32) There is no verb in that sentence! Many of his passages are very choppy and fragmented as well as a driving force of my insanity.
Getting back to the passage: When McCarthy writes, “they have taken with them the world.” I am curious to know what he means by the world. The father’s world is said to be his son (page 6.) However, prior to the passage, the man is speaking about a dream in which a woman, presumably his wife, died because of him. Maybe his wife is the “world” he is speaking about. She is now gone and so are those who are virtuous and loving (assuming my interpretation of “godspoke” is correct and that the dream was at one point reality.)
As far as this “query” goes, I am not sure what made this question come about. Was it triggered by the man’s dream? I do not really see a connection between the two. My answer to the question is that “the never to be” is much more disappointing than “what never was.” What never was” is of no concern to those living in the present. It is in the past and we are completely helpless to change it. “The never to be,” however, is in our future. There is still nothing we can do about it, but of course being humans, we have to try. It is our nature to fix things and prevent nature from running its course. We can and do devote our whole lives trying to stop some unpreventable event or dodging the inevitable. No matter how hard we try, “the never to be” will always be so despite our maddest attempts to reverse it.
Some queries of my own:
Why is there so much ash everywhere?
Why does no one have a name?
This one bothers me a lot. I suppose it is more of McCarthy’s superb writing techniques, but I like to be acquainted with whom I am reading about.
I am sorry that this was so long. I don’t really know what I am doing.

One of the first things I noticed while I was reading The Road was that Cormac McCarthy did not give the two main characters names. Throughout the whole book they are called the man and the boy. I think this is significant because it gives the reader a chance to develop the character on their own. This way you can imagine the character as someone you know, which provides a stronger connection with the book.

“You can’t. You have to carry the fire.”
“Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it,” (McCarthy 269-270)

The fire is representing the essential of life and the man wants the boy to go on without him carrying the fire. Throughout the book the man and the boy refer to themselves as the good people. They consider themselves good because they do not murder other people. Therefore the boy is carrying the fire to all the good people left in the world. This is saying that as long as the boy continues to carry the fire then there should still be some good people left in the world. Without the fire no one will survive.

“Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world,” (3, McCarthy).

This passage stood out to me because of the interesting comparison of the darkness to a disease of the eye. Glaucoma is a cureless disease of the eye that causes vision loss without much warning (“What is Glaucoma?”), which is similar to the way that the dark clouds of ash that block out the sun. The author introduces the reader to the setting of the story in this passage, a constantly dark and hopeless place where every day is a struggle to survive. He also introduces the reader to two different reoccurring themes of sight/eyes and light/darkness within the novel; these themes show up in many different locations within the story. The light/darkness theme shows most often when the man and boy deal with the unknown dangers of the desolate world that they live in. The sight/eyes shows when the man and boy talk of the other people on the road or hide from them or when the man and boy encounter situations when they feel that God has forgotten about them such as when they shot off the signal flair and the boy wondered if God saw it (246, McCarthy).

N/a, n/a. “What is Glaucoma?” Glaucoma
Research Foundation 04 Sep 2008 Web. 26
Jun 2009.
http://www.glaucoma.org/learn/what_is_
glaucom.php.

Okay. I finally have the website for this summer reading blog. Is this where we post our required comments? Can someone let me know this…….PLEASE IT’S BEEN BUGGING ME FOR THE PAST MONTH. Can someone who knows comment here seeing that there is only one other person who did.

Thanks

“He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? He said.
“Yes. We’re still the good guys.
“And we always will be.
“Yes. We always will be.
“Okay,” (77, McCarthy).

Throughout the novel, there are many conversations, like this one, between the man and the boy. These quotes brings up the a constant internal conflict within The Road considering the morality of what the man did to make sure that he and the boy stayed alive while on the road. The boy often inquired if taking the food of those who assumedly past away before them, and other similar actions, was stealing or the morally right thing to do. One can also see through this quote that the boy is still young at the end of the novel (and he seems to grow older towards the end). Also within the text, one can see that the author uses no quotations around dialoged (the quotes used here are mine) and the statements are short in length, due to the fact that the world around the man and boy probably offers for little conversation and shows the boy’s trust in his father.

“He dozed and woke. What is coming? Footsteps in the leaves. No. Just the wind. Nothing. He sat up and looked toward the house but he could see only darkness. He shook the boy awake. Come on, he said. We have to go, (115, McCarthy).”

This passage shows the urgency of life on the road through the short, fragmented sentences. At this point in the story the man and boy find themselves in great danger, because they had just discovered the home of the cannibals. This passage is also a good example of a stream-of-consciousness, as it goes through the thoughts of the man. The author does a good job of conveying the man’s stressful job of keeping watch and worrying about the boy’s safety. Through his almost constant worrying for his son within the novel, you see a glimpse of his great love and sense of responsibility for his son.

“They trundled over the bridge and pushed the cart out through the woods looking for some place to leave it where it would not be seen,” (194, McCarthy).

The word trundle means to roll along, which describes how the movement of the man, boy and cart over the bridge. I think trundle could be also used to describe the movement of the man and boy down the road in general. Through all of the emotional damaging sights that they have to see along the way, living with the fact that that is the reality of the world and the knowledge that they must keep moving forward in order to stay alive. This passage also shows the less than accommodating living conditions and safety offered by the road where the man and boy were always in danger of their supplies being taken. Through this quote one can see the author’s great vocabulary and talent for choosing the correct words to describe a situation; at the sound of the word trundle one can visualize the pair and cart moving forward.

“I wasnt going to kill him, he said. But the boy didnt answer… He could tell by his breathing that the boy was awake and after a while the boy said: But we did kill him,” (260, McCarthy).

This passage gives insight into the mind of the boy, how he able to see past his father’s lies, which in the man’s defense is in order to protect the boy. One can also see his extremely caring personality, in wanting to spare the life of the man who tried to take their supplies. Also seen in this passage that the author never uses apostrophes when any word is combined with not, such as in the contractions of was not—wasn’t and did not—didn’t. However, the author does use apostrophes in the contractions combining with would (he’d), will (you’ll), are (you’re) and is (it’s), and when a word is in possessive form (boy’s). Also in the passage was a comma, most if not all of the commas in the novel occur in or around dialogue (usually before or after the “he said,” part or to emphasis the spoken words by adding a break there).

Great work so far.

A couple of you, Hannah, Amanda, noticed that McCarthy isn’t bound by conventional grammar-he even makes up words. I see that Hannah would like him to use quotation marks, but ask yourself why he doesn’t. As all of you now language is fluid. That is it changes in response to audience, occasion, and purpose. You all know this-you do it all the time. How is your writing different in an email, or a text, or an essay? You know how to write “properly” , so does McCarthy, so why would he choose to write like this? Remember everything is on purpose. Writers, good ones, revise over and over again to achieve exactly what they want.

I was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last week. Bruce Springsteen, one of my heroes, is the featured artist. In an interview he describes how it took 50 pages to write the song “Born to Run.” 50 Pages to write a 5 minute song seemed like an exaggeration to me but there on the wall of the museum was the journal. I looked through it an I could see the evolution of the song. My point is that good writing is on purpose-good writers craft their words to produce the desired outcome. In this case the outcome is a great song. Keep this in mind as you do your reading.

On a different note, I will reread certain sections of books when I want to feel a particular way. That’s right I’m a passage junky. In The Road I like to reread the father’s last words to his son I always makes me so sad. And, yes, sometimes I want to feel sad.

Be well, do good work, stay out of trouble.
Peace,
RK

“Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.” (McCarthy, 31)

I had to re-read this sentence a few times to actually get the gist of it. When he said “Not all dying words are true”, I wonder if he was talking about dying words in general, or if he was being specific to perhaps his wife’s last words to him before she killed herself. I can see the truth in what he said, because generally speaking the last words a person says is to comfort loved ones before they go, to make their passing more accepted or embraced, rather than being the truth. Or they say things to comfort themselves, to make themselves feel better about going. The last thing the wife said to the man was how she’d taken on a new lover, and that was death. She said “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us.” (McCarthy, 56) I think the man wanted to believe that the wife only said that to justify herself for killing herself.

When he said “this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground” I think that he was referring to the boy. Before he said (or thought) “Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.” (31) The man was watching the boy simply put wood on the fire. The blessing is that the boy is alive, and strong enough to do things as simple as carry and pile wood on top of a fire.

The man wanted to believe that his wife was wrong to kill herself, and just because they’re stuggling every day to survive, they are surviving, and thats a miracle.

In response to McCarthy’s lack of quotations, and his different writing style, maybe he was just trying to make it easier to read. As I got more into the book, the fact that there weren’t any quotation marks or commas didn’t bother me. I could always tell who was talking, because each character talks so differently, it wasn’t any harder to read. Maybe he didn’t want to take all the time to figure out if that comma was in the right place, or all that. Figuring out if your grammer and punctuation are correct can take more time than the actual writing. I mean, I’ve read books that were way crazier than simply having little punctuation (for example House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, had pages with only a few words, or words that were connected, or even upside down, and it was to put you more in the moment with what the characters were feeling).

Just as Elizabeth mentioned, I noticed the fact that McCarthy did not give the characters name. It could be so that the reader can create their own character in mind, but in my opinion that is not the larger reason for leaving the man and the boy nameless. Leaving the main characters nameless lets you focus on other things that are important to the story, such as the struggle with the man internally, as well as the fight for survival against the elements and the “bad guys.” McCarthy allows so freedom when creating the image of the characters in your mind. By allowing you to visualize your own character, the reader will then become intertwined within the story. When it comes down to McCarthy’s writing style, while it may be unconventional, the way in which the book flows and is written all contributes to the journey the man and the boy must make by showing all factors in their lives. Anything from flash backs to a current situation in the novel, McCarthy is able to allow the reader to note the importance of each item noted within the journey. Another important item to note is the importance of the boy. Early on, it is clear that the child will play a major role in the man’s life.

“He only knew that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke,” (5, McCarthy)

This passage gives a tremendous insight to the reader. By the man thinking so highly of the boy, one could assume that the boy will continue to aid and, in a way, teach the man life lessons that would otherwise go unnoted.

“And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day,” (P.21, McCarthy).

Would death come to call you with colors? In the post-apocalyptic world where the road takes place, the man and boy live in an ash covered world, where the nights are dark and grim and the days are bleak and gray. It is understandable that the man would associate darkness with life, and in comparison associate death with colors.

Sometimes I found it frustrating that McCarthy put passages into the novel that had no relevance to what was occurring in the plot. However if I lived in the same world as the man and boy I would probably find myself in a similar position, thinking about death and the after-life and where that would put me in the grand scheme of things.

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origin. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not,” (131, McCarthy).

This passage reveals a great deal about the man. At this point in the novel, he is recalling his wife and their life in the past. He then continues to say that if you remember something too much, it may be altered and one would think that the altered version is actually the original memory. Due to the fact that people wish that events in life would occur exactly how they wanted, a memory may be altered in order to please one’s mind. After a while, the memory in question, whether it be good or bad, will be completely different from the original.

While some may become annoyed by the fact that McCarthy adds in the flashbacks, memories, etc, personally, I believe that it adds more depth to the story. By adding thoughts from the deeper emotions of the man, such as him wondering if he could really kill his son if he had to, the story becomes more relatable. Instead of having the novel focus on a man and a boy on their journey to survival, McCarty decided to add in another dynamic. Adding in the “random” passages play a part in allowing the reader to see what the man is really going through. McCarthy adding in the memories of his wife and his internal thoughts on their survival, one can really begin to realize what the man was going through.

“Can you do it? When the time comes? … Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly,” (P.114, McCarthy).

That was an extremely depressing passage. At the time I did not understand how the man could be in the mindset where he could kill his son. After thinking about it though, I understood. How could any parent be able to leave their child in a world where the child could easily be a meal, or a world where the child would be alone?

A couple weeks ago I was babysitting with my uncle and we were talking about traveling and whether or not he would leave the twins for the trip. He said that he would rather take them on the trip because there was something comforting about the off chance that something were to go wrong, that they’d all be together.

And on a side note, I agree with Hannah, it bothers me how McCarthy didn’t give his characters names. What also bothers me is why the man doesn’t know what happened to cause the world to be the way it is. Didn’t he experience it when he was living it? The man said more times than one that the world he was living in was not the world in which he grew up.

“When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you,” (P.189, McCarthy)

I’m not too sure that I agree with the passage because I don’t believe that wishing for things to be different or having dreams in general means that one has given up. Perhaps contentment and happiness in a world where there is no stability are not the best qualities to have, but I don’t believe that they should be discouraged. There’s a certain amount of happiness that’s needed to get through the day; for example, the boy makes the man happy. So how can he be so quick to criticize and discourage happiness when he experiences the emotion daily? The boy deserves at least that much…to experience some happiness in a rather desolate life.

“I want to be with you… you don’t have to talk. It’s okay,” ( P. 278,279, McCarthy).

Throughout the novel the man insisted that when the “time comes” he would take the boy with him. Very sporadically he contemplated various ways of killing his son, for the simple reason that they would be together. Although when time ran out for the man, he wouldn’t let the boy come with him.

In one of the final conversations between the boy and the man, the man tells the boy to carry the fire. The phrase “carry the fire” is said throughout the book. I think that the phrase is very philosophical especially coming from the man. For me “carry the fire” means never give up hope and always push forward, but at the same time it means don’t forget the past, and that (speaking from the mans perspective) I’m always here for you. The man seemed to be a pessimist, and the phrase is so versatile that it was rather surprising.

“It occurred to him that he took this windfall in a fashion dangerously close to matter of fact but still he said what he had said before. That good luck might be no such thing. There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead,” (229-230, McCarthy)

This passage is a strong testament to the thought process of the man. Many times the man thinks of death and how it would be easier than having to be constantly running in order to survive. The man also thinks that dying would be easier than starving to death and watching your child suffer as well. As I stated in an earlier blog, the young boy becomes a large role. Throughout the novel, the boy is motivation for the father to keep going in search of a better place. While the man at times may envy the dead, he sees that having hope, as little as it may be, is more beneficial to their survival as well as the boy’s attitude. While, at times, the man may be losing all hope, the fact that his son is looking up to him for guidance keeps him going. While the man may envy the dead, he realizes that he is still living with his son for a better purpose.

Throughout the novel, the man and the boy’s relationship changes. First the man is taking care of the boy, but later the roles are reversed when the man is injured. Whenever the man tells the boy that he has the “fire” and as long as he holds this fire, there will still be good guys in the world. The fire in question is, in my opinion, a concrete item for the idea of hope. By the boy always carrying hope, the man believes that something of a positive manner will eventually occur for the young, thus making the journey worth the struggle.

“The boy turned in the blankets. Then he opened his eyes. Hi, Papa, he said.
I’m right here.
I know, ” (McCarthy, 5)

I first noticed this passage because of the change in behavior on the father’s part. At this point in the story, there has not been much dialogue exchange, but more descriptions of actions. Since it is the beginning of the novel, McCarthy is setting the scene, describing the father as he studies the land, sets up camp, etc. So far, the father comes across as confident in his actions, especially when he is described setting up camp. McCarthy did this very well by adding in small details when noting his every action. For example:

“He spread the small tarp they used for a table on the ground and laid everything out and he took the pistol from his belt and laid it on the cloth and then he just sat watching the boy sleep,” (McCarthy, 5)

It appears that the father is very knowledgeable when it comes to their survival and daily living methods. McCarthy also makes numerous tasks sound as if they are one, fluent action by the man by using somewhat “run-on” sentences. In the above quote, the word “and” is used four times, but by doing so, instead of chopping it up into four sentences, it all sounds like one quick motion. By giving the man the identity of someone who is quick, knowledgeable, and skilled, the man comes across as someone who exerts confidence. The behavior changes during the dialogue in which the boy wakes up, for although the boy only says “Hi”, the man is quick to reassure him that he is still by his side. Now it seems that the boy is the one with confidence, and it becomes apparent that although the man may be confident in their actions, the boy is the emotional support, which in the end, will be more crucial to their survival.

“I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner by nobody had it wound up and it was really scary…the winder wasn’t turning”, (McCarthy, 36-37)

I think this dream is very symbolic and can be taken in many different directions. First off, McCarthy has an interesting choice of animal for the boys dream. Yes, the penguin can be seen as a common childhood toy or a child’s favorite animal at the zoo, but that doesn’t mean that’s the reason that the penguin was the chosen animal for this passage. It could be that the boy is described as innocent and naive, much like a penguin would appear to be, but I also feel that there is stronger symbolism in the actual description of a penguin. The colors of a penguin are simply black and white, much like the dreary, colorless world that the man and the boy now live in. I think the passage would have had a different feel if the animal in the dream was something very colorful, like a bird. It also makes sense that penguins environment is one of a cold, miserable climate, much like the one the man and boy are suffering in now.
It’s unexplainable actions of moving without being wound up can also be symbolic, for throughout the story, the boy struggles to understand why the chain of events are occurring, and must simply be satisfied by the over-simplified explanations given from his father. I also made a note that the boys said “I had this penguin that YOU wound up,” and although this could be interpreted differently, I think that if the penguin belonged to the BOY and the MAN wound it up, it could have an interesting meaning. Throughout the story, the man always encouraged and pushed the boy to keep moving forward. He was his driving force. When the penguin moves without being wound up, it is symbolic and foreshadows the future, in which the father is too ill to continue and eventually dies, and the boy must act on his own. It could also symbolize the mans death in that although he has stopped physically living, (moving by being wound), he will still go on.

. “Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of the pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked to each to each,” (McCarthy, 92)

This passage is interesting to me because it shows how the destruction to the modern world has caused man to return to living a lifestyle not practiced in America for many years. Some aspects described have not been seen in since ancient times, mostly in ancient Rome. The described destruction has brought out the worst in man kind, and McCarthy does a good job at displaying this in the simple parade of misfits in the quote above. These people say nothing to the man and boy, yet they leave a dramatic impression that summarizes the state of the current world they live in. Cars have been demoted to wagons, people to slaves, and women to subjects of men. McCarthy uses a good choice of words when he describes the boys being strapped with dogcollars, for he simply could have said harnessed or tied together, but the use of the word “dog” brings stronger meaning and makes it more obvious that these boys are now possessions of the men, and are no longer seen as worthy of a human status.
Another interesting aspect of this passage is that the mans wife had described this scene perfectly earlier in the story when she discussed with him what would come of their family if they were caught. The parade of pregnant women and catamites shows a lifestyle of abuse, something the wife warned the man about. She would become a victim or torture by their capturers, and the boy would no longer be her son, but a piece of property by the sick men that found them.

“The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night.” (McCarthy 28)
This passage is a reflective thought from the man. Looking at his world before it may have seemed relatively stable as there were sturdy buildings and a seemingly sturdy society structure. Here he realizes those things were not as permanent as he once believed. Living in a world where society, ideas, laws, and etiquette have long dissolved it is easy for the man to see that the problems of the world have faded into nonexistence and replaced by new ones. The man and the boy experience firsthand the delicacy of human life. If they didn’t eat food they would die, if they didn’t stay warm they would die, if they got sick they would die and so on. The only thing in the novel that did not seem to waver was the man and the boy’s relationship. It stood sturdy enough to give them the strength to move forward and essentially survive.
As for the lack of quotation marks, I think this passage hints why they are not there. The world as the man and child knew it was gone. There were no schools, laws, businesses, friends, or anything. The world had digressed to be beyond primitive. People were eating people. That would not have been accepted by society obviously but when society’s standards don’t exist, how important are the rules of writing and grammar? They aren’t. The only thing that is important is survival. I think it was a good idea to exclude them because it does give you an idea of how primitive the world they were living in was as well as gave the reader a feeling of intimacy with the characters when there aren’t barriers between things said.

“My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God” (McCarthy, 77)

This passage explains a lot about the motivation the man has to take care of the boy. He doesn’t view taking care of the boy as a burden but as a job to be taken seriously. I think this is why he is so determined to keep the boy safe even though it would be more convenient for him to travel alone. This is also an interesting passage because it mentions God. The man clearly believes in God even though it appears to be a grim and godless situation. I believe that the reason for him clinging to God is that when there is nothing good on earth, there is little he could do but look for something larger than himself and his situation. Also the man believes in heaven and is hoping maybe it will be a reward for never losing faith and never giving in. The readers know he believes in heaven because on page 31 he says “Nothing moved in that high world”. People don’t usually refer to the sky as a world unless they are referring heaven. Also he thought about the ways he would kill his son if he was dying so they could be together and obviously if he didn’t believe in an afterlife of sorts this idea of “together” wouldn’t exist in his mind. I think God is a powerful theme throughout the novel because it is this belief that propels him to keep going but it is interesting that he never questions God or expresses his anger towards God for their bleak situation.

“To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore. They’ll just be soup.
Are you a doctor?
I’m not anything.” (McCarthy 64)

To me, the man in this novel is the most interesting and the focal point. Though the reader knows his immediate actions and a few of his thoughts, this passage made me realize how little readers actually know about him. We are never really given a physical description or background information, the only thing readers know about his past was that he was married but other than that it is a mystery. Here we can see a glimpse that he was at one point an educated man and probably in a profession of high esteem as he knows terms that most wouldn’t while talking to a “bad guy”. I find his response peculiar though because the majority of people would likely say “I was a doctor” or “yes” but he responds that he isn’t anything. Living in the present is a survival technique the man tries his hardest to apply to his life. Every time a memory is recalled or a good dream is had, the man thinks it is death calling him. By doing his best not to recall anything he keeps thoughts of death at bay. The only thing the man has to live for is his son and life itself, he knows the past is gone for good and a future is really nonexistent. Knowing his past might help the reader understand his drive for life when there is nothing left to live for because it is very unusual. The man never actually considers suicide even though he knows each day will be as miserable as the last and maybe if the readers knew more about him, they would understand why he would never give in and wouldn’t let his son either when most would.

“In his dream she was sick and he cared for her. The dream bore the look of sacrifice but he thought differently. He did not take care of her and she died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no other dream nor other waking world and there is no other tale to tell.”
(McCarthy, pg.32)

I was a little confused when I first read this passage. I’m assuming that he was referring to his wife even though he doesn’t actually confirm it at all throughout the book. My interpretation of “he thought differently” meant that taking care of her was not a sacrifice for him. He wanted to take care of here and be with her when she died instead of her dieing alone. However, another interpretation could be that thinking differently meant that he didn’t want to make any sacrifice to endure that burden of taking care of her.
I also want to comment on the style of writing that McCarthy uses. His writing is very choppy at times and he doesn’t use quotation marks which got to be very confusing at times. Some readers may not have liked his style of writing but I thought it was very poetic and artistic. He also didn’t give names to any of the characters throughout the book. This gave the reader a chance to use there imagination and develop the characters how they want to see them.

Something in this book that caught my attention was the title, “The Road”. Who would want to be on this road anyways. It’s full of devastation, death, and despair. People even consider killing themselves instead of walking on this road, like the mother. But McCarthy gave the father and son “the fire” that gives them the motivation to carry on, to push forward. Because I have a religious background, I see “the fire” as a symbol of the holy spirit. To me “the fire” is the wisdom and belief that there is something better beyond what we see. What else kept them motivated to continue on the road was that they believed they word find other “good guys” meaning that they believed there was still good in humanity.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (McCarthy 10)

This quote stuck out to me the most because of the raw truth behind it. It’s the memories that we hold dear that fade away the quickest while memories we don’t wish to remember are there forever. It’s apparent that the man (seeing as McCarthy left names a mystery thus far) must have gone through alot in his life in order make this connection. Which then makes me wonder how long has the man and boy been traveling together? What has happened in order for the day to be so grey and the nights to be so black?

Though I have not read very far, I feel McCarthy is relaying a message within the above quote. A message reminding the reader to take advantage of the good times we have in our lives because at one point in time, we will experience hardships.

“He sat in the sand and inventoried the contents of the knapsack. The binoculars. A half pint bottle of gasoline almost full. The bottle of water…There five small tins of food…” (McCarthy 62)

I am somewhat confused by McCarthy’s writing style (lack of punctuation and such) but there is obviously method to his madness. The more I progress through the novel, the more I notice how I’m thinking like the man. When reading novels such as this, I become more and more concerned for the man and boy, especially when they do an inventory of their findings. I begin to wonder if they’ll have enough to eat or if the boy will be warm enough, almost as if I am in the man’s head; thinking the same things he is.

It’s pretty obvious that the man cares deeply for the boy and that he is the man’s number one priority. Within this section of the novel, the man and boy are camping underneath the bridge and though the boy is scare, the man does what he can to keep him strong. I feel the message is that in the hardest of times, no one can prevail alone. Without the man, obviously, the boy would not have made it thus far. And without the boy, I believe the man’s perseverance would have shriveled long ago.

“There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all.” (McCarthy 109)

I found this passage to be of importance because the sentence about beauty and goodness stuck out to me. “He wasn’t sure what it was about….beauty or about goodness.” I met someone this year who apparently took a great interest in me because he felt I was a beautiful and good person. That my naivety was beautiful and that he wished others were so. Now, unsure of whether he was just hitting on me or maybe he actually meant any of that, I couldn’t help but wonder what that person meant by beautiful. What makes someone or something beautiful outside of physical appearance? What does McCarthy find beautiful?

In my opinion, I find that McCarthy has the innocence of the boy portray his view on beauty in the world. The man and the boy are traveling through a dark and grim time; running from ‘the bad guys’, foraging for food and constantly a step away from death’s door. However, the boy still thinks of others and wishes not to be left alone. He doesn’t want to die but neither does he want to have someone else die either hence he shares his food and wishes to help others instead of himself. Possibly, that could be why the man was sobbing. He knows that the boy is weak and cannot last for too long in their circumstances but the boy doesn’t deserve to perish after caring so much for others. ‘…beauty of about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all.’ Though the man does not think about such things, the boy unknowingly does.

One theme that occurred to me constantly throughout the entire book is the relationship the man and the son have with each other.

First of all, McCarthy has written the book from the father’s perspective, and I’m trying to place myself in the shoes of a father whose purpose is to provide his son with food, shelter, and protection. I do not know what it’s like to be a father, or to have a child of my own, and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure if I would react the same way the father does in certain situations. Most of the time when I read, especially the dialogue, I naturally placed myself in the shoes of the boy, only because he was the only relatable character to me.

I’m not saying you need to be a father to understand the novel. It’s obvious McCarthy portrays the emotional intenseness between father and son. For example:

“I want to see him, Papa.
There’s no one to see. Do you want to die? Is that what you want?
I don’t care, the boy said, sobbing. I don’t care.
The man stopped. He stopped and squatted and held him. I’m sorry, he said. Don’t say that. You musnt say that” (85).

This dialogue occurs between the father and son after the boy saw another little boy, about the same age. When I read this passage, I literally felt like I was the boy and the thought of crying came across my mind. Later on, on the same page, the boy asks his father, “What if that little boy doesnt have anybody to take care of him? he said. What if he doesn’t have a papa?” The boy’s reasoning makes sense to me, because what if he was in the same position as the lonesome little boy (essentially, this quote also reflects the boy at end of the novel)? On the other hand, his father still resents the idea of even seeing if the little boy was okay.

I understand the father wants to protect his son and doesn’t want to take any chances that could potentially put him in danger, but I would have handled the situation differently and listened to his son. I mean what harm could the lonesome boy do to the man and boy? Maybe the man thought that one child was enough. Maybe he thought sharing rations would raise their likeliness to die. This is why I think it’s important to be parent while reading the novel. He/she could have a better and deeper understanding of the father’s various actions that don’t exactly make sense to me throughout the novel.

The first thing that caught my attention during my first read through of The Road last fall is Cormac McCarthy’s deliberate avoidance in explaining what this apocalypse was. While re-reading the novel, I still wonder to myself what it could possibly be, although it is clear that this is not the focus. McCarthy’s work, in my opinion, is a depiction of human nature. How, after we have successfully destroyed the world as it once was, will the human race continue to live? McCarthy’s book shows us that most will remain the same. In today’s world there are those who are good and those who are evil, The Road’s post- apocalyptic world contains these two groups of humans, but the numbers are reversed. Most people in our world wouldn’t stoop to cannibalism, because they don’t need to in order to survive. This means that the majority of our population would be in the “good” column, with the boy and his father. However, in The Road, apocalypse has changed the majority. Due to the lack of food, it is simply easier for the race to survive by murdering and eating other human beings. Leaving a minute number of people left to “carry the torch” in order to keep some sort of sanity and goodness left in the world.
I loved the fact that McCarthy didn’t back away from the harsh reality an apocalypse would bring. Countless people believe that in the case of an apocalypse, humans would generally remain good, righteous people. They believe that the human race will work together in order to survive, the truth is that this is highly unlikely. Humans are animals, at their core they will do whatever it takes to survive. This means cannibals, murderers, will come to fruition and most likely thrive. Yet, McCarthy doesn’t throw all humanity out of the human race; he provides a nice balance with the two main characters, the father and his son. McCarthy gives the reader a sliver of hope that some sort of person will continue to carry on a legacy that humans are capable of greatness in even the most desolate situations.

I’ve been told by Mr. Kenneth Villapando to state my idea for why McCarthy lacks proper grammar throughout the novel. As Kreinbring said in response to Hannah, you have to ask yourself why he chose to write this way, and you may come up with something different, with that said this is what I gathered.

While the novel is written in third person, with McCarthy as your narrator, I always felt that the book had a diary or journalistic feel to it. If you were living in this post apocalyptic world and happened upon a diary, the writing would look like what McCarthy has written. In this world, I doubt that quotation marks, periods or anything grammatical had any semblance of importance. For me, looking upon McCarthy’s writing in this way heightened the experience because I became even more engulfed in the world created by the story.

Just a thought.

Sydney’s symbolic penguin comment really made me think how crafty McCarthy is with symbolism. The idea of the penguin even being a possible symbol slipped my mind and wasn’t very obvious, and the connections she pulled were very well put. Another small, minute possible symbol McCarthy mentioned is a decomposing train.

“That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity and that no train would ever run again” (180).

I think the train symbolically represents the degeneration of society physically and mentally. Even though at the end of the novel McCarthy has a positive outlook for the boy and the “good guys,” I feel like he has a negative view on society as a whole. Living in a dark world, where cannibals, thieves, and piles of corpses exist, it’s hard to stay sane and stay the “good guy.” It goes to show that even those who “carry the fire” are greatly affected by their surroundings. At one point in the novel, the man gets furious after a thief steals all their belongings, and he ends up finding him again. He outrageously cries out to the thief to give all the things back or he would shoot him, but in addition, he forces him to give up all his clothes. The father states to his son that he wasn’t going to kill him. On the other hand his son states “But we did kill him” (260).

Where is there room to advance living in a lifeless society where the idea of Social Darwinism is incorporated? Where is there room for the train to run again if society is degenerating? It’s kind of like big business: get rid of the weak and the poor. To be realistic, how can one reestablish society with only a few people while more people continue to die from the environment they are forced to live with? In conclusion, I think society has no room to advance and neither does the train.

“The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribbling through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must” (McCarthy 15).

This passage makes real to the reader the unfathomable conditions of night, in the irrevocable dark of a forlorn and desolate wilderness. McCarthy paints an image of total darkness and nothingness with the only sound being a wind in the charred surrounding trees. This passage presents a feeling of hopelessness to be lost in deafening darkness with no knowledge of escape but the pale, gray morning to come. McCarthy creates realistic imagery that can be not only read, but seen. In reading a passage one can also clearly visualize the scene in which the boy and the father are existing. Each image that is described takes the reader deeper and deeper into what the boy and his father are experiencing.

“They ate the little mushrooms together with the beans and drank tea and had tinned pears for their dessert. He banked the fire against the seam of rock where he’d built it and he strung the tarp behind them to reflect the heat and they sat warm in their refuge while he told the boy stories. Old stories of courage and justice as he remembered them until the boy was asleep in his blankets and then he stoked the fire and lay down warm and full and listened to the low thunder of the falls beyond them in the dark and threadbare wood” (McCarthy 41).

This passage depicts the boy and his father in a more pleasant light. The hardships of walking across the gray snowy abyss seem faded, when the boy and his father enjoy a more comfortable camp with food and warmth. Up until this passage, most of the book is described as a burnt disarray of ashes with decaying human bodies scattered throughout, and a pale gray sky hanging overhead. The imagery describing the pleasant and dreadful experiences is equally admirable in that both types of imagery are capable of expressing to the reader the affects of the situation on the characters.

Although McCarthy uses imagery in the most positive ways to create the scene in-depth for the reader, I would have to agree with Hannah on the quotation marks. Though it may be in McCarthy’s own style of writing not to include them, not having quotation marks gives the reader some confusion as to whom is saying what.

Although McCarthy’s lack of punctuation bothers me, I think in a way it represents the world that is being described in The Road. The book is left bare of punctuation just like the town is left after being burned. Having no punctuation removes the authors personal emotion to what is being written, which can allow the reader to react to what they read in their own way.

“That the boy was all that stood between him and death,” (McCarthy, 29)
The man knew he was going to die but he kept fighting to stay alive for the boy. The boy was the only thing that kept him from giving up. Throughout the book the man shows great kindness towards the boy, which shows how much he loves him. He is determined to keep the boy safe, and stay alive for him too.

“They stood on the far shore of a river and called to him. Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste. Trekking the dried floor of mineral sea where it lay cracked and broken like a fallen plate. Paths of feral fire in the coagulate sands. The figures faded in the distance. He woke and lay in the dark” (McCarthy 52).

After reading this passage I noticed that the passage makes a reference to “tattered gods”. I feel that these “tattered gods” are people like the man who had been struck by lightning. People who have been wandering lost and hungry, trying to survive in the wilderness. People whom the father could not help. The father has this vision of them calling to him, possibly calling to him for help that he would never give them. I’d like to think that the reason McCarthy refers to these people as “gods”, is because they are innocent people that have been stripped of all they own, and are struggling for survival hopelessly. McCarthy most likely added this passage to allow the readers to see how the father’s guilt of not helping the injured man affected his thoughts and dreams.

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. This is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blankets and carried him to the fire” (McCarthy 74).

“He kicked holes in the sand for the boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it” (McCarthy 74).

“He’d carved the boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and he took it from his coat and gave it to him” (McCarthy 77).

These quotes embodied to me just how gentle and caring the man is with his son. Firstly, he is cleaning the brains of the killed man out of his son’s hair, showing his son that he is genuinely concerned about his well being. Then he is making him a place of rest, and taking special care to dry his son’s hair before the fire. To me, these quotes really express the fondness and compassion that the father has for his son. He does simple things for his son that have great value and meaning. Throughout the book the care that the man has for his son clearly demonstrates that without his son, the father would have no necessity for existence.

Hello everyone,
It’s nice to finally join all of you on the blog. For some reason, I started reading Truth and Beauty, only to realize that The Road was the book we had to read first (oops!). So, that would explain my delay in posting on the blog.

When I started reading The Road, I immediately noticed McCarthy’s unique writing style. At first, I found it quite difficult to read the conversations between the man and the boy, as there were no quotation marks, but as I continued to read, I asked myself the question that Mr. Kreinbring brought up to Hannah earlier on the blog. “Why doesn’t McCarthy use quotation marks?” Well, this is when I realized that it was not to drive us all insane! McCarthy’s manipulation of grammar and lack of clear organization define the path of the novel. His abstract style brings out the lack of vision and purpose for the characters. It shows the randomness of the world around the two travelers. There is very little planning, and the man acts on whatever comes to his head. The descriptions are often random with seemingly little relevance, and the man often acts based upon random thoughts and impulses. Both the man and the boy seem to have many insecurities, and McCarthy uses the choppy, sometimes awkward conversations that they share to define their mission in the novel as one without hope and just an exercise to stay alive. Their mission is defined as one without a clear goal and pointless in the passage on pages 160 and 161:

“The boy stood up and got his broom and put it over his shoulder. He looked at his father. What are our long term goals? he said.
What?
Our long term goals.
Where did you hear that?
I don’t know.
No, where did you?
You said it.
When?
A long time ago.
What was the answer?
I don’t know.
Well, I don’t either. Come on. It’s getting dark.”

#2
I also took note of the same quote that Emmaline had mentioned before: “You forget what you want to remember and remember what you want to forget.” (12)

The novel is filled with memories of the father’s past, but all of his memories seem to have a hint of sadness behind them, as he knows that he can’t even share these memories with his son. Each day he experiences his memories alone. Immediately after the quote, I noticed a memory that brought both happiness and sadness to the father. The father remembers going to get firewood with his uncle so distinctly, yet there seems to be some kind of pain in this memory. He realizes that his son may never be able to experience that bond with him. When I read this passage, I couldn’t help but remember all of the fun and memorable times I had with my father, like playing basketball with him and fighting with him when he was attempting to help me with my homework. However, this wasn’t the only passage in the novel that reminded me of my past. Through each and every memory McCarthy brought up in the novel, he delved into my innermost thoughts and memories, making them real once again.

I also believe that these memories are what bring about the differences between the outlooks of the father and the son. The son is more optimistic. Although he is frightened by others on the road, he is ready and willing to help them. He doesn’t feel as much loss as the father, because he has not known anything else in his life except pain, isolation, and this new world after the apocalypse. The father, on the contrary, is more weary and untrusting. He feels more loss than the boy, realizing that there is nothing left of the world he once knew. There is a passage in which the father realizes this.
“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought” (75). There is no one and nothing left from the world the father once knew.

When I thought about the quote on a more personal level, I realized that many people do remember the things that they would like to forget, like the mistakes they have made in their lives. For the father, he wishes to forget the past that his son can never have. However, I view this quote in a more positive light. By remembering those mistakes and never being able to forget them, one can insure not to make those same mistakes in the future. I also believe that by forgetting the good times that we have had in our past, it forces us to focus on the present and future.

I saw a few people had commented on the apocalypse, so here are a few of my thoughts:

As I continued to read the novel, I could not help but wonder what the apocalypse was. I completely agree with Eric in that explaining what happened would steer focus away from the novel.

I assumed that it was an apocalyptic fire, but that only made me contemplate upon why the man and the boy are barely able to survive in the FREEZING temperatures. “Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold…Cold to crack the stones. To take your life. He held the boy shivering against him and counted each frail breath in the blackness.” (14)

I continued to ponder upon the various reasons why McCarthy failed to explain exactly what happened in the apocalypse, but , by not revealing the cause of the disaster, McCarthy makes the post-apocalypse scenario more plausible. If he were to point to a certain cause, one could refute that claim (being the skeptical person that I am, I know I would). We don’t know what will cause an end to the world, and McCarthy’s vagueness made me think throughout the whole novel, “What are we doing that may cause a global disaster?” McCarthy’s novel makes me only want to be more cautious, so that we may never have to live in a world like that of The Road- a world where humans trade morality for survival.

I really enjoyed Sydney’s explanation of the penguin as a symbol, and Kenneth’s explanation of the train as a symbol as well.

Another symbol that I found in the novel was McCarthy’s comparison between the animals and those people living within McCarthy’s work. Several passages and instances show why the man and the boy are symbolically attached to animals.

1)On page 20 McCarthy writes, “They stood in the rain like farm animals.” As soon as I read this simile, I automatically compared their lives since the disaster to being like animals. First, every day they seem to be going through the same motions. Get up, eat, walk, eat, and sleep. Second, they always seem to be in fear, and have no control over their lives. The father has said many times how easily they could die either by the gangs, or by the cold rain. This idea is also supported when the father tells us about what life was like directly after the disaster on page 29. The way he tells us, the people who had survived walked around with no purpose, feeling helpless seeming like they were just doing it, and not thinking.

2)The next symbolic comparison lies in the direct fact that the father and son are hunted and helpless, as are animals. McCarthy depicts, “two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover” (130). The characters have no escape from the constant predators, forcing them to take on animalistic habits. When the pair was providing aid to the elderly man, “…looked like someone trying to feed a vulture broken in the road” (163). The helplessness of all those living in the novel’s era creates an undeniable relation to an animal’s inability to constantly protect themselves.

3)The next instance is less literal, and occurred when the son inquired about his restrictions. The pair discusses,
“We’re not going as the crow flies.
Because crows don’t have to follow roads?
Yes.
They can go wherever they want.
Yes.
After a while the boy said: There’s not any crows are there?
No” (158).
The crows here represent the freedom which is completely excluded from McCarthy’s world. The idea is based on the fact that the birds were once able to do as they please, to have no boundaries, as the father was once able to experience in his life before the apocalypse. The loss of the animals, such as the liberated crows, is a reminder to the man of the extinction of his personal freedom.

When I picked up The Road, I was more then ready to be bored out of my mind, a precedent that’s been set by just about every piece of summer reading, ever. But, I was excited to realize it’s actually an out-of-the-box read, and interesting to boot.

“With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless.” (McCarthy, 4)

The reason I selected this quote is simple, in the first four pages McCarthy sets up the mood for the entire novel. Gray, barren, silent, and godless, throughout the entire novel you can see these four words, even when he doesn’t actually write them. His descriptions, metaphors, and similes all come back to those four words. When I think about this book now that I’ve completed it, I picture gray and desolation. He does a brilliant job of setting the mood and maintaining it without needing to say it every four words. Except for gray, that comes up quite a bit.

“He thought the bloodcults must have all consumed one another.” (McCarthy, 16)

This is the portion of the story that first started generating an actual interest from me. This is where the reader realizes that nature isn’t the only enemy here; the author has added a predator component to the novel that piques your interest because now it’s not just man versus nature, its man versus man, or man versus something unknown. What I really like about how he wrote this part is that he doesn’t go into detail for you, he doesn’t give you a description of a bloodcult, you have no idea what it even is. By doing this the author lets you come up with your own frightening nemesis, the author knows that anything your imagination comes up with is going to scare you more then a word for word description from him. A bloodcult becomes your own image of evil, whatever it may be, and by leaving it unknown it’s more ominous.

“Raw cold daylight fell through the roof.” (McCarthy, 27)

This quote is awesome. In this quote McCarthy is showing you just how far the world has come. Sunlight is generally viewed as a positive thing, something that invokes happy images of summer and warmth. But in the world of The Road, even this has been corrupted. It’s not warm, soft, daylight, it’s “Raw cold daylight…” It doesn’t shine on you, it “falls” on you, that little quote puts the final nail in the coffin; there really is nothing good left in the world.

One of the characters that really intrigued me throughout the novel was the boy, and for some reason, I paid very close attention any time he said anything, did anything, or anyone referred to him in any way.
Because of that, I noticed that the boy exhibited “God-like” qualities in the novel like selflessness and generosity on several instances.

One example was when a thief steals the man and boy’s cart full of supplies on page 253. Though the thief nearly destroys the livelihood of the boy and man, the boy still becomes very upset when the man punishes the thief, forcing him to give up his clothes. The boy cries, and the man leaves the thief’s clothes in the road for the thief to find instead of taking them away.

“Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.
He’s going to die anyway.” (259)

Given the situation of the man and boy one would expect the boy to adopt a naturalistic philosophy on life, but he progresses in the opposite direction. The boy acts as the man’s God, making sure the man acts on his morals rather than just to survive. There are many instances of this in the novel. Two that stood out to me were on page 145 when the boy says Grace and on page 170 when the boy gives to a beggar. Religion serves a similiar purpose, reminding people they should act on their morals, regardless of their situation.

However, my assumption that the boy could symbolize God was countered by the fact that he is careless, and does things such as leave the valve off the gas If a character that symbolizes God and hope can make such mistakes, then it can also mean that God is possible of making such mistakes too. However, the boy’s mistakes do not indicate a weakness in him. The boy is portrayed as God, and mistakes, such as leaving the valve off the gas, simply indicate the world’s overdependence on God. The man knows he is partially to blame for the incident. The boy doesn’t know any better, and it was the man’s duty to ensure this got done. There is a quote on page 176:

“After a while the boy said: I forgot to turn off the valve didn’t I?
It’s not your fault. I should have checked.
The boy set his plate down on the tarp. He looked away.
It’s not your fault. You have to turn off both valves. The threads were supposed to be sealed with Teflon tape or it would leak and I didn’t do it. It’s my fault. I didn’t tell you.
There wasn’t any tape though, was there?
It’s not your fault.”

The man knew this was his job, his duty. It is a metaphor for the overdependence we place on God (or other people) today. We expect God to do everything for us, we ask for help, but often times don’t do our own part. We have to meet God halfway; we are not incapable of helping ourselves. The boy can not do everything, and the father needs to do his part to ensure their survival too.

Does anyone know if McCarthy is religious?

“When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?”(173)

This passage and the rest of the conversation with the old man was very strange and interesting to me. It is the only peaceful human contact that the man and the boy have and it shows the perspective of another survivor who, we assume, must deal with the same hardships as the boy and the man. The old man is very mysterious and he refuses to explain how he has survived but in their brief encounter he shares his opinion on death. The old man portrays death as another survivor left in the world and he treats him as a lonely scavenger. It seems that the old man feels that once all the people have died the world will have been cleansed and that they will all be happier in death. This idea veers radically from what the man believes and it shows an opinion where there is no hope left for the human race.

HEY GUYS!!!!!!!!!! I know I am kind of late on posting on the blog, but that’s my fault because I didn’t start reading The Road until mid-June. When I first started reading the book, I thought it was interesting that the main characters didn’t have names. I took this as intriguing because I wanted to keep reading. I was confused at first because I had no idea what was going on during the first couple of pages, but as I kept reading, the story became clearer.
Throughout the book, I noticed some different aspects of McCarthy’s writing that interested me. I liked that McCarthy used fragments in his writing. I felt like this was a good way to provide short, vivid descriptions and it added to the overall effect of the story. Another aspect of McCarthy’s novel that I noticed was his reference to God. I liked that even though the man and the boy were living in a world with no morals and where no god was expected to live, they would still pray and the boy would consider others before he took any supplies. I also liked McCarthy’s inclusion of the father’s flashbacks. It gives the readers insight into how the world was before the “apocalyptic” event. The man would remember certain features of how life was before the great fire and wish that his little boy could experience the same things that he was able to. While they were at the bunker, the father did try to recreate these experiences, but in the end, he knew that it would never be the same as his experience. “That he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own. Even now some part of him wished they’d never found this refuge. Some part of him always wished it to be over (154).” To me, this quote basically shows that the man is starting to give up. He would always want to hold himself together for the boy, even though he was in the process of dying. He wanted the best for his child, but he didn’t know how much longer he could provide for him.

After finishing The Road, I am able to see the use of fire as a double symbol. It is portrayed as both a power of death and of rebirth. . It has the potential to be both constructive and destructive. Fire is a great tool, when used for warmth and light, but fire can quickly become dangerous. Fire can destroy homes, families, and other things one holds dear. The outcome is dependent on the wielder of the fire. In some hands (the good guys), fire can represent hope, survival, and new life. This symbolism is apparent on a myriad of pages:

“…We’re carrying the fire.” (129) –the boy and his father are conversing-
“Are you carrying the fire.” (283) –the boy and the “good guys” are conversing-

However, place the fire in other hands, (the bad guys) and fire becomes a destructive force, leaving behind little to salvage in its wake. This is true for any type of power given to mankind; some will choose to abuse the power. When God gave mankind fire, he gave them the potential for great construction, along with the potential for great destruction. Any time that power is placed in the hand of man this potential exists. If fire is the symbol for passion and the will to survive, then it can either steadily grow and bring life and hope back to Earth again, or it can destroy the little left that exists.

I also have an interesting personal connection to fire. Because I practice the Hindu religion, I know that fire is an extremely big part of our ceremonies and rituals. Similar to its “double symbolism” in The Road, fire also has a “double symbolism” in our religion as well. Fire is used in the Hindu religion during times of birth for naming ceremonies and marriages. However, it is also used when cremating the body of someone who passed away. So, fire unites people on Earth and separates people from the Earth in our religion. I just thought it was an interesting thought to share!

Here are my last thoughts on The Road:

Reflecting on the conclusion of the novel, The Road, I realized, is essentially a classic tragedy. The characters are doomed from the start and surprisingly the father’s tragic flaw is what makes him great; his desire to live, his will to persevere. In the end the circumstances of the desolate earth overtake the father and his life is over. He wants his son to carry the fire, but what is the fire?. I believe McCarthy created the journey of the boy and his father to allow us to question what is our fire. The fire within us all represents our purpose; the reason we were created and ultimately our reason to live. In McCarthy’s novel all the distractions of life like rewards and materialism have been destroyed. The fire the boy and the father carry is not for a selfish goal, but instead is to keep good alive. We all have the purpose to carry the fire, but many of us fail because of fear, and that limits our individual progress.Thus, when the boy asked, “What is the bravest thing you ever did,” the man responded, “Getting up this morning.” (272) The hardest part of our journey is pushing on through the struggle everything is against you. Also, like the man in the novel we desire to pass the torch to those that follow after us. The fire we pass is, “the breath of God…it [passes] from man to man through all time.” (286) The man knew in order to achieve his purpose he had to pass the torch to his son. We also must push to succeed and push those that follow to achieve similar success.

McCarthy’s novel also discusses the foundations of human purpose. Throughout the novel, both the man and the boy repeatedly ask themselves, “Are we going to die?” The characters essentially have nothing to live for except each other. As we progress through our own journey, or our own road, we are able to advance because of a certain end product that we envision. However, the absence of such a motivation could ultimately kill the will to live.

On page 137 the father said, “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up.” I feel that this quote describes their actions throughout the novel.

Many times during their adventure along the road, the boy is motivated by the idea of being the “good guys”. In my opinion this gives him hope, and a reason for going on. Without hope, I feel that the father would have given up very soon in their journey, bringing his son down with him. You can see how important being a “good guy” is to the boy by the repeated times he makes sure that what they are doing is what good guys should do. Such as making sure that they don’t steal food from people who are already alive, and giving the thief back his clothes.

McCarthy uses his abstract style and flashbacks to portray the importance of having motivation. As the man flashes back to his arguments with his wife, the wife explains, “there is no stand to take…my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.” (57) Before ending her life, the man’s wife has nothing to live for. Her lack of hope for a better life is only perpetuated by her desire for peace, for death. McCarthy uses this theme to illustrate the importance of purpose in one’s life.

When contemplating upon why McCarthy would have written this novel, I finally came to the conclusion that McCarthy wanted all of us to ask ourselves, “Why do I live?” Of course, we all have career goals, and want to have a family, but is there something above all of that? In religion class we talked about this same concept of doing something more with our life. But when will I have that “AHA!” moment? That is something I still wonder…..

“A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.” (McCarthy, 68)

This quote also reminded me of a movie I saw last year. Five people were in a car about to be killed, but they only had a gun with four bullets. To save them from suffering the man in the front seat shot them all (including his young son). After shooting them, the man got out of the car ready and willing to die. Of course the final twist of the movie was that as soon as the man got out of the car, the military was there to save him, and everything would have been fine if he hadn’t shot them.

The fact that the man even has to think about “the truth” is depressing. After having to kill the boy, he would have to wait for his own time to come. I can’t think of anything that would be worse than that. While it is sad to think about, at least the man would be able to save his son from suffering (I mean, what father wouldn’t do that for their child?).

“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there.” (McCarthy, 168)

This is one of my favorite quotes from this book. It’s so true too; we spend a lot of time preparing for the future that we don’t always focus on the present. We’re always trying to plan our next moves and we aren’t living in the moment. While we should have general plans for the future, I think we should just take what comes and accept it and work with it. Most of the best things in our lives are the things we didn’t prepare for.

For the man and the boy, they had to live day to day. They had one main plan, and that was to make it to the coast. Other than that, they lived every day not knowing what was going to happen or who they were going to meet.

Maybe it’s just me, but I hate planning. Other than going to college, I don’t have any other big plans. I have an idea what I might want to study, but it will probably change before I again in the next year. Luckily right now, I don’t have to have any bigger plans, because nothing is set in stone. I don’t have to have everything figured out right now. Eventually I will have to make decisions, but for right now I’m happy not knowing what’s going to happen.

“They picked their way among the mummied figures. The black skin stretched upon the bones and their faces split and shrunken on their skulls. Like the victims of some ghastly envacuuming. Passing them in silence down that silent corridor through the drifting ash where they struggled forever in the road’s cold coagulate.” (McCarthy 191)

I find this passage eerie and interesting. The author does a fantastic job at creating a visual that makes the reader’s skin crawl as well as get a sense of what the man and the boy see. Writing that passage instead of something like “the man and boy passed dead bodies” really puts the reader in the traveler’s shoes. What I find interesting about this is that when I read it I winced, but the travelers seem to see without being horrified. A normal person would feel some sort of emotion upon seeing this but the man and boy seem to pass by numbly. I think it shows how much humans can be desensitized to whatever their surroundings, no matter how horrible.

This passage is also significant because it shows the dead as scary. If you hear someone talking about a funeral, they will usually say how peaceful the dead looked almost as though they were sleeping. These dead are not at rest. They are still agonized as they were when they were alive. The last part of this phrase says “where they struggled forever in the road’s cold coagulate”. This implies that the dead will struggle until the end of time, never finding relief. I believe this haunts the man, that even in death there is no relief. It could be why he fights death off so hard even though it seems like the easier option. He fears death will bring only more struggling.

I don’t even know if I’m posting these comments correctly, but I hope I am. Anyways, I agree with Sam when she was talking about how the boy was the father’s moral mentor. The boy would want to help any “good guy” that they met, but the man would want to either kill them or just run away. The boy taught the man to be careful, but caring at the same time, as seen in the situation with Elly. On the other hand, the boy needed the man to help take care of himself. “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God (77).” This quote is ironic to me because the man is taking care of the boy, but at the same time the boy has to take care of the man. The boy has to make sure that his father will eat, even though the father is not eating so that the boy can eat more. It’s like Robert Brault said: “A parent’s love is whole no matter how many times divided.” The father’s life revolves directly around the child; protecting him, making sure that there is food and clothing for him, and providing insurance that everything will be okay no matter what. Most parents already do this, and they would continue to do this in times of peril. Then again, I agree with what Alicia said about why the man would want to kill his child, but in the end I don’t believe that any parent would be strong enough to kill their own child, unless they had gotten to the point of having no morals. Even in the conclusion of the novel, the man said “I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant (279).”

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did? … Getting up this morning, he said (272).”

I thought that this quote was a very inspiring quote. In a world where there’s nothing left to look forward to, the man and the boy have to pull through and live in fear; expecting the worst, but hoping for the best. “Maybe you should always be on the lookout. If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it (151).” The quote introduces a plausible suggestion, but I don’t like this mindset. We should always have our guard up, but we can’t just live in fear that everything we do will end up turning out the wrong way. Throughout the novel, the man always tells the boy that he can’t give up. The man is close to dying through the entire story, but he keeps trudging onward. Even if life gets us down, we need to get right back up and keep going. Joe E. Lewis once said, “You only live once – but if you work it right, once is enough.” Although we might live through hardships, we can’t ever give up; we need to be brave and conquer our problems.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. It was sad when the boy was left alone, but “the fire” was carried on. In my opinion, I think that the fire was life itself; life with compassion, life that could rarely be found in this post-apocalyptic world. I think that in the end the purpose of this road that was followed throughout the story was to carry on the fire, much like Sam had mentioned earlier. With the fire being carried on by the boy, we could only hope that the remaining survivors would also learn to carry this fire.

Hello Mr. Kreinbring,

I just wanted to let you know that I am leaving for China until July 31st, so my blog comments on Truth and Beauty and Autobiography could be a bit late….We are going to be staying in a school, so I will have access to the internet at times, but we are leaving to go to a village for a week or so too…I will post ASAP when I get back.

Can I ask you something? he said.
Yes. of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now. (pg15) Mccarthy

This was a great quote. It is so simple, yet it speaks nothing but the truth. It saddens me to think that many people fear death. They are so scared of losing what they have especially their beliefs. It is inevitable that organisms die. Why do people spend so much time thinking about death, how it will happen, what happens after I die, where will I go, do I have a soul etc. Is it really that important? When it’s my time to go. It’s time. End of story. I’ve pondered long enough what could happen. Frankly, I don’t care. All I care about is what is happening now, in this lifetime. If I continue to focus on my present actions, then I know everything will be okay in the end.
This is what the father was trying to explain to his son. We will die. That WILL happen. When? I don’t know. And I don’t care.

Ugh. Man. Kelsey you just spoiled the book for me.

Oh Well!

^-^

I think this passage is a flashblack the man was having in a dream of some sort between his wife. Before she left??

I dont care. It’s meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot.
Death is not a lover.
Oh yes he is.
Please dont do this.
I’m sorry.
I can’t do it alone.
Then dont. I cant help you. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I dont dream at all. You say you cant? Then dont do it. Thats all. Because I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take. My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so dont ask for sorrow now. There is none. Maybe you’ll be good at this. I doubt it, but who knows. The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart. (pg 56) Mccarthy

The woman knows how good of a person the man is. She knows, that the man will feel guilty if he were to live for himself. He is so unselfish that his soul would be comforted by caring for another soul above his own. The woman feels guilty. She feels guilty because she no longer is grateful for the love of the man who is caring for her soul. The woman feels that nothingness (death) will end her guilt. The boy she had birthed was another burden for the man. Because of her guilt, the woman feels that she must take death’s lovely still heart and leave the man and boy to cherish each other like she knew she couldn’t. In her confrontation, the woman is referring a ghost to the man’s soul. She thinks that he believes that he was born into this world to care for another soul other than his own. (As i mentioned earlier). So, she offers this metaphor of creating and nurturing a ghost/soul to live beside so he has something to live for. I can tell the woman is sick of the man’s perspective and is willing to travel down another path.

The man however, seems to think she is selfish and still does not realize that the ghost is within him all this time. (He retorts with pleas of staying and what shall i do?)
In fact, he translates the woman’s ghost metaphor into a very real being. His son.

I have only read this far, so I am wondering if my theories are true.

NOW I’m interested. The beginning of this book was exceptionally boring, but now I am starting to experience some enjoyment. Very pleasing.

“He set the empty tin between his feet. Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie,” (McCarthy, 238)

This passage comes across as brutally honest. Maybe it is more distinguished from others because the man spends much of the time trying to dull-down the sad reality of things when he exchanges dialogue with the boy, and here, he confronts the truth as he thinks to himself. He constantly tells the boy they are not going to die, yet he has to accept the fact that the undoubtedly will. This passage comes across as strange to me because I think the truth is actually the exact opposite of what he is saying. There are two parts he speaks of: every day being a lie, and his own death. After reading this novel, it seems more to me that every day is not a lie, but the truth. It is the truth that humanity must face, a punishment. Whether in the end the cause is a God given curse or a natural disaster, it does not matter, for the corruption the boy and man see everyday among the humans they once considered humane is now the truth. Corruption is among them, and it cannot be denied. It was always there, now it just has the opportunity to be seen. What is more truthful than that? As for the man confronting the fact that he is dying, it can also be seen as the opposite. It is obvious the man fears his own death, but at the same time, he tells the boy that he will never really leave him. I think the love and bond between the man and boy is so strong at this point in the story, it is clear that the man will always be a part of the boy, and although he may die physically, the man must convince him that he is never really leaving.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (McCarthy, 12)

To me, this quote seems like it sums up the entire book and maybe even life itself. When you really think about it that small line has such an impact on how we live our day to day lives. It’s exactly what the boy and the man struggle through day to day, trying to remember a world before the harsh, grey, ashy times. A world in which they were happy, in which the boy had a mother, the man a wife. But, slowly it slips away from them (even thought they try so hard to remember).

However, I also believe that this quote fits perfectly for each and every one of us. How many times has one of us been sitting trying to remember something that happened last week or even what we ate for breakfast this morning and not been able to remember? It’s not really an uncommon thing; I know that it happens all the time to me and people in my family.

Yet, this is not truly why this quote stood out to me. The reason it stood out so much is that my grandpa has Alzheimer’s, so this consistently affects my life. My PapPap (as we call him) can’t remember what he had for breakfast, if he actually fed their animals, or simply even when he has to use the bathroom. It’s not that he doesn’t want to but, like the quote, he forgets what he wants to remember.

“He looked like something out of a deathcamp. Starved, exhausted, sick with fear.” (McCarthy, 117)

This quote stood out because of the word “deathcamp”. I’m not sure it it’s because I like World War II and that’s really when the entire idea came about, or if it’s simply that the word terrifies me. I think that it’s both. However, as I sat here and thought about what I was going to write, it occurred to me that the world that the boy and man live in is basically a death camp. It’s right there in the quote. The boy was starved, exhauster, and sick with fear. Don’t all of those words describe the people living in death camps during WWII? To me, they do.

Thinking about that makes me wonder what it’s like to live in the world that Cormac McCarthy has created in this dark novel. Even though he has basically laid it out for us in descriptive lengthy passages, it still makes me wonder. Obviously one can’t get everything out of reading and this is why it’s so difficult to wrap my head around this world. I suppose that it’s so hard because I haven’t actually experienced it and have never ever remotely been in a situation like this. I, like most of us, have always been in good situations and have always had enough food, time to sleep, and have always had someone or something to comfort me when scared or sad, whether it was my blanket when I was little or a friend now. Overall, I believe that this quote is an awesome metaphor for the world in which the man and boy live in and is an excellent conversation piece.

“By the time he came out he was blue with cold and his teeth were chattering.” (McCarthy, 218)

The reason that this quote stood out to me is I’ve experienced it! Though I’ve never actually swam in freezing cold water, I’ve seen people do it and I’ve put my feet in. My family loves to travel, and we went up to Lake Superior, and of course we had to swim in the water. For those of you that don’t known, Lake Superior is freezing, even if it’s a hot summer day. My little sister is a fish on land, water is her element; she wouldn’t get out of the water. However, when the sun started to set, my parents forced her to get out of the water and I watched from the nice warm sand as Anna got out of the water with blue lips, and chattering teeth. I instantly thought of this and I understood what the boy went through. I got that he wanted to swim and also why, cold water is beautiful, even if it was the grey ashy water that the boy was swimming in.

“The dark did catch them.” (McCarthy, 233)

There are two reasons that this quote stood out to me. One is the awesome mental picture I got when I read it. It personifies the dark, and makes it appear to be doing something. I saw it as a monster, with long droopy arms running after the boy and man, trying to catch them. The dark monster slowly catches up with them, closing the gap, with its arms reaching out toward them until finally the entire picture was dark black.

I think this is exactly what McCarthy was going for when he wrote this small powerful sentence. It’s his style of writing: short, sweet, and to the point. Also, he writes with a lot of literary language, lots of descriptive detail and vivid verbs. This is the second reason that I picked the quote. I liked the shortness and how little McCarthy had to write in order make the reader understand the race against the sun. It made me pause and think about how small, yet so powerful, the sentence was. It really demonstrates the power of words and what an impact they can create and what kinds of pictures they could create in our minds.

“His uncle turned the boat and shipped the oars and they drifted over the sandy shallows until the transom grated in the sand. A dead perch lolling belly up in the clear water. Yellow leaves. They left their shoes on the warm painted boards and dragged the boat up onto the beach and set out the anchor at the end of its rope” (McCarthy, 13).

In similar fashion to most of the class, I quickly picked up on the unique writing style that McCarthy used throughout The Road. With no character names, no quotation marks, and an overall lifeless format, McCarthy’s writing style fits the novel’s dismal tone. Like Hannah and some of the others, I thought that I would grow very annoyed with the book’s style; but, I actually came to appreciate how the unorthodox format helped the novel to maintain its bleak feeling.

However, this passage caught my interest due to how it steers away from the cold, black-and-white imagery that the majority of the novel presents. The presence of colors and other sensory details allows the reader to regain feeling in what is otherwise a conscience numbed over by a lack of, “literary warmth”.

Finally, I can relate to the passage personally, as I spend most of my summer hopping in and out of fishing boats all day long. The only difference is that my boats and lakes haven’t been turned into ashen waste.

“Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?” (McCarthy, 32).

This brief question posed by the man buried itself deep into my conscience as I read through The Road. Initially, I was confused as to the meanings of “never to be” and “what never was”, even to the point of putting the book down to figure it out. I eventually concluded that the two concepts were the world views of the man and the boy, respectively. I figured that the, “never to be” was referring to the man’s vantage point on life, where the world was, “never to be” as is used to. On the other hand, “what never was” seemed to refer to the boy’s vantage point on the world, having no memory of the living world that passed away before his birth. This concept is continually examined by McCarthy throughout the novel. Using the boy’s simple questions about the old world as a way to show the differences between the man and the boy’s views on what the world truly was. I found it depressing that the boy was born into the new world, living his entire life in an ashen wasteland stripped of basically all forms of nature and life. This fact also challenged me to try to think as if I knew nothing of today’s world in order to understand the boy’s thought processes, which was basically impossible to do as I live in the, “old world” everyday.

“I wouldn’t leave you.
I don’t care. It’s meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot.
Death is not a lover.
Oh yes he is.
Please don’t do this. I’m sorry.
I cant do it alone.” (McCarthy, 56-57).

Throughout The Road, I was constantly irritated by the lack of information provided on events causing the barren hell that the man and the boy were forced to live in. This passage provides a rare glimpse into the man’s life in what we know as the normal world, or what preceded the “never to be” (McCarthy, 32). My best guess is that this was a dialogue between the man and his late wife shortly before her suicidal death. The boy was most likely much younger, and it seems that the woman was unable to come to grips with the inevitably impending doom that the entire world was facing. Her words carry such a heavy, heart wrenching tone that it’s nearly impossible to not share in the despair that the man is experiencing in that moment. Nevertheless, I still wish that McCarthy would’ve provided a few more flashbacks in order to reveal what caused the apparently fiery apocalypse.

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job.” (McCarthy, 74).

Typical of many passages in the book, McCarthy creates a bluntly graphic image of the hellish world that the man and the boy are forced to live in everyday. I can hear the man saying this in the same tone that a parent would use when trying to talk through the news of losing a child. (Not to make a Harry Potter reference, but how about Mr. Diggory moaning, “That’s my boy” over Cedric’s dead body in the 4th book/movie?) The gut-wrenching reality of this passage caused me to regret reading the book and forcing myself to absorb the hideous mental images accompanying it. But, moments like this are what give The Road its worth. Any author who can cause a reader’s conscience to flare up with anger and his innards to twist uncomfortably definitely has what it takes to write a book worthy of the Pulitzer Prize. Despite my raging feelings toward the horrible ideas presented in the novel, I can’t deny the book’s value as a work of literature.

“If they find you you are going to have to do it. Do you understand? Shh. No crying. Do you hear me? You know how to do it. You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand? Stop crying. Do you understand?” (McCarthy, 113).

Like the passage about the man washing brains out of the child’s hair, McCarthy uses these instructions from the man to provide another sick example of the terrible lifestyle that the man and child are forced to follow daily. The image of a man instructing his terrified, crying child to blow his own brains out if he were to be taken just added to my mental list of reasons why I didn’t want to read The Road. Sure, the storyline was gripping and the love shared between the man and child was beyond profound, but the gruesome reality of the new world and “the road” was sickening to endure.
On another note, the passage serves as one example of the boy’s continuing, yet limited, maturation throughout the novel. As a very innocent child, the boy is forced to grow up prematurely in order to survive the harsh world he was born into. However, his inability to understand the act of self-destruction revealed that he could only mature so quickly, no matter what the circumstances were. Yet again, it was horrible to have to read about a little boy who was forced to grow up just to avoid being killed and eaten. It’s terrible to even reiterate it in writing…

“They’re going to eat them, arent they?
Yes.
And we couldnt help them because then they’d eat us too.
Yes.
And that’s why we couldnt help them.
Yes.
Okay.” (McCarthy, 127).

With this dialogue between the man and the boy, McCarthy examines the conflict between survival and morality, specifically through the boy’s mental process of reconciling his actions. Many times throughout the novel, the boy refers to his dad in order to justify that his actions are moral, not just an easy means of survival. This justification grew increasingly difficult for the boy as the story progressed, which is seen in his justification for not helping a group of people that was soon to be killed and eaten. This process of justification reveals the fine line existing between morality and survival, which coexists with an unclear boundary between the survival-of-the-fittest and dog-eat-dog theories.

It can also be noted that the boy’s perception of morality can change in relation to the need for survival. In this situation, the boy is okay with leaving the people to be eaten due to the fact that he would be eaten if he tried to help them. In another situation where the boy’s life is not in question, he would’ve suffered incredible guilt for leaving the helpless behind (i.e. the naked man who attempted to rob their things). However, his father’s lessons on survival, taught more through his decisions than his words, allowed the boy to learn to live as morally as possible while looking out for his own life.

“Yes it is. When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days with be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?” (McCarthy, 173).

With this mindset, the old man that the man and the boy encountered provides one of very few optimistic views presented in The Road. While the man never really offers up much of a positive embrace to death throughout the book, this old man has developed what I guess can be referred to as a “healthy” theory of death”: a release from pain, not some ultimate termination of life. The old man looks beyond the end of his life to the end of death’s working, with no life left to defeat. In fact, the end of death’s victims will in a sense be death’s own death, which could ironically be life (how confusing?). Regardless, the old man’s perspective on dying provides a moment’s release from the despair brought about by the man’s constant thoughts about both his and his son’s impending doom. After going through a great deal of the book constantly worrying about when, or if, the man or the boy was going to die, hearing the old man’s more accepting thoughts on death was, although temporary, definitely a necessary relief.

“Standing at the edge of a winter field among rough men. The boy’s age. A little older. Watching while they opened up the rocky hillside ground with pick and mattock and brought to light a great bolus of serpents perhaps a hundred in number. Collected there for a common warmth. The dull tubes of them beginning to move sluggishly in the cold hard light. Like the bowels of some great beast exposed to the day. The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for evil but only for the image of it as the conceived it to be. The burning snakes twisted horribly and some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses. As they were mute there were no screams of pain and the men watched them burn and writhe and blacken in just such silence themselves and they disbanded in silence in the winter dusk each with his own thoughts to go home to their suppers.” (McCarthy, 189).

I’m still unsure as to the specifics of this passage. Whether it’s referring to the new or old world, or if it’s in a dream or real life, I’m still not sure. With McCarthy’s writing style, it’s difficult to decipher exactly what type of recollection/dream the man is having here. Part of me wants to think that the scene is an actual happening in the story, but I’m not sure how snakes would’ve survived the apocalypse or gathered into such a huge group if they did. Plus, it wouldn’t make sense for the men to have not cooked and eaten the snakes seeing that live animals were basically extinct. Nevertheless, too much doubt remains in my mind to make a decision in regards to the details of the passage.
Aside from this confusion, I was intrigued by the odd concept that McCarthy presents here. Just picturing a group of guys scorching a bunch of snakes for no reason other than to create a tangible image for the evil surrounding them is very eerie. Taking into consideration the lack of food and supplies in the new world, it’s absurd that the men would waste the snakes as food and the gasoline for nothing more than a sick form of entertainment. And, even if the whole thing was a dream, how in the world did McCarthy think of something so weird to put inside the already grim novel?

“And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun” (McCarthy, 219).

Seeing that isolation and loneliness surround the man, the boy, and most of the other survivors in The Road, this passage stuck out to me as the peak of the man’s desire to encounter fellow “good guys”. After reaching the coast, it seems that the man is filled with anticlimactic feelings, desiring to see a colony of survivors, a hint of new life near the ocean, or some sort of other salvation from what had become their everyday hell. It’s hard not to feel for the man here, as all of his hopes seemed to be invested in the unseen promises along the southern coast.

In a way, I can relate to the man’s curiosity about the doings of distant people. Sitting on a snowy ridge in the woods while deer hunting, I’m often consumed in my own thoughts, wondering how many other hunters are sitting on distant snowy ridges in distant places. Although the man and boy’s solitude was generally ruined by the constant worry of survival, there’s something that can be found in those quiet moments that is better than anything that can be experienced in the presence of others.

“There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who’s not honored here today. Whatever form you spoke of you were right” (McCarthy, 277).

Of the many confusing passages present in The Road, this one gave me considerably more trouble. My first thoughts turned to the prophet part. Was there some prophet who had predicted the apocalypse that destroyed the old world, or had the man been some sort of prophet in his experience in both the old and new worlds? Also, who is the man referring to with the form of something being spoken of? I tried to fit the boy into the picture here, but it just didn’t seem to fit. This made me conclude that the man must’ve been referring to some God-like being or prophet who had already passed, or possibly his late wife.

Shifting back to the first portion of the passage, it seems that the man may have been consoling his son in his death, pointing out that the “good guys” would be honored in their death for surviving such a rough life in the new world.

With his death, the man left behind a legacy of profound love that allowed him to prolong both his life and the life of his son, allowing the boy to continue to carry the fire with his new family after the man’s death.

Aside from the hideously depressing plotline of the book, I must say that The Road was still a great novel because of its ability to evoke such strong emotions within me, the reader. I will most likely check out some more of McCarthy’s work, but only after reading reviews to see if they are anywhere near as depressing as this one was.

What a book.

I have to agree with Mr. Kreinbring about feeling sad. When the father died, I started to tear just a little. Throughout the book I wanted them to succeed and find the sanctuary that this road could be taking them to, but I wanted them to be there together. Although we never know what happens to the boy, we know that his father has died and he has to leave him in order to continue on. I believe that the father taught the boy well, and that the boy continued to live based on the things that his father taught him.

“In the nights sometimes now he’d wake in the black and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun” (McCarthy 272).

This quote clarifies the fate of the man. Earlier in the book he mentioned to the boy that good dreams were a bad sign that death was coming, and sure enough the man died soon after. Although I’m not entirely sure if the man believed that was true, I do feel that it is ironic that he died shortly after having pleasant dreams.

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
…Getting up this morning” (McCarthy 272).

This quote to me reflects the passion that the man has for surviving on behalf of his son. He knows that death will soon be upon them, but he wants to be strong and brave for his son. He wants to continue moving for his son even though it’s killing him.

“Each the other’s world entire” (McCarthy 6).
This quote also reflects the selfless devotion each has for the other. Without the son’s affection and need for his father, there would be no father. Without the father’s passion to protect and love endlessly unto his son, there would be no son. This quote really puts into perspective their reasons for living, and their desires to live for each other.

All in all, I’d say that The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a good read about human devotion, and the drive that a father and his son have for staying alive in apocalyptic conditions. This book had ups and downs and dramatic twists and turns that caused me to read further into the tragic story that revolved around The Road.

He’s been visited in a dream by creatures of a kind he’d never seen before. They did not speak. He thuoght that they’d been crouching by the side of his cot as he slpet and then had skulked away on his awakening. He turned and looked at the boy. Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himslef an alien. A being from another planet that no longer existed. (pg 139) Mccarthy

A few sentences after i stopped copying this passage, Mccarthy explains further that the world he knew that was lost was already lost for the boy. But, WOW. When I read this I was so excited to know that somebody else out there might have thought their parents were aliens when they were younger! So, Mccarthy talks about how the man understands that the boy does not encounter loving, caring, and good people in this newly godforsaken world. The man is every bit alien to the boy.

When I was little, I would gaze at my parents and wonder. What the heck? What are these creatures? Are they living like me? Do they feel like me? Then, one day my mother explained to me that she and my father had feelings too , and that every person had feelings and thoughts just like me. Now, this was hard for me to understand. When I touched another human, I couldn’t feel it. So, it was weird. Anyways, I thought my parents were aliens. Heh heh.

This passage was easily relatable to me and I understood what the man was trying to process in his mind about his boy.

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there. (pg 152) Mccarthy

Heh. This quote. What this old man was saying to the main man is 100% the truth. Tomorrow doesnt give a crap about anything. It just comes. The days press on and the nights diminish, but when you wake up it still feels the same. It looks the same. YOU might think that the days are numbered, but they arent. When things happen, they’ll happen. A lot of people say that this book is so brutal and bold. Actually, I think its a little soft. Its not that heartwrenching or ear twisting that you sit back and you’re like HOLY CRAP! THEY CAN PUT THAT IN A BOOK?!!?!?!? It speaks a little dirty, I’ll admit. By dirty, I mean truthfully. I’m going to brainstorm a little here.

What if you knew tomorrow wouldn’t come? Would you still get ready for it?

Brainstorm time:
There will be people who will answer yes because they will retort that anything can happen. And there will be people freaking out and having panic attacks at the thought of their lives ending at 12:00 am. Then there will be people stocking up on crap anyway and those who are running around telling everyone all the things that wish they had said and more.
I would prefer to do all the things that i normally did and just see what happens. I would not take any special precautions or make any “amends.” And who knows. Maybe tomorrow will be the most amazing thing thas ever happened to me.

The boy watched him. In some other world the child would already have begun to vacate him from his life. But he had no life other. He knew the boy lay awake in the night and listened to hear if he were breathing. (pg242) Mccarthy

Well this passage proves my theory was true. I had formed a theory about what the woman had said earlier in the book to the man about creating a ghost to nurture in order to survive. In the man’s case it was his son. But, in this passage, the man ponders that another son somewhere else would have already left his father for the same reasons that the man’s wife had left him. Guilt, selfishness, sorrow, defeat. The child knew the sickness the man carried. He could have left his father already, but he chose not to because the child knew all the things that his father did for him despite his illness. Both were carrying the fire. The fire that burns with love, care, and hope. The father always made sure for the boy, no matter what he was feeling. And, the boy always wanted to help other folk in need despite the rations he had. I understand that the mother did not have the fire, and if she did it had gone out by the time she told the man that death is her savior.

People are always trying to take the fire from others who have it. They always want more. It is like a power that radiates inside of a person and shimmers around those who come in contact with that person. People get envious and try their best to take what they can so that others can feel their own displeasure with themselves. In, The Road, people were always trying to take away what others had, searching for the fire. But, mostly the world taught them that the fire did not exist and they misjudged others and even themselves.

Final Ponderings

I liked the message I found in the book. The “carrying the fire” is relatable and makes sense under the circumstances of the world Mccarthy painted. However, the book gets very repetitive and i found myself reading the same passages over and over. Not literally. I mean every page is the same thing. Every chapter was the same.
The man and child find a house. It looks dangerous. It is gray outside. I’m cold. What’s happening? I don’t know. I’m scared. The ashes kept falling.

How boring!! I understand the circumstances and I can put myself in both the shoes of the man and the boy, but I didnt feel a tug at my heart or my brain. The ending was….okay? The man dies right, (but i thought the kid would go first so nevermind Kelsey you didn’t ruin it for me ^-^) and then the boy finds some other guy who he thinks is carrying the fire as well. When the father told the son that “You should do everything as we did” and then the son presumably didnt, I was a little mad. I mean c’mon he could have at least said a prayer of apologies to his dad that he was going to try a different route with this new guy. But, I guess this is the open note Mccarthy left on. The last page talks about how a woman comforts the boy and paints a possible beautifully replaced world. I’m a little confused. Is that what happened, or is that last paragraph a side note. Whatever. It’s still an open-ended ending.

The book was not that brutal as I mentioned before. There was only one instance where I was astonished, but it read like something out of The Hills Have Eyes movies, so it was’nt that bad.
Mccarthy’s writing style is fine with me. I was not annoyed at all without the use of grammar or puncuation. This is because i hate doing both and its not really needed if you can understand what going on, then that’s enough. When I read something, and it’s all perfect with all perfect grammar and dialogue, it becomes less of an artwork and more of a business report. I want to read the passion in a sentence. And if that sentences reads “not to be made right again” instead of “never to be made right again” then so be it.

p.s. that quote is pg 254 Mccarthy

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.” (McCarthy, 54)

These lines truly exemplify what the man is feeling, what he is going through. Although by reading the book you get an understanding of the position the boy and his father are in, this passage marks the first time where I genuinely feel the father’s hopelessness.

McCarthy is saying that there is nothing for the man to do and nothing for him to look forward to. The days “are what they are”, there is nothing to come. His pain and grief is large. He feels as though he has nothing, then he looks at his son and says “I have you”. Even though he is in a situation where it would be easy for one to give up, he sees his son and realizes that he has everything to live for.

I believe that everyone needs to have something to look forward to that keeps them going. For the man it is his son. For me, it is my faith. Knowing that there is someone much larger than all of us that is watching over everyone gives me comfort and lets me know that whatever happens, I am never alone. Knowing that I have a purpose and that I was put on this earth for a reason gives me motivation.

Hmm.
Has anyone else began reading Autobiography of a Face? Can we still blog about this book here even with all the other entries about The Road? Hmm. Well here goes anyway.

I started reading Autobiography of A Face and I paused to blog at pg 102. And it’s like midnight. Ha ha ha I laugh at me.

When I started reading the book, I was expecting a heart wrenching story about a girl who has been emotionally traumitized by her experiences with severe physical deformities. However, I researched Lucy Grealy’s photograph, and I didn’t think she was ugly at all. In fact, her missing jaw isn’t really that noticeable. Her big, gleaming eyes are more of what attracts my attention. So, I was a little puzzled when I began reading her story.

I enjoy her writing, it is very descriptive, as most literature is. Her thoughts are easy to read, but what I’ve found is that she likes to put a lot of odd words I dont normally hear in sentences that really dont require such eloquency. Ha. See? I just did it right there. Basically, I’m saying she uses a lot of word fluff, but it’s not so painful.
I feel what she is saying, especially about her epiphanies and revelations she has with the world. There is a particular revelation she had with her father, as she was about to recieve her chemotheraphy that i really understood what she was talking about.
Her tone seems a little negative to me, almost like she is mocking the world she sees, but sometimes she throws in beauty and randomness that illustrates her memories into my brain as though they’ve always been there. It’s odd. In my mind, the scenes of her life are almost aged with a sort of yellow tint and seem to pass hazily through my amphitheater.

As I read more, I will be a little more descriptive in my entries. At least I hope. If I don’t get agitated with this book. I just wanted to share my intitial thoughts on the first 100 pages that I have experienced. I mean 102 pages.

^-^

“There was light all about him.” (McCarthy, 277)

This quote stood out to me at first, but I just continued reading, not really thinking that much on it, treating it like just any other sentence in the world. However, when I read this part of the novel I was babysitting and had turned on the classical world music station for the baby to sleep to. After reading about two pages I heard a song that I liked, it almost seemed to fit the mood of the story perfectly. So, naturally, I looked up to find out what the song was called; the song’s title was “Bright Silence, Quiet Light”. This struck me as odd since I had just read about how the father had seen light all about the boy. I then went back to the quote that I had previously over looked and thought about it. It seemed to fit perfectly with the song that was playing.

This strange event made me think about the way things work in the world. Why do things really happen the way they do? How do so many things get overlooked only to turn out important later? Which begs the question, what made McCarthy want to write something like this in the first place? I know that other authors have written about doom and the end of the world, but why would one want to write about it? It’s such a depressing topic that I almost didn’t want to read it; however, the novel was compelling and one of the best summer novels we’ve had in a while. Still, why would one write it? Was McCarthy depressed? Did he just want to challenge the ideals and shake up his readers? Did he just want to make us think? I believe it to be a mix of these things. Most good authors like to make their readers think and the way McCarthy wanted to do this was to challenge the way that we look at the world. Most of us, or at least most of the people I know, think of the world as a very happy place, and don’t ever think anything bad is going to happy to them. However, in McCarthy’s novel, it’s dark, unhappy, and bad things are always happening.

Thinking about these questions reminds me of the new movie that’s coming out, 2012. It makes us think about the end of the world and what we would really be facing, expect this movie sets an exact time that the world will end and shows OUR world collapsing around us. It challenges OUR world, instead of the world in McCarthy’s novel. His world is only imaginary to us, we don’t know if it’s ours or what happened to it. But maybe he did this on purpose so that reader’s all over the world could relate, and he wouldn’t have to write the thing a million times depending on each section of the world.

“There was light all about him.” (McCarthy, 277)

This quote stood out to me at first, but I just continued reading, not really thinking that much on it, treating it like just any other sentence in the world. However, when I read this part of the novel I was babysitting and had turned on the classical world music station for the baby to sleep to. After reading about two pages I heard a song that I liked, it almost seemed to fit the mood of the story perfectly. So, naturally, I looked up to find out what the song was called; the song’s title was “Bright Silence, Quiet Light”. This struck me as odd since I had just read about how the father had seen light all about the boy. I then went back to the quote that I had previously over looked and thought about it. It seemed to fit perfectly with the song that was playing.

This strange event made me think about the way things work in the world. Why do things really happen the way they do? How do so many things get overlooked only to turn out important later? Which begs the question, what made McCarthy want to write something like this in the first place? I know that other authors have written about doom and the end of the world, but why would one want to write about it? It’s such a depressing topic that I almost didn’t want to read it; however, the novel was compelling and one of the best summer novels we’ve had in a while. Still, why would one write it? Was McCarthy depressed? Did he just want to challenge the ideals and shake up his readers? Did he just want to make us think? I believe it to be a mix of these things. Most good authors like to make their readers think and the way McCarthy wanted to do this was to challenge the way that we look at the world. Most of us, or at least most of the people I know, think of the world as a very happy place, and don’t ever think anything bad is going to happy to them. However, in McCarthy’s novel, it’s dark, unhappy, and bad things are always happening.

Thinking about these questions reminds me of the new movie that’s coming out, 2012. It makes us think about the end of the world and what we would really be facing, expect this movie sets an exact time that the world will end and shows OUR world collapsing around us. It challenges OUR world, instead of the world in McCarthy’s novel. His world is only imaginary to us, we don’t know if it’s ours or what happened to it. But maybe he did this on purpose so that reader’s all over the world could relate, and he wouldn’t have to write the thing a million times depending on each section of the world.

This is the last of my thoughts on the road and I found it to be an excellent novel that challenges what we believe, our thoughts on life, and for me, I was able to relate to it (weird, but true). This novel was worth reading!

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (McCarthy, 130)
The Road was one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Though I hated the novel through and through, its writing was undeniably poignant. There were little gems of sentences scattered throughout the novel which made me stop to think and analyze our bizarre existence: we wake in the morning, do our respective duties in the afternoon, and sleep at night. We’ve created a ground-breaking concept called ‘leisure time,’ where we put aside the duties we’ve created for ourselves and acknowledge our existence. What a brilliant and original concept— never mind that the rest of the species which co-habit our world do that just about every day!
We humans have successfully managed to fool ourselves into thinking of this as ‘our world.’ We’ve destroyed the planet, built buildings, created jobs, and generally made ourselves miserable. But in reality, whose world is this? That seems to be the first question raised by The Road. For if this was really our world, then we would have been able to control it, right? The same way we control our friends and children and dogs from doing stupid things, we would have been able to stop our world from destroying itself. McCarthy’s unnamed apocalypse hones the reality of a borrowed world. Everything that we possess comes from a source—from the planet. We borrow the planet’s resources to fulfill our ‘higher-intellect’ needs. Even our time on this planet is borrowed: we can’t control when we die. Time takes us as and when it fancies. In the end, we’re all just spectators in the Grand Play of Life. What we can control—our time on earth—we’ve managed to fill with mind-numbing drudgery.

The man inhabited our borrowed world when we tried to micromanage it, and continues to inhabit our borrowed world after the loss of our structure and organization . Cannibalism seems to have become mainstream. Infants are gutted and beheaded and roasted. This is the Tomorrow that McCarthy has painted for us. The beauty of this Tomorrow is the irony of Today. We spend our lives working towards the future, assuring ourselves that once we get to Tomorrow we will slow our pace and take life one day at a time. But this never happens: time flies, and we will pass high school, college, and grad school, land jobs, get married, start families, raise children. What happened to our past promise? We push it off again to the invisible Tomorrow. The sad truth is that we haven’t very many Tomorrows left.

Hello. So I realize I’m very late posting about The Road. I’ve had the book finished for awhile, but for some reason didn’t get around to posting my thoughts on the passages. But anyway on to my thoughts about this book!

This book was extremely straightforward, and not what I expected for an AP English book, but it held my attention. It was very repetitive. We walk, we stop, we find something, we see dead people, repeat. But I suppose this was necessary so that you could see the character’s emotions changing throughout the book and their bond growing stronger through their struggles and disagreements.

The passages I highlighted may seem extremely random, but I just highlighted them because they stuck out to me. So here’s the first one!

“And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.” (McCarthy 11)

This quote definitely caught me off guard. It’s only the 11th page in, and the boy is already questioning death. The father’s response to the boy’s question was expected. What else is he supposed to say? The only more comforting answer I can think of would be “You won’t die, you needn’t worry about that”. And though he does end up saying this quite a few times later, they both know it is inevitably a lie. Their circumstances are dire, and food and shelter aren’t a constant in their lives. All of this is obvious. The reason I find the father’s response significant is that it is a clue into the fact that his only reason for living is his son. If he did not have a son, he would have killed himself long before. The boy means so much to him, because he feels he must protect him, even in death.

Later in the novel though, the man becomes aware he cannot take care of his son forever, and must let go. It’s a classic parent-child relationship, but with much many more consequences and responsibility. The fact that the boy has to go on his own, means the father must come to grips with the fact he cannot protect his son any longer, and is ready to die. However, I do believe that the skills and morals the father taught his son throughout the novel will protect him throughout the rest of his life, whether either of them realize this when he dies or not.

“He said that the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death.” (McCarthy 18)

The man probably has no expertise on dreams and is just saying this. But, it’s hard to tell whether the man actually believed this, or just said it to reassure himself and his son when they had nightmares. To an average healthy person living in mainstream society today, there are no lingering thoughts of death hanging above them, so they just accept nightmares for nightmares, and happy dreams as happy dreams. But the man didn’t accept things as they came to him, he usually had to find meaning behind what happened.

My theory is that the man usually had nightmares, so this is what was normal to him. His everyday life was a nightmare so it was nothing out of the ordinary. But, when he had a good dream, it reminded him of his old life before the ‘world ended’. Good dreams were so foreign to him from what he was used to; he had to believe good dreams were the call of death in order to justify that his nightmares were normal. The human mind can manipulate the way you think and even invent new facts so that things seem better. It’s a part of life, and the man cannot be blamed; though I did think this was very interesting.

“The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be. The burning snakes twisted horribly and some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses. As they were mute there were no screams of pain and the men watched them burn and writhe and blacken in just such silence themselves…” (McCarthy, 188-189)
After my initial cloud of depression and anger passed, I hoped that the worst of the pain in The Road was over. I was wrong; McCarthy had much more, much worse stuff up his sleeve. The man’s flashback of animal cruelty in the middle of his post-apocalyptic sickness struck me as odd: an odd connection to a past world that the man continually pines for. This quote was heartbreaking, to the point that I cried for these ink-and-paper snakes and their horrible ordeal. McCarthy paints a very graphic picture, and while the passage makes beautiful use of language, the question that is raised is ‘why?’ McCarthy’s novel seems carefully planned and plotted to deliver the most punch possible, so why does The Road deviate all of a sudden?
The deviation is strategic. The passage serves to put mankind’s foolishness into perspective: there is no light without dark, and similarly there is no good without evil. Good and evil co-exist within all of us, yet for the most part we assign ‘good’ labels to certain things and ‘evil’ labels to others. Snakes, sadly, got stuck with the ‘evil’ label, and as the man relates, he was either witness to or partook in burning a ball of snakes alive. The man and his peers, by burning a representation of evil, hope to have made a dent in all the evil in the world. They are just average people trying to make sense of a confusing world, where the contradictions are endless and opinions are infinite. The burning snakes are a symbol of good trumping evil, a theme parallel to light overcoming dark that recurs several times in the book.
This is ironic in many ways; McCarthy is similar to Jane Austen (sorry, RK) for his mastery of irony. Evil takes many forms, and despite all the myths, I doubt that snakes are one of them. The most common form is that of a man or a woman—of you or me. It’s ironic that the man and his peers try to get rid of something that is intrinsic in them, because evil can never be destroyed. As long as there are people, there will be evil. It’s the universe’s balance; everything exists in pairs. McCarthy makes several nods to this truth—even the man and the boy are an example of the universe’s balancing act. A child and an adult; innocence and hope versus knowledge and skepticism.
In the end, innocence and hope live on while skepticism perishes. The man’s death is heart-wrenching in the same bare beauty that defines The Road. If anything, McCarthy teaches us that beauty does not have to be glorified. Simplicity is beauty. The novel’s plot is stripped to the bare bones, and the language isn’t too difficult or abstruse, but the book is beautiful beyond belief. Even those that are skeptical or dislike the book fall to its charms, like me.
The Road did wear down my skepticism as it progressed. Skeptics usually don’t get so mired in the novel that they take away wisdom from it; that’s a fanatic’s job. Skeptics also don’t begin to second-guess their existence like a couch philosopher. I suppose that’s the effect McCarthy wanted: for people to question the things they’ve taken for granted for so long. In the end, The Road raised so many questions, most of which I’d no answers to.
Perhaps McCarthy has some answers to those meaning-of-our-existence questions. Maybe, if I one day met him, I’d get these questions answered. Or maybe the book was his way of asking himself these questions, and maybe he’s on the same road as us (pardon the pun).

“In a pocket of his knapsack he’d found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim.
You promised not to do that, the boy said.
What?
You know what, Papa.
He poured the hot water back into the pan and took the boy’s cup and poured some of the cocoa into his own and then handed it back.” (McCarthy 34)

This passage stood out to me right away. It shows that the man cares much more about the boys health and happiness than he does about his own. A lot of people tend to put others first, but usually make a big deal out of it, or at least make an effort to make sure their actions are noticed. While people do like to help others, I believe most of their satisfaction comes from being thanked or appreciated for doing kind gestures. The man however, is different. He actually went out of his way to make sure the boy didn’t notice he was doing a nice thing for him. He didn’t care about praise, and he didn’t do it to make himself feel good. Though giving him cocoa may be a small gesture, it’s a sign of something much more. He genuinely cares about his son more than anything else in the world; and this passage may be the best example of that.

“I don’t know. Maybe you should always be on the lookout. If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.” (McCarthy 151)

This passage is always so confusing to me. In real life, yes, it does seem that things come to one when one least expects it. But it’s hard to believe that just by having an expectation, one can stop something from happening. It’s completely irrational. Also, throughout the book, the man was on the lookout the entire time. But trouble still found them. Expecting trouble will not prevent it, it will simply prepare one for it. And even if one is prepared, things can go awry.
And also, if this concept holds true for fortune as well as trouble, they should have found fortune throughout the book. They were never expecting anything good to happen, just hoping. And when it’s not expected, shouldn’t it happen?

I’ve thought about this concept of expecting and receiving for awhile after I read that in the book and still don’t think I will ever be able to understand it without getting confused. If one doesn’t expect something, then they’re expecting nothing, so anything could happen? I don’t know. But it is a good passage and provokes a lot of thought. This may not have made any sense but I enjoyed the passage enough to share my thoughts on it.

“He cut his own hair but it didn’t come out so good. He trimmed his beard with the scissors while a pan of water heated and then he shaved himself with a plastic safety razor. The boy watched. When he was done he regarded himself in the mirror. He seemed to have no chin. He turned to the boy. How do I look? The boy cocked his head. I don’t know, he said. Will you be cold?” (McCarthy 152)

This may be my favorite quote out of the entire book. It’s subtle, yet gets the point across that there is no other goal in the man and boy’s lives except to survive. In today’s society, especially among teenagers, one of a person’s greatest worries is how they look. The man is still somewhat attached to the idea of having a nice appearance, because that was the world he grew up in. But the boy sees absolutely no sense in worrying about how his father looks when he could die from freezing to death. Whether or not McCarthy put this in there to get the reader to think about their priorities, it definitely made me think about mine, and how lucky we are to have such small worries.

“You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldn’t understand him. What? He said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.”(McCarthy 259)

This is the moment where the man finally realizes he’s not going to be there for his son forever. Up to this point, he’s basically been making all the decisions and just protecting the boy. As much as the man thinks and talks about death, he really didn’t plan ahead for the fact that the boy is going to want to be his own person and make his own decisions. The time-line is unclear in the book, but by this time I’d say the boy is either a young teenager, or close to it. Which is the time when most children start wanting independence from their parents. The boy cannot have independence though, because his father is the only person he has, and has no choice but to stay with him. This is also reiterated in another quote:

“In some other world the child would already have begun to vacate him from his life. But he had no life other.” (McCarthy 273)

By this point, his father has begun to die, and accept the fact the boy will be moving on while he dies alone. They had talked about the boy killing himself if the father were to die earlier in the novel, but this is no longer the case. Throughout the book the boy has grown up significantly, forming his own opinions on life and death, different from his fathers. He’s much more trusting than his father, for better or worse. Offsprings of every species eventually leave their parents and move on, it’s just a part of life. It’s definitely a lot more emotional in this book than in any other circumstance because they were “each the other’s world entire”(McCarthy 6). The father may have been a little overbearing, and the boy may have been too apprehensive but by the end it’s obvious they have built a bond stronger than one is possible in today’s society. Out of disasters come beautiful things, and though we never learned how or why the world ended– at least one positive relationship came out of it. If the circumstances in the story were positive, there’s no way the father and son would have become and close and brave as they did.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (McCarthy, 12)

When I first read this line of the book I let out a chuckle or two at its complete relevance to life in general. People can forget about the little things of their past but can easily remember a mistake or embarrassing moment that they would love to forget about. In terms of The Road, it’s obvious that the man wants desperately to remember times before destruction and ashes. Unfortunately, what the man will remember throughout his journey are frightening images of burning and death that he would much rather forget. I also realized that Katie commented on this quote as well and I completely agree that this quote sums up the book in its entirety as well as “real life.” I’m sure we all have things that we wish we could remember, or things that we would much rather forget about.

As I “dug deeper” (hooray for AP Government!) into the book, I came across another line referring to what the man believes about memories. Upon gathering priceless memories about the life he had before, the man states “What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.” (McCarthy, 131) Throughout the book, the man tries incredibly hard to remember the little things of his life before, such as his woman and other memories which tend to show up in the form of dreams. Whether these recollections are true or not, the man has the ability to shape what memories he has into whatever he pleases to make his life the least bit bearable. The man’s memories are real to him, and that’s what counts in his struggle to survive.

It’s obvious Cormac McCarthy hadn’t used proper or conventional grammar through out his book. Readers may like or dislike his style of writing but the whole book is full of fragments and run-on sentences. These were meant to symbolize the jumbled thoughts of a man put in a situation and world where grammar is just not important anymore. In fact, it’s probably the most unimportant priority at this point. It only makes sense that McCarthy used narrative to represent the stream of conscious coming from a man who is just trying to focus on surviving for both himself and his son. There’s a lack of structure and punctuation in the thought process- especially when in a state of panic. That’s what I think might have been McCarthy’s intent. He’s trying to bestow panic and fear among the reader to help them understand what the man and the boy are going through.

“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already?” ( McCarthy, 88-89)

I think this passage is important because it might give a little insight as to why the man and the boy don’t have names. They’re trying to survive an apocalypse. Both of them are scared and in fear that they won’t make it to the next day. Their only focus is to make it, to live for each other. So it’s understandable as to why they would forget the normal world. Everything’s dark and grey and miserable. Anything that they had before is gone, along with any sort of life they had before disaster fell upon them. So at this point, is having a name important? The only importance to them now is each other, because each other is all they have.

“He was beginning to think that death was finally upon them… There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasnt about death. He wasnt sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or goodness. Things he’d no longer any way to think about at all.” (McCarthy, 129- 130)

This passage is probably my favorite, strictly because you get a feel of how important the boy is to this story. It’s obvious that the man is trying to save the boy because he’s his son and because he loves him. But what if it’s bigger then that? What if the man feels a bigger moral obligation to humanity and civilization? They have an on going conversation throughout the book about them being the “good guys” and you learn how important that is to them- especially to the boy. The boy’s innocence may be another reason of motivation for the man. Why else haven’t they fallen to cannibalism in order to survive? The man has a deep sense of his morals, conscious, and sense of what’s right and wrong. He passes this to his son. And even though they are staring death straight in the face, they will not give in to such monstrous and grotesque behavior. It’s apparent that the man cherishes the boy’s goodness and kindness. I think that’s the reason why he’s fighting so hard to keep the boy alive- to keep what little good they have in this world.
I really think that this is a message from McCarthy about his fear of what our world could turn into. He doesn’t give a reason as to why the world is ending, just that it is. I think that’s a scary thought. Anything can cause the world as we know it to end. It could be because of war or global warming- both of which are becoming worse and worse because of us. We could be the reason why the world would end.
I think that McCarthy uses the boy’s kindness and hope, as a message of encouragement to embrace the goodness in the world. There is a scarce amount of pure goodness in people these days, and perhaps it’s time to change.

The minute I began reading Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett, I knew I was in for a smooth clear read. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy was good, but it was confusing and the flashbacks and random poetic phrases threw me for a loop.

I became immediately comfortable with the clear and understandable way Patchett writes. I also find her imagery descriptions attractive and clear.

I noticed shortly after beginning the book that Lucy gives these long italicized letters from the future, and it becomes clear that this book is written in a flashback stlye.

Even early on in the book I really sympathize with Lucy in her relationships. She just wants to be loved, and she feels that her physical condition is hindering her from finding it. So in her quest for love, she is sleeping with guys trying to make them love her, which is not doing much for her in the long run.

Even though I am only on chapter two, I feel that this book has some good potential and I’d like to see what happens to these two very different characters.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.” (McCarthy 54)

As I read this passage I was trying to decide if this one was a better summary of The Road over the remembering what you want to forget passage. I still can’t decide which one is the better summary, but this quote has its strengths just like the earlier one. I pulled two interesting traits about this passage. The first being the overall idea of “No Day but Today” and the second being the man’s definition of beauty.

This passage describes how disaster can change one’s opinion of life. The man has learned that his days are numbered, and thus concludes that it is very important to live in the now, and not be in constant worry about what tomorrow could bring. Being the theatre geek that I am, I’m going to connect this passage to the song “No Day but Today” from the Broadway musical Rent. This song is performed by characters who have survived from AIDS, so far. It seems as though the people singing this song have found something to live for, which will consume what time they may have. In a way the man is similar to these characters because his time is also limited and he has something worthwhile to consume the time he has on Earth, his son.

Secondly, I was quite interested in this passage because it shows how the definition of beauty is completely different, depending on who you’re talking to and under what circumstances. In this passage, it’s clear that the beauty in the man’s life is his son. In a later passage the man states that “The boy was so thin. He watched him while he slept. Taut face and hollow eyes. A strange beauty.” (McCarthy 102) It’s amusing to me that society’s definition of beauty describes supermodels or celebrities while this simple man’s definition of beauty is deeper and more meaningful. To the man, the only beautiful thing in the world is the person whom he loves the most.

But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?
Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.
(McCarthy)

This quote seemed important to me because it represented a bit of foreshadowing. As the book progressed I could predict that somehow the boy and his father would be separated, however I did not know how. This quote told me that when the separation eventually did happen, the boy would do well without the man. Although the man was talking about another little boy when he said this, I felt as though he was reassuring himself and the little boy when he said “Goodness will find the boy”. Although the book ended without out any clarification of the boy’s fate, this quote gives me the sense that the family the boy meets in the end, will take care of the boy because they are, in fact, the good guys.

Sorry, I forgot the page number for my previous entry. It was on page 281.

She would sometimes talk about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father.
(McCarthy 286)

For survivors in a seemingly post-apocalyptic book, one such as myself would think that survivors would lose faith in God or at least lose their relationship with God. I was quite surprised when the woman that the boy meet after his father’s death spoke of and spoke to God. I also found it interesting that that boy tried to speak to God also, but was happier and found comfort in talking to his father. For some, God can be a being who is not actually there, but the person is able to continuously find comfort in that guiding voice.

Before I started reading “The Road”, Kelsey Hannaford told about me about the weird punctuation and McCarthy’s different style of writing. As an avid reader I was ready for anything, since I have read books in verse, books where the words formed pictures, and some books that contained completely made up words and the reader was forced to understand this new, made up language. Once I started the book I guess one would say the I was a bit disappointed, although the McCarthy’s style of writing can be a bit confusing at first, it’s easy to pick up on. I did appreciate his style though, because I prefer creativity in writers, even if it’s through different fonts, the flow of the words, or the type of word used to paint a picture in my mind.

Also, one thing that seemed to bother some is the fact that McCarthy did not explain how the world ended. I found this incredibly inspiring. Without the explanation, my mind was forced to wonder what could have wiped out entire populations of people and animals. What could have started such powerful, sweeping fires? McCarthy’s lack of answers made the book more interesting to me, because I am the type of person who doesn’t dwell on the future and likes to be surprised by life. So when the world does end in a wash of flames, I’ll be the last to know.

Oh right, responding to the blog. I’m on it.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that the main characters didn’t have names. I think that the anonymity of the main characters names is used to add to the mystery of the novel, and in turn cause the reader to have to think about the story. McCarthy puts emphasis on the unknown throughout the journey; he doesn’t mention their names, he doesn’t say what the apocalypse was, and in reality the man and the boy really don’t know where they’re going. Yes, they’re following the road to the coast and then south, but they don’t know what they’ll find there, if anything at all.

I also agree with Eric’s thought about how McCarthy wrote the story. It had a first person type feel to it for being written in third person, and I did see it as sort of a diary. Writing is sometimes used as a type of therapy, and I think that after an apocalypse most people could probably benefit from whatever form of therapy they could get. I know the man keeping a diary or journal isn’t mentioned in the book, but I can easily imagine him doing so, with all the stops he frequently made for the boy to rest and every night.

“You have some.
He took the can [of Coca Cola] and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here.
It’s because I wont ever get to drink another one, isn’t it?” (McCarthy 23-24)

This passage stood out to me because it puts a different looking perspective on what the man and the boy are enduring, and a different way for a reader to try and relate to their situation. Nobody knows what the world would be like in a post apocalyptic state. It’s impossible for most of us to truly imagine going days without eating, and traveling down a road where we don’t know what we’ll find. The fact that the can of Cola, something that if I wanted to I could buy every day from the vending machines in the cafeteria, is a once in a lifetime drink for the boy puts a new spin on how bad things are for them, and what we take for granted in our everyday life.

“I should have done it a long time ago. When there were three bullets in the gun instead of two. I was stupid. We’ve been over all of this. I didn’t bring myself to this. I was brought. And now I’m done… I’d take him with me if it weren’t for you. You know I would. It’s the right thing to do.” (McCarthy 56)

This flashback caught my attention mainly because it included the character presumed to be the man’s significant other and the boy’s mother. It answered one of my initial questions when I began reading, which was the circumstances of the boy’s mother’s lack of appearance- did she die before or after the apocalypse, were they separated afterwards, or was it something else? Additionally, the quote itself made me ask the question if the woman’s idea of what was best for the boy was better than the path the man chose. Both of them obviously care about the boy, but their ideas of what was best for him could not be more different. I spent a fair amount of time contemplating which path I would have chosen in that situation. If I were in the role of the man and I had chosen to live and embark along the road, upon my time of death I would probably be asking myself if prolonging it for so long with still no more signs of hope was worth it. For the man, I think it was, as he did have hope and he was “carrying the fire”. Personally, I doubt I would have been so hopeful, and probably would have regretted my decision.

“If you break little promises you’ll break big ones. That’s what you said.” (McCarthy 34)
“We should go get him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us. We could take him and we could take the dog. The dog could catch something to eat.
We cant.
And I’d give the little boy half of my food.
Stop it. We cant.” (McCarthy 86)
“You should thank him you know, the man said. I wouldn’t have given you anything.” (McCarthy 173)

The above quotes show the slight differences between the man and the boy in their morality. While they are both the “good guys” and both maintain their high morals, such as not eating other humans, the man has more of a realistic view of their situation, while the boy tries to keep his high principles, sometimes at the expense of his own well-being. I think this difference in their views makes their companionship along the road a necessity. If the boy were alone, he would not be able to survive (excluding his obvious disadvantage of being very young) because he would be too generous trying to save everyone he comes across. If the man were alone, I believe that his level of morality would be lower than if he were with the boy, and he would start to gradually shy away from being one of the “good guys”. No, I don’t believe that he would make such a drastic change such as eating other humans to survive, but I think that the boy keeps the man at his very best and without him the man would compromise his morality more if it offered him a better chance at survival.

“When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you.” (McCarthy 189)

This is probably one of the most demoralizing, yet at the same time inspirational, quotes I’ve ever read. When I read the first sentence, it makes me want to lose all hope for the boy of ever escaping the life along the road he appears destined to live. At the same time, it’s the truth of the situation the man and the boy are in. If they begin to become even the slightest bit content with the way their life is, then they won’t have the drive to continue on seeking the “good guys”. The end of the quote finishes a powerful statement from the man, who once again proves his love for the boy and his desire to protect the boy and give him the best life possible under the circumstances.

Overall, I really didn’t care for the book. The storyline was too repetitive for my liking, them running out of food, finding food before they starve, facing an obstacle in their path, repeat. Although I suppose that in an environment like the man and the boy are in that would be a realistic life for them; nevertheless, it bored me. I also found it difficult to relate to the man and the boy, as the dynamic of my relationship with my dad is entirely different from the one they have, and I couldn’t put myself in their position.

As I began reading The Road, I thought the book was going to be filled with destruction and depression. I was partially correct. The novel definitely was depressing and filled with loss and hopelessness. However, I found love to be one of the highlighted elements of the novel. The love between the man and his son was a bond that was unimaginably deep. They were suffering the harshest conditions, yet they were moving forward together.

“But he knew that if he were a good father still it might well be as she said. That the boy was all that stood between him and death.” (McCarthy 29)

This statement holds true throughout the entire novel and is one of the main themes of the book in my opinion. I believe that if his son was never born, the man would have died long before the novel took place. Instead, the boy gave him reason to live and the courage to persevere throughout the difficult journey. The boy’s presence gave him hope, even though it was quite often tainted by disappointment. The boy also saved him from loneliness. He would’ve had nobody else to converse with or celebrate the few moments of happiness they endured. Life wouldn’t have been worth it at all if it wasn’t for his son.

I imagine that the man would have been ecstatic to learn that the boy went on to find the “good guys” after his death. He would feel a sense of fulfillment that his life was worth it because it gave his son the opportunity to live a better life after he had passed away. His bravery to continue living for his son was astounding and a great act of selflessness. I doubt that the boy would have had the courage to continue living after his father’s death if his father wouldn’t have instilled within him bravery and ability to overcome fear. The man’s courage in life enabled his son to live a better life after his death.

“No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later.” (McCarthy 54)

The conditions set forth by this statement are unimaginable to me. I can’t imagine not having a list of things to be done. It seems that life would be enjoyable beyond belief if there were no obligations holding one back. One could do whatever they pleased and life would be great. However, this is not the way the world works. In order to have food to eat and a place to live, one has to work to earn the money as the means for obtaining those essentials. Even in the post-apocalyptical world, where money doesn’t exist, this is still the case. The man and his son can’t do whatever they wanted all the time, because they have to search for food to survive. Even though there was no list of things to be done, they couldn’t simply enjoy their lives doing whatever they pleased, because they had to survive somehow. One would imagine that a life in which the day was providential to itself would be preferable, but McCarthy clearly depicts that it would not. Survival always requires effort and work – that’s just the way the world works.

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (McCarthy 130)

This sentence holds a lot of truth that I had never really considered before. The world is something that belongs to nobody that occupies it. It simply exists and is used by its inhabitants. As Varsha mentioned, humans quite often believe that this is our world and that it belongs to us. This is where conflict arises. If we viewed the world as something we are privileged to dwell upon, instead of attempting to show our ownership of it, then I feel we would all live in a more peaceful environment. McCarthy has it completely correct in that we borrow the world. I also believe his statement of borrowed time to be true. It exists and we use it to our liking, but we can never own it. We can never change the time or have any impact upon it. The only thing we really can control is how we choose to use this borrowed medium.

However, even though I consider time and the world to be something that is borrowed, I didn’t understand why McCarthy says that one’s eyes are borrowed. I thought that a person’s eyes belong to them. A person can choose what they use their eyes for, whether to allow their eyes to function by opening them, and the sights that they decide to watch and focus upon. After saying this, it seems only reasonable that our eyes belong to us and are not borrowed. However, then I started to wonder if our bodies at all belong to us, or if we just borrow them. Can we really own our bodies? Our bodies are items that were given to us to inhabit, and just like time and the world we choose how we use them and what we do with them. However, after we die, our bodies will remain here on earth, but our souls won’t occupy them anymore. It’s almost as if our souls borrow our bodies while we live on earth and then discard them once we die. After thinking about this, I can understand why McCarthy describes our eyes as borrowed. They don’t quite belong to us; we just use them as we choose.

Despite the truth it holds, I find this statement to be very depressing. McCarthy mentions the main function of a pair of eyes as to sorrow the world. Instead of using more generic verbs such as observe or contemplate, he uses sorrow. In my opinion, this depicts the true suffering the man and his son were experiencing. They sorrowed the world in their journey along the road, and I think that’s what McCarthy wanted to illustrate at the end of this sentence.

“He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.” (McCarthy 154)

This passage confused me at first. I wondered how the man could believe that the child had known the loss of the world that once existed better than he could, since he never experienced the previous world. However, the man knew the reality of what existed before the apocalypse, and the boy only had his imagination of what existed. The boy only knew the horrors of what existed in his time, and his imagination was limitless as to how much better the world could have been beforehand. The man actually knew exactly what was lost, so it couldn’t have seemed worse in his mind. However, the boy had no idea, so the loss could have seemed much greater than what actually occurred. In this way, the journey on the road might have been harder for the boy than the man. Even though he never actually experienced the loss, he never got to experience the beauty and goodness of the world before the apocalypse. The only world he knew was filled with destruction with little hope. Even though he had no previous world to miss, he had no memories of what the world once was and no knowledge of how great it could be again.

“Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden . . . Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash.” (McCarthy 215)

This passage stood out to me immediately because I have never thought of the ocean in such a way as McCarthy described it. When I think of the ocean, I think of a magnificent natural beauty that elicits emotions of hope, wonder, and curiosity as to what its depths hold. It was surprising to me to read McCarthy’s harshly negative description of it. Even though I’m sure that the man in the novel was experiencing disappointment at the current state of the ocean compared to how it once had existed, I had expected him to hold at least a minute sense of awe at its wonders because it was, after all, the ocean. His description of the ocean clearly shows that he did not. However, then I realized that his disappointment ran much deeper than just that the ocean wasn’t the same as it had been. Throughout their journey on the road, the man and his son had been heading towards one destination: the coast. The man must have believed that the coast would offer them the best chance at survival and experiencing whatever happiness they could muster up. The hope of what the coast and the ocean would offer was probably a big part of what kept them moving down the road towards it. It was pretty much the only thing they had to look forward to, except for death, the ultimate end to their suffering. Now that they had finally arrived at the coast, they realized it was nothing to look forward to after all. The destination disappointed all their hopes that it would offer them something better than what they experienced during their journey towards it. I realized that the description of the ocean that had so surprised me was true at that moment in time. The description was affected by the overall disappointment that the hope they held on the journey was false. By providing a viewpoint that was so contrary to what most of the readers feel, McCarthy was clearly depicting the ultimate disappointment the man and his son were experiencing.

“Their progress was a torture.” (McCarthy 276)

This short, straightforward sentence seems to be a common idea throughout the whole novel. As the man and the boy continued their journey along the road, they gained little but lost a lot. Their minimal gains of food and survival items would always run out, and were therefore very temporary. The only other positive thing they gained was an increased feeling of love for each other as they both were all the other had. However, this turned out to be a torture in itself, as they both had to constantly see the one they loved most suffer. While gaining so little, they were always losing two irreplaceable things: hope and strength. They were suffering all the time. While reading the novel, I often wondered why they kept going at all. They had no real goal. Their only destination of the coast offered them no relief and only killed their hope even further once they came to this realization. What’s the point of living a life with no goal, little hope, and no relief from the suffering? Their progress was a torture, so why make any progress at all? Why wouldn’t they just stay where they were and wait for death to come and end their suffering?

As I contemplated these questions, I realized that the man and the boy were two of the bravest characters of any novel I’ve read. The easiest, least painful thing to do would be to allow death to overtake them. However, they kept going, no matter how hard it got. They didn’t succumb to taking the easy way out of life. That was something that required an unimaginable amount of courage. They truly lived their lives to the fullest, considering what the world was offering them at the time. They took all the strength they had and put it into living. That’s bravery in my opinion.

“My older sister spoke politely to me, as did my twin sister. They’d never been polite to me before, and I knew that a chasm had opened between us” (Grealy, 58).

Throughout Autobiography of a Face, Grealy consistently analyzes the effect that her cancer has on her relationships with others. As seen in this passage, Lucy’s seemingly altered bond with her sisters causes her to consider the possibility that she will no longer relate to her loved ones, or anyone for that matter, as she had before her appearance-altering surgery. It’s unfortunate to witness how Lucy’s world slowly transitions from one of a regular elementary school girl to one of an outcast, basically restricted from normal relationships due solely to her facial alterations. Aside from dealing with the burden of a newly misshapen jaw, having to adjust to the unavoidable awkward stares of strangers and friends alike makes Lucy’s situation seem all but unbearable. It’s astonishing that she was able to somehow persevere through the drastic changes that she’s already been through, especially since she hasn’t even reached the 4th grade.

On another note, Lucy’s examination of her altered relationships is written in a very relatable manner. Although I’ve never had any appearance-altering surgeries, Grealy’s through-her-own-eyes writing allowed me to get at least some sort of a grasp of the isolation that she experienced due to her surgery. I can picture her two sisters staring down at her hospital bed, making futile attempts at normalcy, all the while emitting awkward vibes that reveal their true thoughts and emotions. It’s this intimate perspective of Grealy’s that allows the book to hold its emotion while avoiding any hint of a pity-party tone.

(Mr. Kreinbring…just thought I’d add that the html isn’t transferring from Word, at least for italics and the like).

“Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people, and for the specific job of being a twelve-year-old with a younger sister, cruelty is de rigueur” (Grealy, 65).

Typical of countless moments in the book, Grealy is able to use her own experiences to produce theories that are universal to her readers, allowing those completely unlike her to remain connected to her ideas and writing. As Ann Patchett says in the book’s afterword, Grealy’s primary hope for the readers was for them to analyze her ideas and writing, not just her sickness and its story.

With this in mind, I’m able to say that she was successful in achieving these hopes, with credit going to her strategic use of universal messages that all readers can in some way relate to. Even though this passage pertains to Lucy’s older sister scaring her with creepy, death-related myths, she is able to touch on the concept of how powerful our influences on other people can be. I appreciated Grealy’s ability to provide thought-provoking ideas throughout the memoir, as they allowed me to experience not just her battle with cancer but her philosophical ponderings as a writer.

“Truth was something that existed; it’s just that it lived far away” (Grealy, 67).

As I’ve already mentioned, Grealy’s knack for universalizing the life lessons that she learned gives readers of Autobiography of a Face a venue to do more than just observe Grealy’s life as a distant third party. With this passage (more of a statement, to be precise) Grealy offers up another bit of food for thought amidst the storyline of the autobiography.

Despite the literal sense used by Grealy here, one can still wonder about their own proximity to the truth, whether that proximity is metaphoric or, as in Lucy’s case at the time, physical. For the most part, I’d say that the majority of us fall into the metaphorical category, seeking comprehension of a fulfilling life philosophy or the discovery of where life’s true meaning lies. Regardless, the statement struck me as compelling for some reason, most likely because I, like Lucy was, am still figuring out a few truths about myself, as I’m sure the majority of us are.

“Vietnam was still within recent memory, and pictures of the horrors of Cambodia loomed on every TV screen and in every newspaper. I told myself again and again how good I had it in comparison, what a wonder it was to have food and clothes and a home and no one torturing me” (Grealy, 126).

Aside from the simple message conveyed in this passage, I was struck by the similarity it had to a series of thoughts that I’d had this past winter.

I decided to work at a homeless shelter in Pontiac for a night, but I could’ve never guessed how strong of an impact the experience would have on me. Well into the shift (around 10 p.m.) I overheard a few of the guests talking about the Bible. And, after a brief-yet-thorough internal debate, I decided to walk over and sit down with the two men. Long story short, what I’d planned to be a brief chat where I’d hand out a few Bibles became an hour long conversation that I’ll never forget. Turns out that one of the men was a recovering heroine addict with 5 felonies under his belt, who also happened to be a senior majoring in philosophy at Oakland University. The other man, in his fifties or sixties, was waiting for government compensation for his disabilities, and expected to be back in an apartment by the next week. As my shift drew to a close, I said a short prayer with the two guys, holding their hands and connecting with them in a way I never thought would’ve been possible at the beginning of the shift.

I came home teary eyed that night, impacted exactly as Lucy had been. I was dumbfounded that I had the audacity to complain about waking up early in my warm home while these guys were getting up at 6:00 a.m. (in the dark) and going out on the streets for the rest of the day. Although my complaints still arise, I came away with a greater level of gratitude from that night at the Baldwin Warming Center, something that is probably more valuable than what the guests may have received at the shelter that night.

Coming back to the novel, I find it astounding how Grealy’s writing can cause her audience to fall into memories of their own experiences and come away with the same wisdom that she was able to draw from her own.

“I recognized this wonder and awe as intimately connected to the feelings I’d discovered while recovering from chemotherapy sessions, when to simply “be” was reason enough for joy. Now I knew that joy was a kind of fearlessness, a letting go of expectations that the world should be anything other than what it was. And I felt I’d at last discovered the means with which to actively seek out this kind of being, this kind of beauty” (Grealy, 193-194).

For some reason still unknown to me, about 97% of what I write in English classes tends to relate to hunting, fishing, and the outdoors in general. Perhaps, this is because I was just watching Into the Wild. Regardless, I was drawn to my experiences in the outdoors after reading Grealy’s words here.

I pictured her shaking from an unbearable combination of pain, exhaustion, and nausea, “feeling her body” as she put it, experiencing the intensity of a moment described purely by sensory feelings: the room spinning, stomach churning, head throbbing; all at once in that one single moment in time.

My own interpretation of this “be”ing takes on a much more mellow form than Grealy’s, perhaps what I’d call an intense serenity. On a typical November deer hunt, sitting down on a dark ridge offers its own interesting experience. In that moment, my warm, tired face slowly becomes one with the frigid morning air, causing the rest of my body to conform to its harsh winter surroundings. With nothing to see, my ears tune in to the varying sounds: the rustling of a squirrel, the hopping of a bird, the slow crunching of a deer’s walk, or the distant roar of Lake Michigan. To top it off, the energizing chill of the air entering my nose fills me with the cold reality around me; I am there, in that moment, with nothing to do but “be”.

Now, despite the radical difference between Grealy’s experience and my own, it’s still profound that I can relate to some aspect of her story due to the way she can universalize the lessons she learned in her own life. As Ann Patchett said in the Afterword: “She uses her own life as the step up to something universal” (Patchett, 232).

Upon finishing the book, I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading it, and that I even immediately began Truth and Beauty after setting it down. I went from continually thinking, “This is stupid”, to really feeling Lucy’s emotions and connecting wit her thoughts. It’s too bad that she never ended up writing much else, because I would’ve loved to see her insightful writing style in a fictional novel.

“You dont believe me.
I believe you.
Okay.
I always believe you.
I dont think so.
Yes I do. I have to.”
(McCarthy, 185)

This passage is a conversation between the boy and the man. The man says “You don’t believe me” after talking to the boy about whether or not there are other “good guys” in the world. To this the boy responds with “Yes I do. I have to.” I think this passage is important to the book because it shows how much faith the boy has with in his father. No matter what action his father takes, it’s a MUST that he believes whatever he says because all his hope lays within the man.

The man is not perfect. He’s sort of merciless. You see that each time they encounter another human being other then the cannibals. He doesn’t like to offer food and he left the thief who tried to steal their cart with nothing, not even a stitch on his back. And each time the man’s pitiless nature shows, it’s corrected by the boy’s innocent and forgiving nature. Basically the man can make mistakes, and be guiltless but to the boy he could do no wrong.

“I want to be with you.
You cant.
Please.
You cant. You have to carry the fire.
I dont know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I dont know where it is.
Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.”
(McCarthy, 278-279)

Right when the father was about to die, they had this conversation. He had gotten the boy as far as he could and now he would have to go on his own. But he would always have one thing, no matter what. And that’s the “fire.” I have to agree with Sam, who also said that this “fire” they talk about translates to hope. Though the boy may be alone here on out, as long as he had that hope in his heart, he’d be okay. He and the man carried hope all through there journey. I think that’s the only reason they survived. Perhaps luck had a fair share in their survival, but so did hope. Hope to carry on, live, push for the survival of civilization.

I’d also like to point out something else. A sort of connection I saw and maybe thought it was important just to mention. I started thinking about why McCarthy mentioned anything about fire. Why was it important to the story? I thought and the story is about the fight for the human race to survive. They pretty much have to start over. It’s about a fight for life to remain on this planet. This might be a far leap from the truth, but maybe McCarthy was making a connection to the very start of civilization, thousands and thousands of years ago. Once upon a time we had nothing and were nothing except simple beings i.e. cavemen. But along came a very important creation. One of man’s major accomplishments was the creation of fire. With fire, you have the foundation of life. That was the start of our evolution and progression towards a much more advanced society in which we live today.

So the man and the boy have nothing except the desire to live on. They have hope which they conveniently call ‘fire.’ Perhaps their fire will be their foundation to again start life anew and let it progress from there on. So they’re pretty much back at square one just like how the cavemen were. But hopefully the spark will catch, become a roaring blaze and this hope will become a reality rather then just a dream within the boy’s heart.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” (McCarthy, 12)

This quote from the book really stood out to me because it was very true to the characters. The father expecially did not remember much about his wife except for the part when she left him forever, which no person would want to remember. The father did not remember much of the old world and how great it was. He only remembered the bad things from it and how much it had hurt him in the past.

“What is it? the man said.
Nothing.
We’ll find something to eat. We always do.
The boy didn’t asnwer. The man watched him.
That’s not it, is it?
It’s okay,
Tell me,.
The boy looked away down the road.
I want you to tell me. It’s okay.
He shook his head.
Look at me, the man said.
He turned and looked. He looked like he’d been crying.
Just tell me.
We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving?
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t.
I said we weren’t dying. I didnt say we werent starving.
But we wouldn’t.
No, we wouldn’t.
No mattere what.
No, No matter what.” (McCarthy, 128)
This conversation shows that the boy is first shy to show his feelings and tell what he really thinks because he isn’t sure how his father is going to react. This also shows the character of the man and the boy because they are living in a world were there is minimal food and the few humans left have resorted to cannibalism but the man and the boy will never resort to such a thing, no matter how hungry they are, because that is inhuman and against their morals & beliefs. It also shows that the man is willing to make his son feel better and comfort him even though the man himself is unaware of the future and what is it to happen to them.

“The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be.” (McCarthy, 188)
This quote wasn’t very important but it stood out to me because the people in this new world do not have many resources or materials but yet they’d waste the few that they do have to burn the snakes because as a Christian we are taught by the Bible that snakes are the symbol of evil, and not just Christians but most people in the world, due to the story of Adam & Eve. The men in this new world hate it so much and would give anything to have their old world back so they burned the snakes because it symbolized that evil was dying and things would turn around for them soon.

“I want to be with you.
You cant.
Please.
You cant. You have to carry the fire.
I don’t know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I don’t know where it is.
Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.” (McCarthy, 278-279)
This is the last conversation that the man and his son have and it is not filled with words but it is filled with wisdom. The man is saying things that he know will keep his son going and make him want to live long after his father is gone. The fire was a very important symbol throughout the whole book because it is the fuel to their bodies. It is what kept them walking, heading south, when it had been days since they had last eatten. The man knows that this will keep the son going hard and strong for much more time.

This book was something very difficult for me. It was very different from what I am use to reading and I hadn’t enjoyed it because of the lack of conversation and explaination of what had happened to the world, who the characers were and where they were but for some odd reason, it captured me, and as much as I hated this book for being so different, I could not put it down. It was a very odd book, but now I can look back and say I enjoyed it for being so different.

“ I though only of what was right in front of me, like my experiments with words, shredding their meaning through repetition,” (Grealy, 44)

Through reading this novel, I became aware of the many patterns and repetitious cycles that surrounded this young girls life. She did not see every morning as a chance for a brand new day, full of endless opportunities, but rather she waited for the familiar habits of her family and lifestyle to surround her. At one point in the novel, she talks for quite a bit how her father would come home everyday and yell that he’s home up the stairs. Small things like this made it obvious that Lucy does not favor change, but rather repetition. Like she discussed repeating words to destroy their meaning on page 44, I think this is similar to how she reacted to the countless, repetitive chemo treatments she endured. Instead of looking at them as painful but life-saving events, she analyzed them to the point of being simply a challenge, this challenge being whether she could withstand the pain and avoid crying to please her mother.

End of chapter four.

So far I am really into Truth and Beauty. This book is a captivating story of two young writers in the eighties and their journey through their writing and their lives. I feel that this story is telling the readers that the life of a writer is complicated. That writing isn’t the easiest thing, and in order to get your work out there, you have to be dedicated to it and actually pursue it.

As far as the writing style is concerned, I am pretty much enjoying how Patchett writes. The one thing that kind of bugs me is that she never mentions the names of Lucy’s man candies…then again maybe she feels that the names aren’t important, and that the important thing is the affect that they have on Lucy. Still it would be nice to know who these guys are, but I suppose it’s irrelevant.

Also I really love the relationship that Lucy and Ann have with each other. They are two people who didn’t really associate in college, and now they are the best of friends. I like their story of friendship and I am really interested in this book. It’s a good read so far, and I enjoy nonfiction so it’s kind of nice to know that this is a true story.

“Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people, and for the specific job of being a twelve-year-old with a younger sister, cruelty is de rigueur.” (Grealy 65)

It’s perfectly healthy to have a fear of death especially when you are only twelve years old and fighting a cancer. No one wants to make a visit to the doctor and find out that they have a type of cancer and that death is a possibility. I believe Lucy Grealy is such a strong person for having to grow up so quickly in her childhood and learn that life and death are more than just words. When I was little, maybe about five or six, I somehow figured out that people don’t live forever (somehow I was thinking about cottage cheese or something) and for years after that I was absolutely terrified of the thought of death. I think back on that now and I realize emotions are involuntary actions that we have no control over. Lucy was scared of death and there’s nothing wrong with that. Continuing on page 65 Grealy writes;

“No one had any idea, not my parents or teachers or friends, because there was no way I could discuss it….This was what awaited me, there was no way I was going to escape death…”

Though we can’t help how we feel, we can help how we deal with them. Finding a solution towards our fears is the best way to go in my opinion but how do you get over a fear of death? That’s my big question for Ms. Grealy even though she grows out of this fear and moves on from it later in the novel. I praise Lucy for her triumphs over her fear (even though they lead to other fears that I find useless).

“While Lucy has discovered that she was different from all the other children in her grade school because she was sick and was different from all the other children on the hospital’s cancer ward because she continued to survive, I had discovered I was so much like every other girl in the world that it always took me a minuite to identify my own face in our class photo.” (Patchett, 4)
This quote really stood out to me because society has taught girls from ages 4-24 that they need to fit a certain mold. They need to be a certain size and look a certain way and even dress a certain way and Patchett discovered that she was one of those girls, that was fitting to the mold. Lucy realized that she would never be in that mold because she was so different from everyone and she enjoyed it because it made her special. A step ahead of everyone else because she got her own category, not to be lumped with everyone else. What girl does not enjoy getting special treatment and being noticed by others? Lucy is fully aware that she is different and takes full advantage of this fact.

“She was twenty-two and thrilled to be relieved of the burden of her virginity. In face, she told me and Tina, it hadn’t just been losing her virginity, it was solid experience.” (Patchett,
This quote from the book upset me because I do not understand why a twenty-two year old is burdened by the fact that she is a virgin? It’s something that sets girls apart from others. When a woman finally gets married I’m sure her husband is extatic to hear that his wife has not been with any other men in her life. That she has been saving herself till marriage, like it has always been intended in the bible.

“But while she was tortured by her relationship with her face and talked about it being uglym she had a real fondness for her body. Every scar was a badge of honor, and she was always pleased to whip off her shirt to show someone the scars on her back and tell their unhappy story. (Patchett, 26)
I can easily relate to Lucy here because I had shoulder surgery when I was 13 and even though it wasn’t a very seriour surgery, it was a serious injury and left a few scars on my shoulder. I like to point them out because it gives me a story to tell people about myself. A story not like many others and a story that sets me apart from others. Lucy must expecially feel like this because her story is so unique that there is no way in the world that soemone had nearly as many surgiers as her or the same type of surgeries. They bring her speical attention and set her apart from the rest of society.

“Lucy assessed the pain of the body by the standards of her own expiernece and found that just about everyone else came up short, especially those on whom the ravages of illness could not be seen.” (Patchett, 91)
When certain tragedys happen to people they like to recieve sympathy. People must have tried to get sympathy from Lucy many times threwout her life and she probably never gave them any because Lucy knows that she has been threw many worse things. She was extremly jealous of people whos illnesses did not affect their looks for the worse because Lucy was very self-concious of her face and went threw many extra precidures in attempt to get teeth and even to try and close her mouth. If she has not been self concious in the first place she would have gone threw less precidures.

I really enjoyed readying truth and beauty and I am even more excited for autobiography of a face to come in the mail so I can read the book that made Lucy so famous. Even if it was not on the summe reading, I would have read it anyways because I’m dying to read her side of the story. Patchett’s book was very enjoyably because she shows Lucy’s life from the outside instead of from the cancer patient’s point of view because that is a very common story.

“With so many brothers and sisters, I’d never had many opportunities for privacy…I became a snoop, going through everyone’s drawers, looking for clues to how other people lived their lives. I like to lie on my sister’s bed, look out her window, think to myself, So this is what she sees when she wakes up in the morning. What was it like to be somebody else?” (Grealy 81)

This quote stuck out to me immensely due to the fact that I wonder the same thing. I’m sure plenty of people wonder what it must be like to be someone else. I can connect with what Lucy is saying because I’ve always known I had a lot of siblings but sadly I’ve never grown up with them except for my two sisters. I often wonder what it must have been like to grow up together the way they did and how they interacted together. Often I feel that way about students at school, wonder what they’re thinking and why.
Lucy, at this point in her novel, is in a stage of her life where curiosity takes over. Continuing on page 81 she states, “I liked to go into my mother’s closet and sit there in the dark for the sheer pleasure of smelling her, at the same time knowing how annoyed she’d be if she knew I’d invaded her privacy.” Her mother also proves to be an odd character. I suppose hard times can do that to a person but it’s upsetting to see that Lucy has to work so hard for her mother’s approval and pride.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” (McCarthy, 10).

This statement made by McCarthy is reality. Everyone is likely to feel this at some time or another. The mind has the tendency to lose track of the things that you are supposed to remember, usually important. But on the other hand, it frequently replays the things you are hoping to forget. I absolutely hate when this happens. Most of the time those things that you want to forget are what have caused you pain, anguish, embarrassment, or fear in the past. This holds true for both characters in the book. Their minds often revisits the experiences that do not bring joy. These reminders littered throughout the novel, mostly giving the reader a glimpse into the man’s mind, are what set the tone of the story. They make it very gloomy and gives the reader an unsettled feeling that makes them believe in the inevitable fate that waits for the characters at the end of the book, well at least for the man. This quote is just the realization of how the mind works in its uncanny ways.

“He spoke into a blackness without depth or dimension” (McCarthy, 57).

McCarthy’s use of imagery really grasped my attention with this quote. The description of the night makes the reader picture what the characters are experiencing. In this case, when I came upon this passage I could just imagine feeling lost in the darkness with no way to gage how far it continues on all sides of you. It’s almost as if you are engulfed in the blackness and there is no way out. You feel as if your eyes are closed even though they are open.The only thing you can do is wait for a new day to come hoping it brings the light with it. You are completely overwhelmed with the feeling of helplessness.

“…he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe…Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it” (McCarthy, 110).

This passage evoked a lot of thought for me. Each sentence adds a piece to the puzzle that represents the world. Decoded, its message reveals that the world is full of disappointment. And since people are only here for a limited time, their lives are not truly theirs and the things that surround them in life most likely are there to bring them sorrow and show them that this world has nothing to offer. This statement is a pessimistic one but reading about what The Road’s characters have gone through, this type of realization is expected. How can one obtain optimism when everything they approach eliminates that feeling until it no longer exists? And nothing around them holds promise of rekindling that flame. At this point in the story the reader is under the impression that the characters are on the verge of giving up but as the story continues this view of the world changes ever so slightly and the characters continue traveling the road in search of something that might not exist, but they have that little drop of hope that keeps them trekking on. I feel that in any pessimist’s life, or just anyone who is going through a tough time, there is something that gives them the motivation to keep going, to keep living and maybe that is what McCarthy meant by “carrying the fire”. But it is hard to keep that hope alive when the world that surrounds you is one that brings you sorrow.

“I told myself what fools those boys at school were, what stupid, unaware lives they led. How could they assume their own lives were so important? Didn’t they know they could lose everything at any moment, that you couldn’t take anything good or worthwhile for granted, because pain and cruelty could and would arrive sooner or later?” (Grealy 126)
Administrators work to enforce equality and keep kids from verbally or physically hurting each other. But what most people, I feel, don’t understand is that being different isn’t always accepted in our society. Sure you can look different by dressing in brighter colors or dye your hair fire red but negative things like outer beauty or impairments can stir negative attention. I’m glad Lucy connected those boys who pick on her to the fact that everything we find beautiful in life can easily be ripped away from us. I believe most people don’t understand that and it often makes me wonder what’s so difficult about treating others how you want to be treated.
Lucy continues on the next page stating that her pain was insignificant to what was going on around her: “I treated my despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.” (Grealy 127) People should never find themselves unappealing unless who they are as person proves them to be so. Having an ugly personality makes you all around an ugly person and it seemed that Lucy had a bigger heart then what she is making it out to be in her autobiography which to me makes her more beautiful then she’d agree.

ANDREW PARKS “THE ROAD” BLOGS
(Yes, I know these are late… I had these written months ago I just totally forgot to post them until now…)

“But he knew that if he were a good father still it might well be as she had said. That the boy was all that stood between him and death.” (Page 29)

Heading to an unknown destination, trying to survive by looting the traveled land, there was no real inspiration to live anymore for the man and his son. Most of the world was gone; what was the point of living? Even if they were to reach some southern location where the weather was warm and bearable, there was nothing to build from, because everything was gone. For the man, the only reason he kept going; why he kept going, why he held that pistol so close – it was all for his son. If he didn’t have his son there, he would surely have joined his peers disintegrating into the land in which they paced.

“Papa? He whispered. What’s wrong with the man?
He’s been struck by lightening.
Can’t we help him? Papa?
No. We can’t help him.
The boy kept pulling at his coat. Papa? he said.
Stop it.
Can’t we help him Papa?
No. We can’t help him. There’s nothing to be done for him.” (Page 50)

Calling themselves the “good guys” was a huge overstatement. When the son saw people in need, stranded, alone, or dying, he wanted to help. However, the man felt he couldn’t afford to help anyone else because he loved his son so much. When they came across a man struck by lightening, there was no negotiating ignoring him and moving on. That’s what needed to be done. But what was the point? There was no difference between “good guys” and “bad guys”. They were just simply people trying to survive, by any means necessary.

“He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hold in his forehead.” (Page 66)

This passage not only caught me by surprise, but it opened my eyes to the strength and love the man had for his son. To kill another person takes a lot of heart, a lot of guts, to just do it and keep going. I don’t think I could ever kill. But when his son was put into danger, “the man… dropped to the ground and… leveled the pistol and fired…” This was a very exciting part of the novel, but even though there was the threat of death, it was too predictable that the boy was going to survive – because what else would the book have to say if the boy died? You know? I just knew the “good guys” would come out on top, because that’s just how it has to be; the book wouldn’t have been the same. If the man hadn’t killed the other man, the boy would have most likely died, and then the man would have probably killed himself, and that would be the end.

“If they find you you are going to have to do it. Do you understand? Shh. No crying. Do you hear me? You know how to do it. You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand? Stop crying. Do you understand?” (Page 113)

This really freaked me out. I could never kill myself, but I understand what the man was telling his son. He didn’t want the son to be killed. If anyone was going to end this kids life, it was going to be the kid himself. He wouldn’t let anyone else kill him; that’s not the way to go. The man would surely have done the same. This passage showed me that they were fighters. That they would never give up, and if they did, they would be the ones to choose if they’d go. This passage really just reminded me of a horror movie, and made me realize just how insane this apocalyptic setting really was.

“Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect.” (Page 153-154)

I saw this passage and thought to myself, “Yes! That’s what I’ve been wondering!” First of all, what the hell happened to end the world? What caused this disastrous, homicidal earth traveled by killers and mad men? Was the man or the boy alive during the times before the world ended? I assumed that the man was witness to the end of everything, but that the boy had been born into it. He never had the chance to live like us. He had no videogames, no television, no computer, no iPod. He and his father were from two different worlds, making the man like an alien to the boy.

“There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead.” (Page 230)

Personally, I’d probably feel the same way. I mean, what was the point of living? If the world was over, and finding another living person was scarce, then even if they should make it south, there would mostly likely be nothing. Traveling, going through gruesome starvation; was it worth it? Or would it be easier to lay down with the rest of the world? I don’t know. On the other hand, I don’t think I’d want to die, leaving my son alone to fend for himself in the dark world outside. That’d be horrible. The man envying the dead really says a lot about the harsh world they were traveling, and the road that carried them.

“I wasn’t going to kill him, he said. But the boy didn’t answer. They rolled themselves in blankets and lay there in the dark. He thought he could hear the sea but perhaps it was just the wind. He could tell by his breathing that the boy was awake and after a while the boy said: But we did kill him.” (Page 260)

This passage is referring to after the man and boy were robbed. They returned back to where they had kept all their belongings, and there was nothing. So they picked up the trail and followed their thief, leaving him with nothing; not even clothes. They held him at gunpoint, which showed me how passionate the man was, and that he wasn’t ready to give up that easily. But no, the man did not end the thief’s life. He didn’t kill him. Or did he? The boy had a lot more care inside him than the man. He saw that, by leaving the thief with nothing, they did indeed kill him. Which is worse? Dying suddenly by bullet, or slowly by starvation and freezing? I would have chosen the bullet.

“But in the stories we’re always helping people and we don’t help people.” (268)

A strong quote from the boy, this statement made me realize that they weren’t really the “good guys” at all. They were indeed just like everyone else trying to survive. They came across many people they could have helped. They man struck by lightening, the stranded boy, the thief, the people in the house, but did they help them? No. They were selfish. I wonder, did the people they ignored think they were what they deemed as “good” or “bad”? The whole time they were watching out for the “bad guys” but, in the eyes of the people they refused to help, were they even “good”? I doubt it. I really liked this quote because it made the man realize who he really was, and what he’d been doing. I feel like once he realized that he wasn’t the good guy, he died.

“You got two choices here. There was some discussion on whether to even come after you at all. You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me.” (Page 283)

The ending of the book was very obscure to me. For the duration of the novel the man and boy fretted encounters with other people on the road; regardless if they were good or bad. They didn’t help anyone, nor did receive help from anyone either. But somehow, at the end, a man approaches the boy, and everything is all fine and dandy. That makes no sense. What’s funny is that the boy goes with the man too. Instead of staying with his father, who cared for him, fended for him, and risked his life for him, he just as easily is adopted by another family and seems perfectly fine with it, as long as they don’t eat people. Ha. Give me a break. This was too much of a happy ending to a death-filled, dark, mysterious book.

ANDREW PARKS – “Autobiography of A Face” Blogs

“Only then did I begin to realize how accustomed I’d grown to being taken care of. I hadn’t even had to wash myself.” (Page 60)

When I read this sentence I thought to myself, “I feel bad for this girl… a little.” I thought that because, she DID have cancer and a totally messed up face, but she was always being taken care of. She says it here that she didn’t even have to wash herself. That’s pampering. I respected the way she wrote it though, because it’s almost like a confession. She’s admitting that she became accustomed to being taken care of. She was in a hospital with nurses working around the clock for her, and she bluntly says here that she began to realize it. At least she’s honest.

“With no school responsibilities to speak of, no family tensions to deal with, I considered going into the hospital something just short of a vacation.” (Page 93)

I like the way she explains in this section that she enjoyed going to the hospital. She makes it seem like she doesn’t even really want you to feel bad for her. She clearly puts it here that she had no school responsibilities and no family tensions when she was at the hospital; that it was a vacation. I don’t feel bad for her. Her emotions are obvious in this section. She sounds happy to be taken care of, almost carefree. On the other hand, she is telling us that it’s a hospital she’s going to – not a vacation. If the hospital was almost a vacation then things at home must have really been bad previously. Nevertheless, she’s almost bragging about the fact that she doesn’t have to go to school, yet she continued to pass each grade because teachers and faculty felt bad for her.

“My face may have closed the door on love and beauty in their fleeting states, but didn’t my face also open me up to perceptions I might otherwise be blind to?” (Page 150)

Finally she realizes that there are pro’s and con’s to every situation. PERCEPTION is a strong word. She has a different story than everyone else. She may not find love the way everyone else does. She may not be looked at the way most people are looked at. But that can help her, for instance, in poetry, or in writing. She wrote this book, didn’t she? If she wasn’t diagnosed with cancer and looked ‘ugly’, she may have lived a completely different life, and not had time to sit down and tell her story, and show us her perception.

“My first reaction was that this would put a wrench in my new horse plans.” (Page 164)

What a little witch! Her dad is going to the hospital, and she’s thinking not about his health, but about her disappointment because she may not get her promised horse now. That’s terrible. Yet, I do give her credit for admitting this. Again, she gives us her confession. She is at least honest with the readers. Everybody has some selfishness inside, and Lucy is not afraid to admit it. Sometimes, in the course of reading this novel, I wanted to feel sorry for Lucy, but then she’d write her confessions like this one, and it’d make it very hard to feel bad for her. It made me want to feel bad for everyone BUT her. I felt bad for the doctors who had to put up with her attendance for all those years. I felt bad for her father, who actually does pass away in this novel. But not Lucy. I don’t feel bad for her. She had a terrible thing happen to her that changed her life. But she didn’t have a bad life. It was only different.

“I was stunned by the rawness of her pain. I came to understand that night in the sports bar, safe from the blinding rain, that I could not worry about Lucy anymore. I knew then it was just too enormous for me to manage and that worrying about her would swamp me. If I was swamped by worry, I would be useless to her.” (Patchett, 42)

Ann had the tendency of trying to be a parent to Lucy. I understand that when you really care about someone you try and protect them and take care of them. Lucy may have needed someone to be a mother to her, it wasn’t what she wanted, she wanted a friend, and when Ann became more of a mother than a friend, Lucy shut her out, like near the end of the book, where Ann wrote:

“I started hearing from Lucy less and less again. She wouldn’t return my calls. The worse things got, the more she avoided me: I was too judgmental; she hated to disappoint me; both things were true.” (Patchett, 246)

The first quote, from page 42, came to be the truth by the end of the novel. Lucy shut her out, and Ann became useless to her, and Ann had to just hope for the best.

She wasn’t wrong though, in the way she acted. I think that in acting more like a mother she was actually being a better friend. You’re supposed to take care of the ones you love, even if they don’t want your help.

“People made an effort to find out the details of her life. They knew her story and mistook it for actually knowing her, as I had done.” (Patchett, 48)

I have to disagree with Ann a little. Just knowing the story of what had happened to her face doesn’t mean they know everything about her, but I’d say that they do know a part of her. How else do you go about getting to know someone other than finding out details of their life? Knowing her story gives them a more superficial understanding of Lucy, but it is still part of who she is. The way you really get to know someone is by listening to them talk, and tell their stories.

“A teller sat alone in a little glass box and watched the world go past her. “Hello, Lucy!” she called into her microphone.
Lucy looked at her, sighed, and then looked back at me. “That’s not even my bank,” she said.” (Patchett, 49)

Of course not everyone had the opportunity to know Lucy on a personal level, so they had to get the details from other people, and we all know that when you try to learn about someone by going through other people, the story gets more warped as more people try to tell it. Similar to the telepone game.

“The question of love was a dark hole into which Lucy swam daily. She claimed to be alone, alone, alone, and bringing up the legions of friends who adored her was only an irritant.” (Patchett, 169)

I find myself not being able to decide what I think of Lucy. I feel torn between feeling sympathetic, and just flat out annoyed by her. I feel bad for her, what she’s been through and what her childhood must have been like (well, I suppose bad is somewhat of an understatement, considering what she’s been through), but sometimes I feel angry towards her, like when she is being manipulative and wanting to be the center of attention. Then I feel bad about myself for being annoyed with her, because I feel sorry for her. There are so many mixed feelings about her.

She’s also very needy in this book. She continuously needs to be reassured that people love her, and even when they tell her that they do, it’s still sometimes not enough. She tries to find love through sex (“What she wanted was love, and the best way was to go looking for it was through sex” (Patchett, 41)), and that didn’t work either, because usually when you go straight to having sex, skipping the part where you really get to know them, they’re not interested in falling in love with you. Most of the men Lucy slept with knew her story, and I believe that they just wanted to sleep with her to be able to say that they had.

I have a little experience with needy people (not to Ann’s extent, but I still know a little). My sister is the most needy and clingy person that I know. She is always hugging me, asking me if I’ve missed her, or trying to cuddle with me on the couch. She comes into the living room and says, “Kelsey, you look like you want to cuddle!”, and she’ll come over and lay on me, resting her head on my side or my legs. She’s 21, and a lot of the time I feel like the older sister.

In some ways, Ann and Lucy’s relationship reminds me of me and my sister; they’re closer than most sisters are. I don’t know anyone else who is as close with their sister as I am with mine (I’m better friends with my sister than I am with my best friend), because most of my friends don’t get along with their sisters at all.

I talked to some other people who’ve read Truth and Beauty already, and while they’ve been annoyed with Lucy’s clingy and needy behavior, for me it was just another thing that I felt sorry for.

I thought we were supposed to read Truth and Beauty first, but apparently most other people started with The Autobiography of a Face. Oh well, I read Truth and Beauty first, and I really liked the book. Although it was a memoir, the novel felt more like a story. I enjoyed reading the letters that Lucy Grealy wrote to Ann Patchett. I felt that this made the whole novel even more personal. Throughout the story, I was able to experience the relationship that these two friends shared. Honestly, the friendship that Patchett and Grealy shared was the perfect example of an excellent friendship. Although they barely knew each other through college, they went to the same graduate program and “the rest is history.” Through all the trials that each of them faced, their friendship remained strong. It was as if they were married at times. They lived “for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; until death do us part.”
“We knew thing about Lucy the way one knows things about the private lives of movie stars, by a kind of osmosis of information. I do not remember asking or being told. It was simply passed through the air (Patchett, 3).” This quote explains society today. Everyone hears gossip and spreads it through all of the media. Even in high school, gossip is rampant throughout the halls; information is spread and by the end of the day almost everyone knows the details. This line is a good addition by Patchett because it shows how little she knew of Lucy before they became friends, yet by the end of the novel, they were best friends.
“Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape (Patchett, 37)?” I thought that this quote was very intriguing. The concept behind this quote is immensely thought-provoking. I believe that the answer to this question is that something that exists on the edge becomes a part of the boundary. This is just as in real life. Everything in life happens for a reason, no matter if the incident is good or bad. These occasions shape your outlook on life and dictate how you live your life.

“Lucy called three or four times a day with the sole purpose of reminding me that while I was in the middle of nowhere Kentucky teaching four classes and being buried alive by student papers, I was ruining her life. ‘I’m all alone,’ she would start… ‘You’re not alone. You have a ton of friends in Cambridge. You go out every night.’ ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. Nobody loves me.’ ‘For God’s sake, Lucy, I love you. Everybody loves you (Patchett, 197).’”
Even though Patchett and Grealy were a couple thousand miles apart, they would keep in touch no matter what. I would like all of my close friendships to be like this. I was at Stanford University over the summer and I made some great friends who live all over the United States, even all over the world. We all promised each other that we would keep in touch, but we all have our own lives, so it is more difficult to be in contact.

Unlike in my situation, like I mentioned before, Ann and Lucy’s friendship is an almost perfect friendship. I say almost perfect because although they do keep in touch, most of the time it is Lucy calling Ann to create a diversion for herself. From this passage, I find Lucy as bothersome to Ann. In my opinion, Lucy calls Ann continuously for trivial reasons, but to Lucy, the phone conversations might have had more meaning, seeing how her family is not mentioned in any of her letters throughout the book. I understand that sometimes you just need someone to talk to, but calling your friends four times a day just to have the same conversation does not make sense to me. On the other hand, I don’t understand why Lucy needs a boyfriend. Even Ann says that she has many friends that all love her, but Lucy is still not satisfied.

After much thought the best answer have as to why McCarthy decided to leave out the apostrophes in the contractions involving “not” (this is a long shot by the way), involve hope. In that maybe McCarthy wanted to take away the intensity of the words can’t, don’t, couldn’t, etc; words that, in this novel, would have been often put in sentences such as, “Well, I dont think we’re likely to meet any good guys on the road,” (151, McCarthy). Maybe by leaving out the defining characteristic of that contraction, it leaves hope that maybe good guys will come and join the boy and man and things turn out well for the boy and man.

“This sense of comfort continued in the following days and weeks. There were definite problems to face here, but to me they seemed entirely manageable: lie still when you’re told, be brave. It didn’t seem like so much to ask, really, considering what I got in return: attention, absence from school, occasional presents, and, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone even if I could have articulated it, freedom from the tensions at home,” (Grealy, 38).

I like Lucy Grealy’s style of writing; it is straightforward and is fluid, like speech. I am a big fan of comma use to emphasize the phrases and lists – it adds to the style and the image of Lucy as a writer and a person. Throughout the memoir, I have a clear picture of what is taking place because of how easily she transitions from telling her story to giving her thoughts on it at the time it occurred and now that she was older. This quote stood out to me because most children would have been scared out of their minds at the prospect of being sick and at the hospital (such as the boy who ran under the bed), but Lucy had almost no idea that she was so sick, her main problems were “manageable,” (Grealy, 38) because she received attention, freedom from school and “the tensions at home, (Grealy, 38). I also think that by reading Patchett’s novel first gave me insight into the force of nature that is Lucy, and made Autobiography of a Face less of a shock to read, because we already knew so much about Lucy (her fears, depression and somewhat addictive nature – through stealing the painkillers).

“I had never known it was possible to feel your organs, feel them the way you feel your tongue in you mouth, or your teeth. My stomach outlined itself for me; my intestines, my liver, parts of me I didn’t know the names of began heating up, trembling with their own warmth, creating friction and space by rubbing against the viscera, the muscles of my stomach, my back, my lungs, (Grealy, 75).”

I thought this was an amazing passage because it gives such a good image of Lucy’s experience with chemotherapy. The description in these few sentences leaves the reader wondering if chemo (at this time) is truly the way she described, because it was written so vividly, that the reader’s stomach turns at the thought. It makes the reader glad (at least this reader) that she never has had to go through (or will have to go through) this kind of chemo. Also seen in this passage, like the last, is Lucy’s ability to expertly use commas to describe her ordeal. The commas help place emphasis on describing the feeling and the different organs that were affected by the chemo.

“There were plenty of people in the world writing novels. It was in no way something I imagined myself to my own. But I was the ant, and the thought of Lucy taking so much money for something she didn’t know how to do filled me with panic. It was my panic though, not hers, so I kept it to myself (Patchett, 166).”
On the front cover of Truth and Beauty, at least on my copy of the book, there’s a grasshopper and an ant. When I first bought the book, I didn’t take the cover into consideration. It wasn’t until later in the novel that I understood the significance of the cover. Patchett mentioned in this passage that she was the ant and as soon as I read this, I instantly remembered the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. The grasshopper spends all its summer goofing off and having fun, but the ant spends its summer gathering food for the cold winter. This symbolism was repeated as the novel went on, and the meaning of the cover became clear.
Patchett was always worrying about Lucy, as shown by this passage. I wouldn’t worry if one of my friends just received a huge contract; I’d be happy for them. It’s their own life and other people should stay out of it. The exception to this is if a person lets you in to their life. If a person wants you to know about something, they will tell you. Even though Ann does worry about Lucy, she keeps it to herself for the most part. Sometimes it is good to voice your concerns for others, but other times it is better to voice your concern only if your friend is putting themselves in a dangerous situation. I am more of a listener, so I prefer to let people make their own decisions unless I feel strongly about their decision.

“I liked to think there was a moment in my life when I could have been a grasshopper and never thought of winter at all, but now I had a house and it wasn’t even a particularly charming house with loads of character that needed fixing up (Patchett, 203).”
This quote goes back to the symbolism of the grasshopper and ant fable. Patchett says she wishes that she had been a grasshopper, but I wouldn’t want to be a grasshopper. I would much rather want to be the ant. The ant plans ahead for the future and in the end, the ant is the one that survives. Sometimes it would be nice to be the grasshopper and just let go for the time being, but not for your whole life. In Lucy’s situation, it would have been better to be a grasshopper. When she was battling cancer, she did not know whether the next moment would be her last, so she lived like the grasshopper on the spur of the moment. This outlook on life continued throughout her whole life.
I can’t help but feel that the distinction between the grasshopper and the ant depends on what kind of situations we are put in. I mean all of us are a combination of both the ant and the grasshopper or have alternating phases of being the grasshopper and the ant, so I guess we should be called anthoppers, a hybrid creature that enjoys living in the moment but still plans ahead for the future.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading Truth and Beauty. The novel made me appreciate all aspects of life. Even though a friend is really clingy, it made me imagine what would happen if the friend suddenly died. I have learned to appreciate life and my friends more than I have in the past. At times the novel was a little bit slow, but towards the end I couldn’t put down the book. I was hooked on the fact that Lucy might have the face that she always wanted, but it upset me that even though she got it, she died soon after. “Life had conspiring to kill Lucy since she was ten years old and life has failed. At every turn she wrestled with death. She always won (Patchett, 247).” This is ironic because Lucy had “wrestled with death” and won every other time, but this time she didn’t have enough to defeat Death.
In the assignment it said that we were supposed to respond to the controversy of the required reading of Truth and Beauty at Clemson. There will always be controversy over every little issue, but that is the way the world is. Human nature is to fight over everything and to make sure your side “wins.” The world is not black and white, so there will always be different opinions, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the required reading of this novel. It has some sexual content, but I’m sure college kids will be exposed to this one way or another. By reading Truth and Beauty, there will be little change in the way one views sex, because most of their views will already be set before they enter college.

When I first started reading The Autobiography of a Face, all I could think about was a quote from Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty. “‘All those conversations, details. Were you ever worried that you might get something wrong?’ ‘I didn’t remember it,’ Lucy said pointedly. ‘I wrote it. I’m a writer (Patchett, 141).’” I loved that Lucy Grealy said this. The Autobiography of a Face is supposed to be a memoir, but it was more than that. I felt as if the novel explained the feelings of everyone who had ever been teased or felt ugly or been in the hospital for an extensive amount of time. One thing that I noticed about Grealy’s writing was that it was easier to read. I felt that I could read more without getting distracted than I could with Truth and Beauty. Besides being more interesting, I noticed that Grealy used more similes than Patchett.
“‘I had cancer?’ ‘Of course you did, fool, what did you think you had?’ ‘I thought I had Ewing’s sarcoma (Grealy, 43).’”
My cousin is eight years old, only a couple years younger than Grealy when she was first diagnosed with cancer. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to go through something so serious. A child at that age shouldn’t have to worry about chemotherapy and surgery, except for the removal of tonsils; the child should live life and enjoy.
This quote came as no surprise to me; it made me smile. If any ten year old was asked what Ewing’s sarcoma was, they would have the same reaction. I am somewhat surprised that Grealy did not figure out what Ewing’s sarcoma was. As time went on, I would have thought that she would like to know about the disease she had.

“My hat was my barrier between me, and what I was vaguely becoming aware of as ugly about me, and the world. It hid me, it hid my secret, though badly, and when people made fun of me or stared at me I assumed it was only because they could guess what was beneath my hat. It didn’t occur to me that the whole picture, even with the hat, was ugly; as long as I had it on, I felt safe,” (106,Grealy).

This passage is another example of Lucy’s great skill as a writer. Like all of the passages I chose before, she clearly places emphasis on her ordeal through commas, “It hid me, it hid my secret, though badly,” (106, Grealy). Also, just by reading this one passage, you can tell that Lucy is still young. Her hat (and her island), had kept her innocent and untainted by the cruel outside world – it gave her a dimension where no one judged her and she could control what happened, and what was said to her, and why. I can relate to this, because from a young age, I’ve always enjoyed escaping to a harmless world where I was the main character, or where I could control what happens to my characters and what is said (to them and by them); and like Lucy I was always safe.

“My hat. It became part of me, an inseparable element of who I thought I was. My hat was my barrier between me, and what I was vaguely becoming aware of as ugly about me, and the world (Grealy, 106).”
Almost every young child has their own safety blanket for some period in their life. My safety blanket was literally a blanket. I would take it everywhere I went and that blanket went through a lot with me. As I got older, big pieces of it went missing and I had to retire my “blankie.” Grealy’s safety blanket was her hat. She would wear it everywhere she went and it would shield her from the rest of the world. She thought that a hat would make everything better for the time being, like a mother kissing a child’s boo-boo to make it feel better. Her hat hid her head from the stares and teasing of middle school boys.
Earlier in the novel, Grealy mentioned that her scars and such were like battle wounds. Losing hair is another battle wound, so why did Lucy hide it? She went from being proud of all of her scars to worrying about what other people think, but I guess that is the normal transformation that we experience as maturity approaches.

“Normally I despised the looks of others, but with Hannah I felt a vague sense of camaraderie, imagining that both our little lives were made miserable by these unknowing, cloddish doctors. To her I was probably just one of the many sick children who streamed in and out of the place, but in my mind I’d found a silent link with someone whose life was as difficult as my own. As ill as I felt, I always liked sitting there with her, imagining our parallel lives clinking quietly along like two trains beside each other, with similar routes but different destinations (Grealy, 129).”
From reading Truth and Beauty and The Autobiography of a Face, I gathered that Lucy Grealy just wanted someone comforting her at all times. In her situation, I don’t blame her. All Lucy wanted was someone whom she knew went through a similar lifestyle; someone who knew the pain and suffering of hospital life. From this quote it’s obvious that Hannah was the first person that she had found that really did know what she was going through. Most people just want to know someone that can relate to them. The song “Welcome to My Life” by Simple Plan is a prime example of how people “just don’t understand” what’s going on in the lives of others close to them.
On a completely different note, the thing that I really liked about this passage was the use of similes and the descriptiveness of it. The image of the two trains “with similar routes but different destinations” is the perfect image in our own lives in high school. We all go to the same high school, but by the end of this year, our lives will diverge to different schools and career paths.

“So what if my face was ugly, so what if other people judged me for this. That was their problem, not mine (Grealy, 179).”
I was happy for Lucy Grealy when I read this quote. I was glad that she finally stopped caring about what other people thought about her. She had been worrying about her face and her hair for a long time and finally, she could be free of it all, but as I kept reading, it still seemed to me that she did care what other people thought. Grealy was still self-conscious at heart and she had put up a façade to make it seem that she really had gotten over the judgment of others.
The thing that I hate about our society is that we judge people on whether they are “different.” Throughout history, this has been the recurring theme. It is being drilled into our minds that we are to all look perfect and if anything is wrong with our faces or our bodies, that we must have it “fixed.” Everyone should be happy with the way they look. You were given the face you have for a reason; it’s your face.
As I came close to completing The Autobiography of a Face, I finally understood what the title was supposed to mean. Throughout her life, Lucy Grealy had many surgeries done to her face and this book was the story of that face and the person behind it. The face was ever-changing, so much so that the person who was wearing the face couldn’t identify it as her own. “I couldn’t make what I saw in the mirror correspond to the person I thought I was. It wasn’t only that I continued to feel ugly; I simply could not conceive of the image as belonging to me… The person in the mirror was an imposter – why couldn’t anyone else see this (Grealy, 219-220)?”
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this novel. It only took me two or three days to get through it all, compared to a couple weeks for Truth and Beauty. I liked the flow of Grealy’s writing combined with her actual account; it made the novel easier to read. I especially liked of the end of the book, where Grealy reveals her revelation of the truth and the discovery of her real face. It was an ideal ending, that makes you think of the way that you live your life.

“Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people…” (Grealy, 65)

When Grealy speaks in this passage, she is referring to her sisters’ crude remark concerning death, when she says “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, in your stomach and out your mouth”. Grealy says that her sister touched on her biggest fear at this point, which was the idea of dying. I thought it was ironic that she was surprised the impact her sisters words had had on her, while throughout the book she never really addresses the impact her own illness and lifestyle had on her siblings. If anything, these words should be very small when it comes to their level of impact compared to how Lucy’s’ siblings are handling things. At one point she mentions how her older brother simply left when he had reached a certain age, but I don’t recall her ever wondering if it was because of the stress her illness had had on her family. If anyone, the other siblings would be hit the hardest, for every penny the family earned went toward something medically related to Lucy, and her parents’ energy went toward her well-being. Coming from a close-knit Irish family, did Lucy ever wonder if her illness had been a big fear in her siblings hearts? With finances tight at the time specifically because of her illness, her siblings probably resented America even more than they had before she became ill. When she says on page 65 that humans underestimate their effect on other people, I believe she applied this logic more to others than herself.

“When I was younger, before I’d gotten sick, I’d wanted to be special, to be different. Did this then make me the creator of my own situation?” (Grealy, 101)

I found this passage very interesting. In ways, I both agree and disagree with it. Obviously, Lucy could not control her body becoming cancerous, but she could somewhat control her mentality and for that matter, how she interpreted what happened around her. On page 101, she discussed how she was appalled by the fact that people may pity her. She came about this thought when her neighbors appeared to feel bad for her when an ambulance picked Lucy up in her driveway to escort her to treatment. But considering she admits that she always wanted to be special, or different, isn’t this exactly what she wanted? For one second I do not believe she wanted to be special only when she was younger, for in “Truth and Beauty”, she makes it obvious that she still feels this way and yearns for attention from others. Even in her twenties, she was desperate to get attention, whether that meant crying to Anne and making her feel guilty, or acting inappropriately towards men, she was willing to do the work. Because of this, I do feel that she was the creator of her own situation, for although she didn’t want to bring attention to her cancer, she wanted to bring attention to herself in every other area of her life.

“And as I recognized myself, I also realized the precision of language; I knew that the poem could not have been written in any way except exactly as it had been. The poem’s power over me came from the author’s unassailable ability to say what felt so right and true. I think I already understood that beauty was somehow related to mystery, but for the first time I saw that mystery was not just a cause but also a natural result of beauty,” (160,Grealy).

This passage gives great insight into what art (writing, poetry, etc) is all about in her mind. Lucy does an amazing job of describing her epiphany about language to the reader and even describes her epiphany about mystery and beauty in an artful way too. At first I disagreed with her statement on mystery and beauty, because my first thought was of murder mysteries (real and fictional) because they described disgusting events making the reader (or detective) scratch theirs heads as to what happened, and, like a puzzle solve it – it didn’t sound beautiful (unless it was a really good book and the reader could appreciate the writing), even though the detective has the satisfaction of solving the crime (which he doesn’t always), the loss still leaves empty holes in the hearts of those dear to family and friends left behind. But when I looked deeper into the quote I then thought of Love, Family, and Friends– that I do find beautiful (in a loose sense of the word, because I find them beyond beautiful), and her description of mystery being a direct result of beauty, made sense. I could do something terrible, and, by some beautiful mystery, be loved by my family and friends anyway; and what is most odd about this quote, is this statement almost directly relates to Lucy when, in her final years, was suffering from her Heroin addiction, her close friends –though they threatened it – could never, really, leave her because they loved and cared for her so much.

“In sharp contrast to high school, I now possessed a large number of varied and decidedly wonderful friends, whom I valued immeasurably. Through them I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it, I discovered, which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the marking of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be, of always striving to see the truth of them,” (195, Grealy).

This quote reminded me about Lucy’s dedication (for the Memoir): “For my friends, whom I love,” and of course Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, and how deeply all of Lucy’s friends loved her (and how deeply Lucy loved them back). Also, once again, I saw through this passage, Lucy’s excellent ability to write; she was able to compare appreciating friends to appreciating artwork. After reading this passage several times, I began to see what Lucy meant when she was writing this quote; and, of course, how true it was. Making and keeping friends isn’t always easy, they may bug you to death or make you angry (or vice versa), but if you (or your friend) truly treasure the friendship, you’ll love each other anyway and accept and love who they are as a person. This passage (and from reading Truth and Beauty: A Friendship) what friendship really consist of (and how they seem to get even more complex as one grows older) and how blessed I am to have such good friends.

“I felt as if I could speculate and theorize about a thousand different beautiful truths all in the time it would take my lips to form a single word. In retrospect, I think it’s possible I had a concussion.” (Grealy 16)
This novel is one that I actually did enjoy reading. It felt more meaningful than other novels we have had to read in the past simply because it was a person letting us in. It is human nature to push people out so I commend her on inviting the whole world into her mind and into her struggles. This passage is just one of the many examples of Grealy sharing her feelings throughout the novel which I found curious because she was about nine or ten and realistically nobody can remember feelings and memories from when they were so young. Also ten year olds don’t think they can theorize about truths of life, let alone beautiful ones because of obviously naivety. But as I read the afterword, Ann Patchett had mentioned that Lucy had once told a fan who asked how she could remember every detail of her young life, Lucy had replied “I didn’t remember it…I’m a writer” (Grealy 231). This explains the intricate details and thoughts too great for a child. I think while reading this novel readers need to remember that this is Lucy looking back and interjecting thoughts of hers now as well as reflective thoughts. Lucy’s analytical thoughts of her past help the readers get more depth and life lessons out of her situation than if she were to simply summarize the actions she went through. Over her life time she had a lot of time to speculate and theorize the truths of her life and she decided to put them into this novel. While I found it hard to relate to her situation, having no surgery or other serious medical issues, I did find it easy to relate to her musings on the truths of life.

“I thought wanting love was a weakness to be overcome. And besides, I thought to myself, the world of love wanted nothing to do with me” (Grealy 124)
Lucy’s world seemed to revolve around strength. She was always proving to herself that she was the strong one, the strongest there is. Not physically but emotionally. Throughout the novel she constantly fights her emotions and feels the triumph over conquering the emotions of fear, pain, lonliness, and shame. She exemplified this by trying never to cry because she saw it as a sign of weakness and trying to overcome wanting to be loved. Grealy wrote on page 127 “I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong”. I feel that for Lucy, she needed something to be in control of. She couldn’t control her situation or her face but she could sure control her emotions. While sometimes wallowing in self pity, often throughout the novel she forces negative feelings out of her body and tells herself to quit being weak and suck it up. For a child to have such control over her emotions is impressive and just shows how different Lucy was.

“…I now possessed a large number of varied and decidedly wonderful friends, whom I valued immeasurably. Through them I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it…It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be, of always striving to see the truth of them.” (Grealy 195)

I was genuinely happy for Lucy when I read about her finding herself and finding friends in college. She had a miserable time not fitting in while in high school but found that she could be herself in college. I think that she needed to be around people who were eccentric and different from the rest of society to feel as though she fit in with them because she was undeniably different. By actually making real connections and friendships with people she acquired knowledge on relationships. Her quote on friendship is an interesting one with a lot of real life weight. To see people as who they are can be a huge challenge to people. By having so many friends with different opinions and ways of life, Lucy had to see people as they were instead of pretending they were something else. Also once she saw people for who they are I think she allowed herself to be seen for who she was. That was a big step for Lucy because she always seemed to be hiding who she was or just hiding in general from people. I think she should have added something to her opinion though. The art of loving people not only requires you to see the truth in people but to accept this truth as well.

Okay, before I get into details about Autobiography of a Face and Truth and Beauty I’ll do a general post.
First off, Grealy’s and Patchett’s writing styles are obviously very different. Grealy uses a lot of big words, as others have pointed it, and I believe it to be because she wants to evoke a very specific emotion from the reader. I still haven’t figured out exactly what Grealy wants the reader to feel, but it comes off almost as pride, as if she cannot imagine anyone feeling sorry for her, and needs the reader to understand that; more on that later though.
And as pointed out in one of the books (I forget which one) Grealy isn’t documenting events, she’s telling a story. Nothing she says is exactly how it happened, she’s just writing her feelings to give the story a certain mood. If she had documented events, it would be bland and without a universal feeling, but jumbled up.
But the biggest difference I saw between Grealy and Patchett was that Grealy really made you think about what she’s saying. She would throw in a few profound things here and there, or hint towards a message. But ultimately, you must figure out the messages in the book through your own feelings, not what she tells you.
Patchett, however, simply seems to be telling us a story– which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. She uses much more straightforward language, which makes it easier for the reader to understand. When something significant happens, and there’s a message involved, she tells you. She tells you what happened, how they felt, why they felt that way, and what they learned. It’s refreshing to know exactly what she means, but I feel like I was cheated out of thinking on my own.
One thing I particularly liked about Patchett’s book, and not necessarily her writing style, was Lucy’s letters thrown in. They mixed it up a bit, and got you more involved into Lucy’s point of view if you hadn’t read Autobiography of a Face.
Overall, these two books were very different and gave two sides of a story to one life. Neither one bad; just different.

“Beauty, as defined by society at large, seemed to be only about who was best at looking like everyone else. If I had my original face, an undamaged face, I would know how to appreciate it, know how to see the beauty of it.” (Grealy 187)

To be beautiful is to be physically flawless; Clear skin, well-kept hair, thin bodies. What we as a society tend to do is compare ourselves to the impossible. Actresses and models wouldn’t have the beauty they do without the help of computer aid and fashion knowledge from other people. Grealy states that if she did not have a damaged face then she would appreciate herself for what she would be. But that’s just a hypocritical statement within itself in my opinion.

Previously on this page she says, “The people in the plastic surgery ward hated their gorgeously hooked noses, their wise lines, their exquisitely thin lips.” (Grealy 187)

The way our features look cannot be helped unless by surgery. Grealy’s cancer is the reason why half her jaw is missing but it is a feature that she has that she cannot do anything about without surgery. In other words, she’s no better then anyone else within that surgery ward who wants to straighten their hooked nose or smooth their lines. We are who we are and true beauty is being able to accept that and look beyond the physical appearance and fix what’s inside. (Please excuse the cliche, it’s a lack of better description)

1. “She was absolutely committed to the idea that writing would be her salvation and that she was obligated to pull herself out of all her present miseries with the sheer strength of her will and talent” (Patchett, 61).

Of all the memorable standout passages scattered throughout Truth and Beauty, this sentence serves as perhaps the best summary of Lucy’s fight for survival in her later years. Beyond the cancerous threats of her early youth, Lucy’s battles shifted to the emotional and psychological realms, engaging her with bouts of depression and horrendously low self-esteem. These issues slowly spiraled to the physical world, manifesting themselves in drug use and self-mutilation. As documented by Patchett here, Lucy’s writing was her only chance to escape her downward spiral, proven by the relatively happier days she had in the spotlight after publishing Autobiography of a Face.

Unfortunately, this solution wasn’t as simple as Patchett put it on page 61. I took the statement as positive foreshadowing, looking eagerly to Lucy’s redemption from her past sufferings. However, I was greatly disappointed to find that the redemption would be short-lived, lasting only as long as Autobiography of a Face’s initial hype endured. Nevertheless, Patchett’s words here provided a very clear portrayal of one of the major battles Lucy was fighting in the years after her cancer.

“It was the single thing I wanted most for Lucy, to have a minute of peace from her relentless desire to understand why she hadn’t found True Love” (Patchett, 188).

Aside from her obvious skill and experience as a writer, I’m convinced that the key to Truth and Beauty’s captivating nature lies in Patchett’s intimately close relationship with Lucy. Without Patchett’s undying love for her late friend, the book would lose the emotional strength that allowed readers to more thoroughly experience the story. Also, as opposed to reacting to Lucy’s struggle with a disconnected sorrow, reading the account from the Patchett’s perspective provides the reader with an opportunity to express a somewhat more connected empathy.

The passage also raises a question in my mind regarding Lucy’s relationship with the concept of True Love. It was apparent that she had very little self-love, so how would she be able to find True Love externally if she hadn’t learned to love herself? I believe Lucy’s life holds the answers to the question. During the times when she was the happiest, Lucy was the least concerned with her own shortcomings. And, at her lowest point, her concerns were the complete opposite. It’s too bad that she never fully came to grasps with the concept of self-love, leading to her premature death.

“‘One of the nurses told me that you’ve had thirty-six operations,’ she said.
Lucy told her that was true.
‘Well, I’ve had thirty-nine. Thirty-nine. Can you even imagine having that many?’
We simply stared at her” (Patchett, 195).

For some reason, I wish that Patchett wouldn’t have put this passage into the book. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading about Lucy and her cancer and cancer-related issues for the past month, and I can’t comprehend how someone could possibly belittle her and her experiences like they weren’t bad at all. Although I can’t completely determine the woman’s tone here, I caught a terrible vibe of arrogance, which irritated me pretty badly. And that means a lot, seeing that I was starting to grow weary of Lucy’s constant state of sorrow. But, despite my distaste for the dialogue, I’m appreciative of how Patchett was able to get under my skin with the way she recounted the event. It would’ve been easy for her to have blandly covered the short dialogue or overlooked it completely, but her attention to the back-and-forth conversation added to the strong emotions felt throughout the book.

“Lucy had cut her wrists, though not badly enough to need stitches, and had then taken an overdose of heroin. She was on suicide watch at Columbia Presbyterian” (Patchett, 237).

The blatant honesty that Patchett used when portraying the darker parts of Lucy’s life caused me to completely rethink my impression of her (Lucy). I had originally pictured Lucy as a valiant survivor of a deadly illness, courageously struggling through self-esteem issues to write a book and become a successful author, only to suffer a premature death due to complications accompanying her complex medical history. However, as witnessed in this passage and the remaining pages of the book, I began to question my initial impressions. Heroine, or heroin addict? Or both? My confusion as to Lucy’s true persona led me to ponder Mr. Kreinbring’s question regarding how we truly know someone. I was able to come to grips with the fact that I didn’t know Lucy just because I read her book, but after discovering the darker corners of her life, I was completely blindsided by how little I even knew from that reading. Albeit disappointing, I found it interesting to observe two different portrayals of Lucy during the past two novels, one from her own pen and the other from her best friend’s. The different details covered by the two authors show how influential authorial presence can be in a piece of writing, especially when two authors write about what is essentially the same topic.

“Life had been conspiring to kill Lucy since she was ten years old and life had failed. At every turn she wrestled with death. She always won” (Patchett, 247).
“Her death was ruled an accidental overdose” (Patchett, 253).

The end of Truth and Beauty left me both irritated and disappointed. The first passage (247) seems to shine a heroic light on Lucy, praising her for defying death in extreme circumstances. The disappointment here comes in the fact that this is only partially true, seeing that her heroin addiction eventually led to her death. I found it painfully ironic that Lucy caused her own death after barely managing to cling to life in the early years of her youth. She had conquered the physical threat of cancer, but was never able to defeat the accompanying psychological demons, which led to her premature death, allowing the physical threat to re-conquer her.

Aside from this disappointing irony, I’m confused as to Patchett’s indirect address of Lucy’s address in Autobiography of a Face after reading the end of Truth and Beauty. In the Afterword of the former, Patchett somehow managed to address Lucy’s death and yet completely sidestep its drug-related cause. Had Patchett not covered it in Truth and Beauty, it would’ve made sense due to the consistency of the writing. However, by only covering the cause of death in her own book, Patchett seems to just be saving face for Lucy in her autobiography. But, I guess this is reasonable, as I’m sure the last thing that Patchett wanted for Lucy was to corrupt her image as a heroic cancer survivor. With all said and done, I’m still horribly disappointed that Lucy died from her drug problem. It’s the classic case of a victim’s vindication, only without the whole happy-ending, vindication concept.

Also, in regards to the controversy caused by Truth and Beauty at Clemson in ’06, I feel that the parents getting their undies in a bundle were just overreacting. Sure, the book had a bunch of “immorality”, but who cares? As a Christian, and basically the leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the high school, a lot of the stuff in the book didn’t line up with my sense of morals. But, yet again, who cares? Reading something isn’t the equivalent of doing it, and without exposure to the harsh realities of the world, how will anyone ever learn from another’s mistakes. I am in complete agreement with a statement that Patchett made in regards to the event:

“If stories about girls who are disfigured by cancer, humiliated by strangers, and turn to sex and drugs to escape from their enormous pain are too disgusting, too pornographic, then I have to tell you, friends, the Holocaust is off-limits. The Russian Revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia, the war in Vietnam, the Crusades, all represent such staggering acts of human depravity and perversion that I could see the virtue of never looking at them at all.”

To put it in short, I feel like the controversy was completely unnecessary. The students at Clemson were practically adults, not 6 year olds. If a college student can’t read about immoral things without doing them, then perhaps he shouldn’t be in college at all.

This is a quote from the Afterword by Ann Patchett: “She taught me something that night about the nature of writing and the nature of truth. In the right hands, a memoir is the flecks of gold panned out of a great, muddy river… Everyone has a middy river, but very few have the vision, patience, and talent to turn it into something so beautiful,” (232-233, Patchett).

Not only is this a quote from the Afterword, but from the Ann Patchett’s novel Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. I found this metaphor really interesting, I’ve never thought of a person’s past as a muddy river, but I can see how a memoir is memories and events into “flecks of gold.” Memoirs are not only a retelling of past events; they’re a large mixture of events, dialogue, thoughts, lessons, and theories from all the point of view of the author (or from people close to the author, retold by the author); so to be put together beautifully takes a great deal of talent and effort. I also never thought of a memoir (in general – not just Lucy’s, and I still enjoy reading them) as beautiful – parts of it, parts that one can tell the author worked tirelessly on, can be beautiful; but other parts, usually, aren’t worked on nearly as carefully are good, but not stunning – although, in general Autobiography of a Face is well written and kept the reader’s attention throughout the memoir. I also think that it is interesting how Patchett was able move the majority of her Afterword and place it into her story without changing or editing it.

“Gawking is a look stronger than a stare. The gawk was full of brazen curiosity, pity, and fear, every unattractive human emotion rolled into one unflattering facial expression. If she saw them, and she must have since this was not a discreet spy job, she didn’t let on,” (9, Patchett).

I found this passage very well written, I had never thought of the makeup of “gawking” (I just assumed it was a more obvious stare) and what fuels such a look. Ann’s style consists of short sentences that add emphasis to the statement made (in this case, “Gawking is a look stronger than a stare,” (9, Patchett). Also she seems to use more short sentences that Lucy; and less that McCarthy, because it is a memoir, not a post apocalyptic novel. She is also good at using commas to describe situations and list, in this case, the emotions that makeup the gawk. I also like how she chose to use the phase “spy job” because, it is true, when people are interested in looking at something different (sadly including a person), they try not to show that they are looking and do a poor job, or forget entirely that gawking just may be rude and mean (and is).

‘My mother said it again. I was to save them all. “Someday you’ll both be famous writers,” she said. “And these letters will be very important to you,”’ (59, Patchett).

This statement almost made me laugh because of how often mothers are always right (for the most part) and how they often take on a commanding tone when they “recommend” that their child do something. The letters from Lucy are probably one of Ann’s most treasured possessions, because such a dear friend wrote them. Also you can even see that the letters are important to Ann, through the way she writes about them, and references them often throughout the story. Also the reader sees once again Ann’s good use of short sentences, to emphasis the statements that were made by adding the break, “My mother said it again. I was to save them all,” (59, Patchett). I also think it is interesting how authors have the amazing ability to add dialogue into their memoirs, and make the transition from story to dialogue very fluid (almost like a novel and biography/autobiography mixed together, but not fictional or weighed down by statistics and facts).

“ In a second she was in my arms, leaping up onto me, her arms locked around my heck, her legs wrapped around my waist, ninety-five pounds that felt no more than thirty.” (Patchett 6)

It was in this passage that I got to see a new side of Lucy. In Autobiography of a Face Lucy seemed sullen and serious but I was surprised to find in the first couple chapters that she was full of life and spontaneity. Normal people greet people with a hello and maybe a handshake but Lucy just flung herself onto Ann which indicated that this friendship was a special one. And later in the passage Ann talks about how she was claimed by Lucy and it certainly appeared that is how their friendship started.. In the last part of this quote it says that Lucy’s nine-five pounds felt no more than thirty. To me I think that Ann was not only referring to her physical weight but also indicating that Lucy was not a burden. Throughout the novel Ann carries the weight of Lucy’s problems selflessly and with ease. Never once in the novel does she complain about Lucy’s behavior, getting her back on track, sorting her bills, paying for expenses, cleaning, or taking care of her when she needed it. Her love for Lucy was so pure and real that I find it quite admirable of Ann to take on Lucy’s problems as her own. I think that Ann was the one person that Lucy really needed in her life because of the ability to shelter and help without stifling or holding back. I feel as though Ann was almost home for Lucy and no matter how far she strayed she always came back home. The dynamics of their friendship were very unique and complex.

“She was in Provincetown, after all, where even in the winter a handful of six-foot-three-inch drag queens still ruled the streets, their stilettos hitting the pavement like hammers onto nails. No one looked twice at a girl with some lumps on her face when they could instead watch the rose parade of men float by in their dreamy feather boas and dog collars. Lucy was invisible, exuberant, and utterly birdlike in her wild, darting freedom.” (Patchett 82)
I’m just going to take a moment and appreciate Ann Patchett’s writing style. I found this book to be well written and I loved how she wrote. This passage is liquid and rich with details that just flow giving surreal image that sucks the reader in. Though this quote isn’t deep and meaningful with a lesson behind it, it stuck out to me while reading just because it was light, descriptive, and colorful. I also found Patchett to be humorous in parts of the novel and she did a good job with directing the flow of so many small recollections to create a bigger picture. Though some memories bounced around to different periods in time I never once felt lost and she kept the novel moving steadily. I know that Ann must have been sad while writing this but it doesn’t come through as depressed writing, it is actually very uplifting. She has an incredible memory and was able to supply the reader with enough details to know what was going on and understand what it was like to be in her shoes and I found this book to be very enjoyable because of how Ann wrote it.

“I would say that was when things fell apart, but it would imply the disassembling of a time when things were all together and I couldn’t remember when that time was anymore. Lucy had started making little cuts on her lips with a razor blade. She was doing more drugs.” (Patchett 209)

There are a few thoughts I have on this quote. One is that while their relationship was always seemed solid and centered, their lives seemed to be caught in the drift; they went where life pushed them. The only time their lives really seemed together was when they lived in the first apartment together but Lucy still had a ton of debt and emotional baggage as well so I think that what Ann means by she can’t remember when that time was is that there never really was a time when life was totally in place for Lucy. Though it had started going down a slope, it had never really started completely sorted out. I also wanted to comment on Lucy’s drug abuse and self mutilation. I was surprised to read that had happened with Lucy because it was not in Autobiography of a Face, but under her circumstances it would be difficult to be completely shocked. To me it sounds like her desire to live like a city “grasshopper” along with her wild bouts of depression had finally manifested into something that consumed her. It is sad that it ended up killing her and that she released her negative feelings this way but I was not surprised. On the topic of drug use and suicide attempts, I don’t understand why there was so much controversy at Clemson. Pretending real world problems don’t exist doesn’t make them disappear, contrary to popular belief. By not allowing students to read this book they would be depriving them of the story of a beautiful life as well as a beautiful friendship just because it had heavy content in it. Chances are the students have already heard about things like suicide and drug addiction, it’s not a new subject. Reading about that kind of thing doesn’t make people go hurt themselves and try drugs; I think it would actually repel them from doing so. This book does not glorify harmful things; it shows the negative and complex effects it has on a person, their life, and their friendships. This book isn’t called fluff and beauty. It’s called Truth and Beauty because it doesn’t soften the story, it tells the truth and that’s what makes it beautiful. To get uptight over the details just means that the parents were ignoring the bigger picture.

“It seems odd to me now that a deed as relatively easy as not crying over a needle was rewarded so lavishly, while my Herculean efforts to simply not fall apart during one of the many family crises went completely unnoticed.”(Grealy, 26)
From the time Lucy was 9 years old or so, she was expected to be brave. This was something she embraced, but also something that boggled her. To her, a child, going through radiation, chemotherapy, and numerous surgeries seemed somewhat normal to her. After all, she didn’t know any better. She never understood why physical pain was such a big deal to others, when it was something she could easily tackle.
Her mother put far too much pressure on her to be emotionally strong. It may be because her mother felt weak at the notion her daughter was dying, and needed her to be strong for her, but she did it in the wrong way. She pressured Lucy in a way that was unhealthy, in a way that caused her to suppress her emotions.
“How could she know I would take her so seriously? She went on to explain how disappointed she was that I’d cried even before Dr. Woolf had put the needle into me, that crying was only because of fear, that I shouldn’t be afraid, it would be all right. It was one thing to cry afterward, because she knew that it hurt, but why did I cry beforehand? Hadn’t I always been so brave before?” (Grealy, 78)
The way Lucy uses questions, it shows doubt in herself. She uses rhetorical questions many, many times throughout the novel; most likely as a way to show she was questioning what she felt and knew. Questioning your emotional reactions to something as difficult as cancer when you’re just a child is ridiculous.
“As I made my way downstairs to my room, I resolved never to cry again.” (Grealy, 79)

Strong emotions throughout Autobiography of a Face are definitely guilt and responsibility.
“In my mind I didn’t have what it took: I didn’t deserve to be comforted.” (Grealy, 87)
“Unable to locate my unhappiness within the difficult and complex family relationships we all shared, I thought that it all originated with me, that I was somehow at fault. If I couldn’t overcome my growing depression, I deserved it, and how unfair of me to inflict it upon everyone else, upon my mother especially.” (Grealy, 93)
“When I was younger, before I’d gotten sick, I’d wanted to be special, to be different. Did this then make me the creator of my own situation?” (Grealy, 101)
“I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.” (Grealy, 127)
“It wasn’t without a certain amount of shame that I took this kind of emotional comfort from surgery: after all, it was a bad thing to have an operation, wasn’t it? Was there something wrong with me that I should find such comfort in being taken care of so? Did it mean I liked having operations and thus that I deserved them?” (Grealy, 145)
All of these notions are ridiculous; everyone knows Lucy has no fault in her situation. But in the eyes of a child, it’s easy to think that you must’ve done something wrong in order for something so horrible to happen to you. She constantly questions her right to be happy and her guilt in putting her loved ones through this. The way she throws self-destructive quotes in throughout the book doesn’t make the reader pity her, which I assume was on purpose because Lucy hates to be pitied. Instead, it makes the reader frustrated because how on Earth could Lucy think these things? That’s probably what she was going for when she wrote them, because later in life she realizes none of this is her fault. She’s frustrated with herself for ever thinking she was at fault. At least, that’s the impression I got.
Overall, the tone of this book jumps around a lot. Towards the beginning I felt sorry for Lucy, somewhere in the middle I started to hate her because I felt that she was a little pretentious because of her surgery, but then towards the end I just am frustrated. Lucy shouldn’t have had to gone through this, especially with the emotional strain.

When I read Autobiography of a Face, I realized that Lucy’s struggle wasn’t primarily going through chemotherapy, and radiation; rather, I saw it more of as an internal struggle. Even though Lucy proudly walked around with the scar on her face, as if she was the toughest kid on the block, her adolescents and her peers made her realize that she and her disfigured face had a hard time fitting into society, because people clearly remembered her as this hideous figure and nothing more. Unfortunately, this is where Lucy’s struggle arises. It’s between herself and how she wants society to see her as a person; ultimately, leading to Lucy’s disapproval of her face.

I think the following passage artistically portrays Lucy’s dissatisfaction with her face.

“Halloween came round again . . . I put on a plastic witch mask . . . walked down the streets suddenly bold and free: no one could see my face” (Grealy 127). Then, Lucy goes on about “breathing in normalcy,” having the ability to feel free and no worries from society. She concludes this passage by stating people walk down the streets without being threatened of being made fun of because they’re ugly. “I again named my own face as the thing that kept me apart, as the tangible element of what was wrong with my life and with me” (Grealy 127)

I found this passage appealing, not only because it includes her struggle, but I also think it highlights her poetic and artistic style of writing. First of all, she creatively expresses the dissatisfaction of her face. As Mr. Kreinbring stated Lucy tells the story “from behind the cellophane.” Likewise, Lucy tells this part of the story from behind a mask; yet, she offers a different perspective. Once Lucy puts on the witch mask, she thinks she knows what it feels like to “breathe in normalcy” like the rest of society.

“Now that she was here, Lucy was certain of her destiny: she would go back to Aberdeen for the briefest time and lay down the law with her surgeon, Mr. Fenton, to whom she had become quite close. They would get this business of her face finished up once and for all and then life, real life, would begin,” (84-85, Patchett).

I thought that Ann did a good job of describing the situation with her comma use and colon use to add to the importance of Lucy’s decision, which is to help the reader understand Lucy. This passage brings up two defining characteristics of Lucy’s life, the love and trust of doctors and that “real life would begin (after the next operation).” I found it sad that Lucy was never able to get past the trauma she faced through the stares of others and her ever changing face and realize that life is upon her perfect or not. Also even though her book made it sound like she was getting closure and not going to live her life the same way as before (or at least not as depressed as before); but she never really changed, she was always wondering why her life wasn’t better like everyone else’s (even though everyone has their own problems). Through this passage one can also find an inconsistency with Lucy too, she wanted to be “beautiful” like everyone else and was depressed about it, but she had loved being different to the doctors, and having them finding her an interesting case (but in her defense that may have resulted from her need to feel loved).

“We shared our ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership. We gave over excess words, a single beautiful sentence that had to be cut but perhaps the other would like to have.” (Patchett, 21)
The simplicity of this statement is amazing. And it paints a great picture. It shows how carefree and light their friendship was in the beginning. They both cared about each other so much that they trusted that the other would do right by the other’s ideas. At this point, they both had dreams and truly believed that they would both make it big someday, no matter how long it took. The beginning was the high point in their friendship, because it was light and fresh.
But as the story progresses, it seems to me that the friendship became very one-sided.
“’Oh, you’ll be fine,’ she said lightly, wanting to move ahead to another topic.
I stopped walking, and after five steps or so she stopped too to find out where I’d gone. ‘I’ll be fine?’ I said. ‘That’s it? I’ve wrecked my life, come to Scotland, and all you have to say is that I’ll be fine?’ I had spent plenty of time on her sadness and now I wanted a minute for my own.” (Patchett, 72)
Patchett spent so much time and energy comforting Lucy, doing anything and everything she could to make sure she was physically able to do what she needed to do, and also mentally stable. She put up with all her crazy antics because she cared about her so much. But to me, Lucy seems very selfish towards Patchett. She never puts the same amount of energy or effort into their relationship as Patchett does. Maybe Lucy doesn’t know how to comfort her and that’s why she changes the subject at this point, but it seems like more than that. She’s unable to deal with the fact that her friend is unhappy, and I don’t know whether that means she’s a poor friend, or is just emotionally unstable. Either way, this quote shook me up and made me feel horrible for Patchett.

“I stayed up worrying about Lucy, something I had long ago promised myself not to do.” (Patchett, 181)
“I was still mad at her, furious with her, but that wasn’t the question. The question was did I love her. And I always loved her.” (Patchett, 221)
“With the body I could be tirelessly helpful, but with her psyche, her heart, I simply froze sometimes.” (Patchett, 228)
It’s obvious that Lucy is unstable, and her actions start to become self-destructive, especially with her drug use. But what’s even more disheartening is how her behavior starts to affect Patchett. Again, it boggles my mind how this friendship could be so one-sided and have so many people proclaim it as a beautiful friendship. There is no doubt that Patchett cared for Lucy, probably more than she should; but it’s hard to believe this care was reciprocated.
I get tired just reading these quotes. I can’t even imagine how Patchett feels. Drained probably, and can’t help but think about anything but Lucy. She even starts to feel guilty for having a life of her own. This is not healthy for Patchett, but it is something Lucy probably needed. But I wonder, Lucy had so many friends, how many of them had similar stories to Patchett’s?
I don’t mean to attack Lucy or the way she treated anyone, because she was very entertaining, good company, and definitely meant well. It just didn’t hit me the right way when I read it though. Patchett definitely loved Lucy, and this book proves just how strong she was to take care of someone so trying.

The fact that there was so much controversy surrounding Truth and Beauty as required reading at Clemson is almost laughable. I read the entire book before I looked at the assignment, and when I saw that we had to respond to the controversy I literally thought, “What controversy?” I’m going to have to agree with Patchett wholeheartedly that there are much worse things children can read.
I’d say I’m a pretty average person, offended by what most people are. But I definitely was not offended or shocked by anything in this book. It’s real life, what do they expect? Chances are, more than several people in our own school have gone through situations such as this in their life. Unfortunate, yes, but it’s just the way life is.
The people parents trying to ‘protect’ their children from Patchett’s book aren’t helping at all. People can really learn from reading this book, they can learn how horrible some people have it, how lucky they have it, not to use drugs, to stop using drugs, to help their friends whenever they can, to take depression seriously, and many other valuable lessons. Personally, I thought this was a good book, and because it was true, was even more powerful. Book banning is the lowest thing people can do—they’re just scared people will actually learn something and realize what’s right.

I want to go off a tangent on Mr. Kreinbring’s blog on Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. I agree that Ann Patchett highlighted Lucy in a negative way ultimately displaying her as feeble minded, greatly dependent, and an ugly person, inside and out. From the heroin addiction to the mountain piles of bills, I still had this strong attraction to Lucy, the attraction most likely coming from sympathy. On the other hand, I truly feel this was Patchett’s intent while she wrote this book. As Kreinbring said, we must know the truth in order to know the beauty of Lucy.

Although this is true, the same question repeated in my head, “How was Patchett successful in portraying Lucy exactly the way she wanted to?” After a long time it finally clicked. Of course, the title. I want to emphasize the subtitle “A Friendship.” To be honest, I didn’t really care for Patchett’s style of writing, but what I did notice was the mood of the entire piece; the mood of a strong and powerful friendship, so powerful that it was almost romantic.

“What the story doesn’t tell you is that the ant relented at the eleventh hour and took in the grasshopper when the weather was hard, fed him on his tenderest store of grass all winter. Grasshoppers . . . find the ants . . . They need us to survive, but we need them as well. They were the ones who brought truth and beauty to the party . . .” (Patchett 20).

After reading this quote, I felt like this metaphor set the mood and tone for the entire book. Patchett, being the hard working, diligent ant, takes an interesting twist on this fable and decides to take in the starving grasshopper, Lucy. Two very different characters, yet they’re greatly dependent on each other. In conclusion, Patchett and Grealy’s friendship was what made Patchett successful in portraying Grealy’s truth and beauty.

I read the assignment before I read Truth & Beauty, thinking I would be able to find or figure out what the controversy was while doing the reading. To be honest, I thought it had to do something about Lucy cursing the Bible or even Lucy’s response to the 9/11 attack. I was partially right, seeing that Clemson University saw “antireligious sentiments” featured in the novel. On the other hand, I researched if Clemson was a catholic university, but I couldn’t find anything on it, other than the college is located in South Carolina assuming these students and their parents are radical Catholics.

If they happened to be radical Catholics then I understand that they would be upset of the immoral things Lucy does in the novel, but Ken Wingate states that the purpose of the book was to send an explicit message to students to encourage sexual activity. This statement is beyond ridiculous. As I stated above, Patchett writes this novel to portray her friendship with Lucy, not to encourage sexual or immoral activities. Usually these activities can develop through depression and stress. I know friends and family who have indulged in cigarettes, and even the extremes: cutting themselves. Once again, Patchett is not saying that an individual should go out and do these things to solve his problems, yet, Patchett still portrays the realism and human nature of today.

Another disturbing thought that came across my mind while reading this article was that parents and alumni actually wanted to cancel Patchett’s visit to Clemson. My question was “why?” Was her intent of her visit to indulge students into sex? I highly doubt that. I was sitting with a group of friends in the McDonald’s lobby casually watching CNN news. There was a controversy about Barack Obama visiting a catholic high school. Apparently the school disapproved of Obama’s visit because he supported abortion. Once again, I found this ridiculous. Was Obama’s intent to change people’s minds about abortion, especially high school students? This just goes to show that censorship solely exists because people’s views are so skewed and close-minded.

“For weeks I pictured the ruined estate where Zhivago wrote his sonnets, aware that the true splendor of the house was inextricably bound to the fact that it was ruined. I didn’t understand why this should be so, and I didn’t understand why reimagining this scene gave me such a deep sense of fulfillment, nor why this fulfillment was mingled with such a sad sense of longing, nor why this longing only added to the beauty of everything else (Grealy 123). “
Throughout Autobiography of a Face, the one thing that stuck out to me was the irony in Lucy’s life. It was everywhere: she takes secret pride in her terrible condition because she was a ‘special’ case, she moans about being lonely despite having hundreds of devoted friends and a different man for every night of the week. The irony in this quote does an amazing job of paralleling the irony in Lucy’s life. Both Lucy and Zhivago’s house have been ravaged, but the damage is actually part of the charm.
Crumbling old mansions, covered in ivy, are quaint and, strangely, beloved—such as Zhivago’s house. Its state of disrepair lends it a mysterious air. The house has character, history, and romance. Its shabbiness improves it. The damage to Lucy works in a similar manner. Lucy is beyond intriguing: the nine-year-old who beat death. The missing third of her jaw is her battle scar, her creepers of ivy. It adds to her charm, her beauty. Beauty is not just skin deep; Lucy’s beauty comes from her strength, her willpower to jump over every hurdle in her way. She made history, let alone being a witness to it. Lucy, like the house, was ruined. She took comfort in Zhivago’s house, in knowing that she was not alone. And while she pined for her face, she had the sense to know that she was beautiful, in a different, truer, and more poignant way.

‘Neither of us said anything for a long time, and after a while I thought Lucy had fallen asleep. The curtains were old and thin and the light from a street lamp fell in through the window and showed up the small outline of Lucy in her bed. “Okay,” she said finally.
“Okay what?”
“I won’t be mad at you anymore,”’ (111, Patchett).

When I first read this passage I thought is was cute, but as I thought more about it became sad. I found it cute because of how childlike Lucy and Ann’s friendship was, and how you can picture a child stubbornly saying, “I won’t be mad at you anymore,” (111, Patchett) while forgiving a close friend. I then found it sad that Lucy would doubt her friendship with Ann and become jealous of her boyfriend in the first place, it is just silly, if they were such good friends. Why would it matter to Lucy who Ann is dating at the time; I can understand maybe feeling a little resentful of that fact that the boyfriend was successful in some areas that Lucy wasn’t – but how could Lucy thought she could be replaced when (like Ann said) she just started dating him and she had plenty of other friends who love her just like Ann did? Also I found Ann’s ability to describe so well her surroundings and the fight interesting, but I guess when one’s friend is as unforgettable as Lucy: it probably isn’t that hard.

“The drag queens and Rollerbladers and lesbian bikers packed the narrow streets alongside the sunburned tourists pushing baby carriages (Patchett 117).”
I utterly loved this quote. This line, insignificant in the grand scheme of Truth & Beauty, brought together both Patchett’s quality of writing and the nature of Patchett’s and Grealy’s friendship. The quote strings together different groups that all are in some way connected; it creates a world of opposites. This is the core of Patchett’s and Grealy’s friendship: they are polar opposites, as Patchett continuously acknowledges, with something in common. Patchett is the sheltered plaid-clad Catholic schoolgirl whereas Grealy is the streetwise, strong-as-nails city girl. Grealy would pass for the lesbian bikers, whereas Patchett is most likely one of the tourists. Then again, that is just one application of the quote.
The quote also represents Grealy’s relationship with the world. Grealy is ‘special’—she is a legend, an inspiration, and a case study. In other words, she is not normal. Nothing about Grealy is normal; she cannot even close her mouth properly. It makes sense, then, to observe that her relationship with the world is also skewed. Grealy falls into two categories: the legend and the untouchable. She is an untouchable to most of the world, one of the drag queens: unwanted, unappreciated, and misunderstood.
Yet this untouchable walks shoulder to shoulder with the ‘normal’ people; the drag queen pushes through crowds of new mothers in the Provincetown summer. This duality, one of Grealy’s most palpable qualities alongside irony, is so well represented by Patchett’s quote. The quote wrapped everything about Grealy’s friendships, treatment, and mentality in a nutshell and delivered the gist of Grealy’s personality in under twenty words. Honestly, the Grealy family is crying over split milk: Patchett’s portrayal of Grealy was flawless.

“Even as people confirmed that this was now my face, even as people congratulated me, I felt I was being mistaken for someone else. The person in the mirror was an imposter – why couldn’t anyone else see this?” (Grealy 220).

This quote is so strong and applicable to society, even Grealy agrees in her interview with Charlie Rose that ultimately this book is about “identity, who you are, how you act in the world, and seeing yourself through two different sets of eyes: your eyes and other people’s eyes.” Grealy also mentions in the interview that people take their identity for granted. A lot of the time, we identify ourselves by the way we look. Likewise; Grealy does the same thing in her adolescent years: she allows her face to take over her identity. In addition, society’s reactions towards her face builds on to trying to create her identity.

We wake up every morning and look in the mirror, naturally matching our physical image with our identity. Then we identify ourselves with our peer groups, who can pressure us to change easily. They tell me I’m wearing an ugly pair of jeans; I get rid of them. My haircut’s horrific; I try to fix it. This is how we identify ourselves: through our eyes and society’s eyes. We constantly change to match our “identity.”

On the other hand, Grealy takes it a step further; a step people are afraid to take. She isolates her face from her image allowing her identity to develop through nature. As Grealy said in her interview, identity is about self-discovery; it’s a journey. “I found that I could stare straight through a mirror, allowing none of the reflection to get back to me” (Grealy 221). She took the necessary steps and measurements to fulfill her journey to self-discovery, even if it meant completely abandoning her image to fully understand herself.

The Road, a story about devastation.
Autobiography of a Face, a story about a girl with cancer.
Truth and Beauty, another story about the same girl with cancer.

At first glance I thought, sarcastically of course, what a great summer reading list! However, as I read Autobiography of a Face and Truth and Beauty I realized that yes, the subject of each book isn’t exactly cake and ice cream but the two different ways their stories are communicated are beautiful. Grealy exposes her story in a poetic and artistic way, like a playwright would. Patchett remembers countless times of struggle and good times as well with her dear friend Lucy. Rather than delivering her story poetically like Grealy did, Ann Patchett took a more straightforward approach towards recollecting special times with Lucy. While Grealy used big artistic words to describe her life’s trials, Patchett used metaphors that are more pleasurable to the reader’s eye, in my opinion.

Though different, I believe the two authors’ writing styles come together in one quote from Ann Patchett. Upon describing Lucy’s autobiography, Patchett said that Lucy “was a serious writer, and she wanted her book to be judged for its literary merit and not its heartbreaking content.” (Patchett, 141) Patchett’s writing is to the point right here. This is who Lucy is and this is what you need to know. Patchett has many a comment like this one in her book, followed by an interesting metaphor of course. This quote also defines Lucy’s writing style without having read her autobiography. Lucy is serious about her work, and her main focus is creating a style that is as poetic and artistic as possible, not expecting to get recognition for her struggles and triumphs before her beautiful writing.

As mentioned by both Patchett and Grealy, Autobiography of a Face was not written to create a sense of pity within the reader, but rather a sense of awe towards Grealy’s excellent writing style. Her story was merely a tool to express her artistically genius method. As stated in her interview, Grealy wanted the reader to understand the meaning of true identity and self definition through descriptive words and passages. I think Grealy’s most beautiful passage is the following, “Each breath was an important exchange with the world around me, each sensation on my skin a tender brush from a reality so beautiful and so mysterious that I would sometimes find myself squealing with the delight of being alive.” (Grealy, 91) In both Grealy’s and Patchett’s books it is a rarity to find Grealy to be satisfied with her life. Because this feeling is so rare, that is why I think there is so much beauty in that particular passage.

Throughout Autobiography of a Face, the capturing of self identity and desire to be special and loved was what Lucy strived for. “I was vain and proud when it came to wanting to be different from everyone else. I wanted nothing more than to be special, and so far the role of patient had delivered.” (Grealy, 25) Lucy wondered if she would still be special and loved after chemotherapy. She wondered if anyone would trade lives with her, if she really had it that bad. “My face may have closed the door on love and beauty in their fleeting states, but didn’t my face also open me up to perceptions I might otherwise be blind to?” (Grealy, 150) Her questioning of her true character was indeed a struggle, but was expressed in the most elegant way.

I would like to applaud Ann Patchett and her writing of Truth and Beauty. Personally, I think writing a memoir would be one of the most difficult types of writing because not only does my memory fail miserably, but writing about a friend who has passed as radiantly and descriptively as Patchett did seems like the ultimate task.

The way in which Patchett described Lucy’s personality, life, and trials is exceptional because she has mastered the metaphor and the simile. Patchett doesn’t need an entire chapter to fill out a great metaphor. Instead, Patchett can sum up a captivating metaphor in a sentence, to a small passage. “Lucy was invisible, exuberant, and utterly birdlike in her wild, darting freedom.” (Patchett, 82) Passages like this enable Patchett to deliver her story in a way that is understandable, as well as intriguing.

In agreement to people who have responded before me, I think that the addition of Lucy’s letters was an excellent way of connecting both of their ideas and feelings. The letters are completely relevant towards Patchett’s writing and are necessary to keep the reader informed of what Lucy is truly going through, without having read her autobiography of course.

I also agree with Amanda’s views on this passage; “Gawking is a look stronger than a stare. The gawk was full of brazen curiosity, pity, and fear, every unattractive human emotion rolled into one unflattering facial expression. If she saw them, and she must have since this was not a discreet spy job, she didn’t let on,” (9, Patchett). It is well written, and I never would have given the word “gawking” a second thought without reading this passage. This is yet another lovely description of the true meaning of Lucy’s life.

There was a controversy concerning Truth and Beauty? Seriously?

Along with Tracie, I giggled when this was brought to my attention. I understand that books are meant to be interpreted different ways be the readers, but I think that this interpretation was completely blown out of proportion. It is true that Lucy’s sexual activity as well as drug usage were published in Patchett’s book, but only to inform, not to influence. Leaving those parts out would leave the story incomplete as well as not truly representative of Lucy as a person. I agree with Patchett in her interview that if her book is too influential towards people then books about war and subject matter like that shouldn’t be read either. Patchett wrote Truth and Beauty as “a story of Herculean effort to endure hardship and to be a friend” (Patchett) not as a means to influence readers to participate in promiscuous and drug related behavior.

“She fell in love with them and longed for them to fall in love with her. Once Lucy gave a lecture to a convention of plastic surgeons and one came up to her later and suggested she come by his office for a consultation. He had some new ideas that he thought could help her. They made love on the examining table,” (147, Patchett).

I thought that this passage was a good example of Lucy’s need to be loved, and the lengths she would go to receive even a piece of the romance she dreamt of. I found is statement incredibly sad, sad in the fact that Lucy was so obsessed with being different to and cared for by doctors, that she wanted them to love her. I also found it sad that Lucy was so desperate to achieve the love of a doctor, that she would have sex with a married surgeon on the first day of meeting him (but I assume that she was used having sex with people she hardly knew by this point of her life). Also I think that if she knew he was married before (the book didn’t say), she should have known his love would be half-hearted and that he was probably an ass. I found it interesting how Ann used a short sentences to describe the situation, and to transition from one event to the next in an extremely fluid motion, from, “He had some new ideas that he thought could help her,” (147, Patchett) to “They made love on the examining table,” (147, Patchett).

“She was trapped in a room full of mirrors, and every direction she looked in she saw herself, her face, her loneliness. She couldn’t see that no one else was perfect either, and that so much of love was the work of it. She had worked on everything else. Love would have to be charmed, (171, Patchett).

This passage stood out to me because of the amazing description of the cause of Lucy’s depression. I found it terrible sad that Lucy was so alone, and could never totally get out of depression; but what I found most sad was that the first thought that came to my mind after reading this passage was “Blanche,” (because yes, I do hate comparing a once living, breathing, person to a fictional tragic character). In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche clearly states that she doesn’t want reality; she wants magic – that quote, came to my mind when I read this memoir, more than once sadly – as Lucy seemed to expect “charmed love” often – at least when writing her letters to Ann. In many ways reading Lucy’s story was a bit like reading a tragedy, Lucy was a strong and powerful force of nature that loved living life on the edge, and like Ann said, often danced with death; but was also often sad and depressed because she was not loved (in her mind) and her life ended in one of her many dances with death (also like Ann said). I also thought it strange that Lucy thought she was the only one in the world with issues and insecurities, but she knew that that really wasn’t true too (this I found out from the interview posted on this page) – it made me wonder if her feelings of being singled-out in the world was one of the symptoms of depression (which obviously she had).

PS – I do not own a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire to properly give the in-text citation for the quote I used.

This was the first memoir that I have ever read and I thought Patchett did a beautiful job captivating the reader with her extraordinary tale of friendship with Grealy. Even though this was merely only a play by play of Patchett and Lucy’s life together, Patchett’s writing pulled me in and kept me reading as if I were reading an exciting novel. The way Patchett phrases and describes an event, even if it’s only about carrying an order of fajitas on a busy afternoon at Friday’s, she words it so creatively and makes everything sound so interesting. “Here’s to not having a car, Lucy raised one glass out of six and I picked up another to clink against it”(Patchett, 21). Even though this is not a very exciting statement it still caught my attention. Instead of saying “We made a toast” or “We raised our glasses”, Patchett found a creative and detailed way to captivate that moment. I felt that’s how Patchett made her memoir. She found little moments in her and Grealy’s friendship and transformed them into pages, and chapters of beautiful writing that sum up their lives together. Patchett and Grealy’s friendship was more like a love affair, their friendship was very intimate and they were so passionate about one another. That’s why I thought the addition of Grealy’s letters was such a vital component to this memoir. We had to see Grealy thoughts to fully understand how deep their friendship really was.

The controversy about Truth and Beauty at Clemson was ridiculous. So yes, Patchett’s
memoir did contain a fair bit of drugs and sex throughout, but to focus on that would be missing the point on why Patchett wrote the book in the first place. Patchett wrote about her and Grealy’s life, she wrote about the truth and the realness of how they lived. Leaving out the controversial details would be leaving out parts of their lives. When someone reads about the drugs, sex, and suicide that take event in Truth and Beauty, they are more likely to be repelled then to be drawn to it.

‘She had practical friends and emotional friends, friends with big houses to crash in and friends who were good for wild fun, and she knit us together to find the perfect balance of what she needed from all of us. But this time I couldn’t do my job. This time I sat on the stairs in my father’s house and I cried with her and never said that this was just a setback and we would find a way to get through it. Instead I told her the truth, that this seemed the saddest thing of all, and I didn’t think there was anything to do at the moment except be sad about what had happened. She was gasping on the phone, she was crying so hard. “What am I going to do?” she asked me over and over again. I didn’t know the answer,’ (208, Patchett).

I found this one passage of the most depressing moments in the entire memoir (along with all of the other times when Ann is unable to help Lucy), I don’t want to ever to have a moment in my life when I have to help or comfort a friend or member of my family and not be able to say anything that would help him or her. I also found it so amazing that Lucy had so many friends and they all served different purposes. I suppose that have friend that I like for different reasons, but definitely not on Lucy’s scale. As far as the writing, this passage appropriately used commas to list Lucy’s large variety of friends and to describe the situation to the reader and the time that Ann couldn’t help Lucy. Also I noticed that, like all of the other occurrences of short sentences, the short sentences in this passage to properly give intensity to the statement and made it all the more sad, “But this time I couldn’t do my job,” (208, Patchett).

‘“I’ll get over this”, she said. “We’ll look back and call these the heroin years. We’ll say, ‘Do you remember when Lucy was a heroin addict?’”
“We thought it was very serious,” I said.
“We thought she was gone for good,” Lucy said, “but then something happened, no one ever knew what it was, but one day she straightened back up. When you look at how wonderful her life is now, you can hardly even believe it was really her,” (248, Patchett).

This passage stood out to me because of how much it reminded of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (at the least the movies, since I haven’t read the books all the way through since Freshmen year – and yes another, in my opinion, terrible, fictional character connection), in that it sounds like a conversation between Frodo and Sam, when they talk about their story (while living it) in the past tense like Lucy and Ann did here. Also I found this passage was very misleading because it gives the reader hope that Lucy had a chance to get better (if the reader didn’t know beforehand what caused her young death, which was my case). It made the reader think that maybe Lucy didn’t really want to kill herself (like what was shown in the page before) and she must have past away suddenly from something else, because she wanted to be better. Though I suppose this conversation was put there because that was what Ann hoped was true about Lucy at the time; that she would get better and stop the Heroin for good. It also shows the strength of an addiction, that the “one day she straightened back up,” (248, Patchett) that Lucy said here, isn’t realistic when one deals with a Heroin addiction or any other addiction.

Here we go, blog time. I’ll start with The Road, a little bit late, but better late than never.

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” (McCarthy, 5)

I could already see what this is getting at. To the Man, his child is all he has, being in a post-apocalyptic time after all. In his child, he sees God. In his child, he sees him as a gift of God; his only hope. If his child is not a message from God, then technically speaking God didn’t give any messages. In this case, there would be no hope. I’m betting that probably most of the characters in this novel will question hope and God. I’;m assuming an unknown cataclysm has ruined the Earth, and now there are few that are fighting to survive. Is there any hope left? Would believing or not believing in God be irrelevant at that point? I guess the Man, though hope is very little, he clings on the belief that hope is still there.

“She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. She would do it with a flake of obsidian.He taught her himself. Sharper than steel. The edge an atom thick. And she was right. There was no argument. The hundred nights they’d sat up debating the pros and cons of self-destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall. ” (McCarthy, 58)

I think we knew at that point that the mother committed suicide. Backtracking a little bit, the mother said that death is a lover and could give something the man could not. I’m assuming that what death could give is an eternal end to suffering. The mother feared of what the future would hold for her and her family. Also, she was not convinced that the birth of her son was any sign of hope, and thought of it as a curse. So it was then she wished for eternal nothingness, an end to her suffering. So in the end, she self-destructed committing suicide.

“I’m past all that now. Have been for years. Where men can’t live gods fare for better. You’ll see. It’s better to be alone. So I hope it’s not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it’s not true. Things will be better when everybody’s gone.” (McCarthy, 172)

This was the old man’s response to the question: “What if I said he’s (the child) a god.” The old man has obviously given up on and life, God, and hope. He wants the human race to cease existence. He believes that whether people live under a god or not, it doesn’t matter, especially since life has been put into this situation. He says it’ll be better if everything and everyone is gone from the world. I’m assuming that the old man is saying that death will end pain and suffering, and with that it will be better for everyone. He most likely thought that just believing in God would be fine… until the given circumstances, basically crushing any belief, any hope.

“On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be out back. Not be made right again. In the deep gleans where they lived all things were older man and they hummed of mystery.” (McCarthy, 287)

And that concludes The Road. It seems that though the boy is now safe under the “good guys”, the future for him and the rest of the human race is very uncertain, dare I say bleak? Though one of the themes in the novel, the “fire”, I’m assuming that was all about hope. If we take that connection and put that into the novel, there may be some hope for the future, very little, but just a bit. The man has passed on everything to his child, and now with the man gone… it’s all up to the child; he controls his own destiny. And whether the human race could survive is up to the reader. There were some people that, technically speaking, turned into animals with cannibalism and such. Then the people still sane and maybe still have some hope, are hiding. Then the world has shaped into something almost inhabitable. And so the novel end there.

Okay, first off, I just want to say that Grealy did not look that bad. I was expecting some sort of Quasimodo-type from the Hunchback of Notre Dame or something of that sort. But no. She did have a sort of unexpected prettiness. Her face just looked a little swollen on the left side compared to the right but it wasn’t completely asymmetrical.

Then again, she did go through 38 reconstructive surgeries? Well, none the less, I think she looked okay…

To be completely honest, I wasn’t that into Autobiography of a Face. I’m not saying that I didn’t feel for Lucy Grealy. She did suffer and undergo a severe experience, which certainly altered her life. I just feel like Grealy was always negative- too negative. I may just be unsympathetic and please, go ahead and disagree with me here. But it was so hard to concentrate on the events and appreciate her writing style when the whole time I’m reading; I’m thinking this book is just one big “Pity me!” I knew people who had cancer, people I had loved and it’s hard. I’m not saying it’s not. Yes, they too had their moments of defeat. But they never let it completely rule their life, even when they found out it was terminal. I feel like Lucy Grealy had the chance to make it, and be a strong influence among those with cancer and those who have family members who’ve either survived cancer or died from it. But she was too focused on achieving acceptance, which put more damage on her then cancer did.

I could go on and on about this. Obviously
that is just strictly my opinion, and it may be rather bleak. Grealy, I believe had said that she wanted her work to be appreciated as it was- a piece of literature. Perhaps I’m being closed minded but I didn’t see that. I’m not going to lie about it for the sake of agreeing with everybody else.

I know we’re supposed to be focusing on the style of writing but I just wanted to express my opinion before I got into anything further.

This is an awfully common quote I see…

“Part of the job of being human is to underestimate our effect on other people…” (Grealy, 65)

No kidding. Grealy would definitely know all about that.

When you’re a little kid, you see a person with some sort of odd characteristic. Let’s say you see a person with dwarfism and you ask “Mommy, why is that person so small?”

(I’m using this as an example because I know it’s happened to a lot of people in the middle of a grocery store…)

Without even realizing it, a little kid just took a shot at this person’s self esteem just because he/she is different then what the child perceives as normal. The child doesn’t know this person. The child isn’t purposely trying to alienate this person for their quirks. It just happens. They point out what they see. No matter how malicious or mean it may seem, people in general- not only children, don’t see what’s wrong with pointing out the odd or peculiar. If somebody is different, it’s like an instinct to automatically look. And although we don’t realize it, the unusual person is pretty much on display for us to stare and pick apart. Somewhat similar to a pack of dogs ripping apart a piece of meat. Imagine how horrid that would be. How awful you’d feel. Unfortunately we don’t take the time to put ourselves in the shoes of outcasts. The human race is quite merciless.

I’d like to say that I appreciate the way that Grealy does try to put you in her shoes. Since it’s an autobiography and in first person, you get a feel of what it’s like to be an outcast- even if you are far from one. Everything she’s written is very personal (although morbid) so you feel like one person.
Everything’s straight forward. Sometimes she throws in big words and a few metaphors, but you still feel like she is talking to you.

“The habits of self-consciousness, of always looking down and hiding my face behind my hair or my hand, were so automatic by now that I was blind to them. When my mother pointed out these habits to me in the hope of making me stop, telling me they directed even more attention to my face, she might as well have been telling me to change the color of my eyes.” (Grealy, 186)
This quote may be one of my favorites in the book. It’s obvious up to this point that Lucy isn’t comfortable with who she is, or what she looks like. But I never really got a sense of how she acted when she was forced to be in public. I knew she covered her face, but I didn’t have any idea that she was unaware she was doing that. I can’t even imagine being so uncomfortable with myself that I would have to force myself to hide from the world for so long that it becomes second nature. I love how this quote highlights the impossibility of being comfortable with herself at this point in her life, which makes it even more amazing that she eventually isn’t afraid to show herself to people. Not just in the sense of showing her face, but showing her soul and who she is.

I got to say, I’m really pleased about Truth and Beauty. I still haven’t finished it, but I think I grasp more of what Ann Patchett has to say. It’s true that this is all about Lucy Grealy, her struggles, and what not. But I like the way Patchett writes. Sometimes simplicity is just the way to go.

Not to mention in Truth and Beauty, she really gets into the gritty aspect of Grealy’s life. She makes Grealy more personable then what I had gotten from Autobiography of a Face. In the first book, I think Grealy was kind of cold. Her self-consciousness made her build a hard exterior. Maybe that’s something she learned from her mother and mistaken it for strength? I’m not quite sure. Patchett definitely makes Grealy seem more charming- even with her faults in an attempt to be liked.

I think it’s funny she leaves the names of Grealy’s past lovers blank. I think it was a good idea to leave some disclosure since they do talk about sex pretty openly. As for the issue at Clemson University, I can hardly call this book “sewerlike.” Honestly, have those students and parents been living under a rock? Get over it. Look at the media today. Most of it involves sex and drugs. It’s unavoidable in today’s society. We don’t live in the fifties anymore. Patchett is just being truthful about the past. Look at the title- hello! It’s called TRUTH and Beauty. She’s got to tell what really happened or it just would be a story not a memoir.

Here goes Autobiography of a Face.

“The room was empty and buzzing with both bad light and the numerous stacks of books I still had to shelve. Five percent. I felt obliged to say something, but no one was there, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say anyway. Placing my hand on my neck, feeling the pulse there, I stood for some minutes on the verge of moving or speaking or sitting or something. Then the impulse passed, and I was on the other side of it, feeling as if I’d forgotten something, some name or object or emotion I’d mean to take note of but had carelessly allowed to slip by.” (Grealy, 68)

Just a few pages back, Lucy was talking about death. She was even talking about her obsession with it, and then what it meant to be alive. Then when she was working in the library and looked up her cancer, she saw the words “five percent.” Five percent being the survival rate. I think at that point she thought: Is this a blessing? Or a curse? It’s almost a miracle given that you only have a five percent chance of surviving Ewing’s sarcoma… but then she’d live through with what’s happening to her right then. Eventually she does in fact get anxious about her supposed loneliness and her ever changing faces, and then some. It’s as if she had a chance to live ugly or to die beautiful. She chose, I guess at that moment, the former, but living with the anxiety she build up led her down the wrong path in the last of her years.

“At home, when I took the mask off, I felt both sad and relieved. Sad because I had felt like a pauper walking for a few brief hours in the clothes of a prince and because I had liked it so much. Relieved because I felt no connection with that kind of happiness: I didn’t deserve it and thus I shouldn’t want it. It was easier to slip back into my depression and blame my face for everything.” (Grealy, 127)

I like how Grealy focuses on the word mask. The mask being not just her halloween costume, but what was used to avoid any gawking (as Patchett says), and maybe temporary happiness on her part. Grealy being sad however because all she did was hide herself for a while, and the fact that she’s hiding her face just for a while was all she could do at that moment. She obviously wasn’t happy with the way she looked not necessarily because of her physical appearance, but what strangers thought of her. She would be stared at, and because of outside appearances… it couldn’t be helped. That is most likely what Grealy was thinking, though she could fake her way by wearing that mask in Halloween… it’s all a lie. Then because of that, it would make her even more depressed.

“I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this is isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things. Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces behind to turn into ghosts that will inevitable resent and haunt us.” (Grealy, 222)

Grealy now starts to wonder, what exactly is our images when we look in the mirror. At this point Grealy finally got a somewhat successful surgery in which her face and jaw was better than ever. But then she looked at herself: “that’s it?” She wondered was that what she’s been dreaming for? Grealy is saying that we may try to look different and try to act like someone else, but when you look back from who you originally were… you may feel more disappointed than happy when you look at that mirror once more. Grealy looked at herself that one final time, yeah she’s different in physical… but then again her face has been changing. Another point she raises is that some people may never be pleased with the way they look…

And here’s the last novel, Truth and Beauty.

“We were all silent. I didn’t know whether or not I should apologize, since I was sure I wouldn’t have picked him up either. ‘You got to stop for people,’ he said, punctuating every word. ‘That’s what you owe me for this ride. You have to pick up somebody else up. Do you understand? Pick them up no matter what they look like.’” (Patchett, 31)

A pretty simple quote. It’s not so much on the picking people up part necessarily, but the part about helping people. People should help each other no matter what they are when they call for it. Then in return, people wouldn’t care what you are… you helped them. Interesting enough, Patchett said she wouldn’t have helped him when he talked about a time no one picked him up. But notice she said she wouldn’t have… until she heard from this guy.

I want to highlight several quotes displaying Grealy’s relationship with not only her parents, but also animals. Although we as humans are classified as animals, our thinking process is complex; well, at least more complex than a cat’s that is. I want to show Grealy’s contrasting relationship between the complex mind and the simplistic mind, and her reactions to both.

First, the way Grealy describes her relationship with her parents is difficult to understand and is never straightforward. Early on in the memoir, she describes her mother as angry and an “embarrassment” while she’s trying to figure out Grealy’s “bone growth” (Grealy 25). As she gradually develops further into constant surgeries, Grealy has no choice BUT to rely on her mother financially, and even in a way, dependent on her emotionally. For example, “For some reason I started to cry. My mother put her hand on my head and tried to soothe me” (Grealy 78). Grealy started crying even before the injection, yet her mother was disappointed in her, telling her to be brave. This part of the novel is so moving yet, complex. Is Grealy’s mother trying to support her emotionally? Or was she trying to support her self emotionally, as Grealy states “that she was afraid for me” (Grealy 78). Even though their relationship seems to be almost meaningful, I find it aggravating that Grealy does not mention her mother beyond her adolescent years.

Now I want to take a look at Grealy in relations with animals; the simplistic mind. “The cats . . . didn’t care how I looked. I made a silent vow to love them. . . I repeated the same vow to the dogs” (112). To be honest, nowhere in the novel did Grealy EVER state that she actually “loved” her parents; the people who struggled through financial anxiety, and still pulled through to help her. This wasn’t the only time Grealy chose animals over people. Grealy fell on her knees, sobbing when she found out that her horse had to be put down. On the other hand, Grealy’s father dies, but she doesn’t show any signs of compassion or caring compared to her horse.

Her relationship with humans and animals are confusing to me. Towards the end of the novel, Grealy also drops the idea of being greatly associated with animals. If Grealy didn’t care about her parents or animals, then who did she interact with? In my conclusion, animals had to be a symbolic message, foreshadowing a social group of eccentric friends who didn’t care how Grealy looked.

Oh, I’ve almost forgotten the Ant-Grasshopper references. I believe that Patchett uses it as a metaphor to her and Lucy’s relationship.

“We were a pairing out of Aesop’s fable, the grasshopper and the ant, the tortoise and the hare. And sure, maybe the ant was warmer in the winter and the tortoise won the race, but everyone knows that the grasshopper and the hare were infinitely more appealing animals in all their leggy beauty, their music, and interesting side trips. What the story didn’t tell you is that the ant relented at the eleventh hour and took in the grasshopper when the weather was hard, fed him on his tenderest store of grass all winter…Grasshoppers … find the ants … They need us to survive, but we need them as well. They were the ones who brought the truth and beauty to the party, which Lucy could tell you as she recited her Keats over breakfast, was better than food any day.” (Patchett, 20)

“Sometimes I worried that Lucy saw me as the ant I was, unglamorous, toiling. Sometimes I knew she did. Sometimes I aspired to be a grasshopper myself, to live in the city and go to parties, to have bright conversations with famous people instead of washing my grandmother’s hair and making grilled cheese sandwiches.” (Patchett, 203)

Looking at both quotes, that would make Ann the Ant and Lucy the Grasshopper. According to the quote from p.20, that holds true with Ann and Lucy. They needed each other; they were better together. Going back to the quote, Ann mentions that the Grasshopper or the Hare were more appealing, in this case, Lucy Grealy. Lucy Grealy became more popular, but at the same time was more concerned with the present and uncertain with the future. This is evident when she always wanted to do things then instead of later. Then near the end of the novel, Lucy became anxious and even needy… and at that time Ann really became the Ant that served the Grasshopper; Ann took Lucy in when she was in dire need of help. Ann herself, however, wanted to be like Lucy in a way that she would have more appeal to others. Though Ann and Lucy grew a bit apart in the end, they were better together.

I think this would be my last post.

“She had a nearly romantic relationship with Death. She had beaten it out so many times that she was convinced she could go and kiss all she wanted to and still come out on the other side. Lucy, weighing about a hundred pounds, having survived thirty-eight operation, had become officially invincible. She believed that the most basic rules of life did not apply to her, and over the course of our friendship, without me knowing when it had happened, I had come to believe it myself. The sheer force of Lucy’s life convinced me that she would live no matter what.
That was my mistake.” (Patchett, 257)

An excellent ending to a great novel. Just like Lucy said in the companion book, she did in fact have an obsession with death, and it was an excellent analysis by Ann Patchett. She has went through 38 operations, she had cancer, and she had lived, for the most part, through pain physically and emotionally. With that, Ann and Lucy herself thought that she was invincible, she has gone through a lot. But what is one thing that could end Lucy’s life? Self-destruction. That was the one and only thing that killed Lucy in the end. Obviously her taking drugs wasn’t only an addiction, but it was to supposedly heal the anxiety that she was building up. Unfortunately, even with all that’s she’s been through, she couldn’t be saved.

Sometimes, parents can really go too far. Take those of Clemson University’s class of 2010, for example. They managed to take a tragically poignant memoir about love, friendship, and the sacrifice necessary to keep those two healthy and twisted it into a pro-sexual promiscuity message. Truth & Beauty was quite the opposite, but over-protective conservatives will worry over the slightest opening of the eyes. Ridiculous, yes, but also scary: very, very scary.
The perpetrator of all that hate and fear would be Mr. Ken Wingate, local South Carolina lawyer who before ran for state governorship and lost. In the wake of my anger at his absurdity, I thought, “Oh, he’s just a sore loser criticizing yet another successful woman. Lovely.” But once the dark ugly cloud passed, I did what he could not do, and viewed the situation objectively.
But that’s putting it mildly. In reality, I scratched my head and pondered for two weeks as to why on Earth Clemson University, of all, would have such a negative backlash to the book. I phoned my cousin, a Clemson alumnus himself, and questioned him. He provided the oh-so-helpful response of “Well, they’re southerners.” That having failed, I turned to Google, my insomniac companion. And Google gave me this wonderful, vexed blog post from British newspaper The Guardian (links are at the bottom, so please read it if you get a chance.)
The post points out that South Carolina is in the Bible belt, and that got me thinking. Bible belt equals conservatives, which equals I-don’t-want-to-see-the-reality; after all the title points out the fact that it will be very raw and explosive. Patchett sheds light on Grealy’s dark habits and shows her Amy Winehouse side. That side is critical to the overall picture of Grealy, and without it, we get a flat Grealy, the traumatized and teased version of her. The dynamic part, troubled Grealy, is missing.
Troubled people often go to great lengths to compose themselves. Grealy went to lots of sex. But never did Patchett ever endorse Grealy’s behavior. She spoke of it with a tone of sorrow and timid disgust. So please, where does the message of sexual promiscuity lie? There is this one part where Patchett helps Grealy clean out her apartment, and one of Grealy’s many Dummies books is about Tantric sex, but as far as the eye can see and read the words “Buy a copy for yourself!” don’t appear on the page. Therefore, Mr. Wingate, please go find some other equally useless, absurd, and backwards activity to involve yourself in.
Forgive me if this sounds more like an angry op-ed than a response. I am still trying to console myself that perhaps these people were just misguided in their efforts to keep the wool over their children’s eyes a bit longer. Because I understand: as my brother grows, I worry about him losing his childish innocence. The tragic part is that losing that innocence is part of what life is about. We cannot hide the truth from younger generations; they’ll be underprepared to successfully take on the cutthroat world they’ll enter post-BA or MA. Patchett knows all about that world.

Links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/aug/15/requiredreading

Yes I have been terribly procrastinating this. The books have been read for a while, but I haven’t gotten to blogging until now.

The Road

“A low thunder coming from the river. It was a waterfall dropping off a high shelf of rock and falling eighty feet through a gray shroud of mist into the pool below. They could smell the water and they could feel the cold coming off it. A bench of wet river gravel. He stood and watched the boy. Wow, the boy said. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.”

This passage in particular, to me, lightened a very heavy mood even though I was only thirty-seven pages in. This book shows the human response to hardships and struggle, and the waterfall is symbolic of finding something along our journey, that enlightens us and pushes us to continue on even when things are difficult. Another reason I picked this passage is because it is just really beautifully written. This waterfall is the boy and his father’s oasis after a long journey, and they both seem to run into these a few times during the book, when they most need it.

The Road

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

The first one really made me think. How on earth can you borrow time? Maybe I’m thinking to literally. Personally I get the second one about a borrowed world. We’re here on this earth passing through, and it really doesn’t belong to all of us, so that much I understand. Maybe by borrowed time, McCarthy means that we are just using the time we are given. The time we’re given here was actually obtained from something, so maybe we are just borrowing it while we are in this borrowed world? And my interpretation of “borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it” is that maybe there is a possibility of a soul, and that maybe our souls live more than one life, so our bodies may serve as a kind of container for these souls, and we’re just borrowing these containers for the time being.

The Road

“Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash. He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.”

When I think of the beach, this is most definitely not the way I think of it. The man had probably described to the boy what the beach used to look like when he was younger, obviously in much better condition, so of course the boy would be disappointed. Who would want to go to a cold gray beach? What I want to know is how the ocean, and for that matter, the rest of the road, got that way. What happened to make everything ash and to never see the sun? My best guess would be the ending of the world somewhat, but I’m not sure. I get that it’s supposed to be seen as the hidden and not so hidden sometimes, suffering of man and how we as humans respond to our grief and hardships. Though these measures seem to be extreme.

Though I do feel that, even though there is apparent suffering, it is a beautiful disappointment. The way McCarthy describes the beach makes it seem uninviting, and there is almost a hidden danger to it. He symbolizes disappointment very well, in the description, and even in the very few words exchanged between the boy and his father. You can almost see him hang his head, and only whisper “That’s okay” back to his father. It really is an amazing moment that he has captured.

The Road

“At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.”

I see this as going two different ways. Either he is speaking about death, or oppression by some outside force. Okay so it sounds out there but here’s my reasoning.

From “He is coming…” on, it seems like he may be talking about death. At this time he is being taken by consumption, so maybe he feels like whatever is in control of his fate, if there is anything, is doing this to him. “He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.” To end his life, or perhaps even to end his suffering, given the fact that he is dying as it is.

Now the other direction that this could take is that he was/is being oppressed by something, possibly a government of some sort. There were people in the book that were out there to hunt survivors, so they help explain that. “He sharpened a quill…to scribe these things…” possibly something done to make the people or the man in particular suffer? Or maybe it was just thought to have been done by the “government” or whatever that force is, due to the fact that that statement is a question.

My first reaction to McCarthy’s writing style varied from disgust to frustration. However, after expressing this in my first blog (an extremely long time ago) Mr. Kreinbring encouraged those of us who were disturbed by this to provide an explanation. Thus, here is my explanation:

McCarthy chooses to write in this style lacking punctuation in order to detach himself from the story being told in the novel. This made it their story, not his. I began to think about the reason for his writing style a lot when I read this passage on pg 133: “He opened the cabinet. Old Catalogs. Packets of seed. Begonia. Morning Glory. He stuck them in his pocket. For what?” It almost seemed to me that the author was enquiring the reasoning behind his own characters actions. Why would he do that unless he wanted to appear as a third party and not an author. This made me think about how little we know about what goes on in the minds of these nameless characters. I know Emilie touched on that a little bit. There is no need for names nor an explanation of intimate thoughts when merely observing and that is what I believe McCarthy wants the reader to see him as, an observer. I also felt that with out the quotation marks, I wasn’t constantly reminded that this was a fictional story and not a true account of an amazing journey. Another thing that kept it “real” was the repetition of each day. Every day the father and son would find food, worry about the dark, and be cold. There wasn’t much variation in their actives and if the novel were a true story there wouldn’t be. People trying to survive aren’t concerned with much but just that – surviving. Thinking about the novel, I found myself trying to find an explanation for the old man. Perhaps he was a symbol, but I think more than anything he was just another survivor trying to keep on going. I thought the monotonous daily routine added a touch of realism.

A passage that really stood out for me was one expressed by the old man. “ People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.” (168) To me, this passage is both eloquent as well as smack in the face for those of us who become a little too obsessed with preparation. I am certainly guilty of this. Not only does he criticize their way of life, but then he reminds them how delirious they are to think that what they do actually matters. The world will continue to revolve around the sun and day will still be replaced with night no matter what they do. The old man really gets at how significant we really are. Prior to the passage the old man tells the father and son that he just keeps going. That is exactly what the father and son had to do to keep alive. They had to simply stumble along nameless and inconsequential. I think that everything being so full of ash and debris makes that picture come alive even more. Not only is everything dead or dying, it’s grey and colorless. To me with out color, there is no emotion, no life.

I recently read Lord of The Flies by William Golding. There were two characters that particularly stood out, Ralph and Piggy. If you’re not familiar with he novel, a group of young boys are stranded on an island and soon find themselves savages . The rules that they established upon first coming to the island were no longer obeyed and all order quickly fell into chaos. There were two boys, however, Piggy and Ralph that seemed not to partake in the bestiality displayed by the other boys. I was puzzled why those two were so special and avoided the undoing of civility. Then I realized that I never quite understood what made the father and son (as well as the family in the end) in The Road so different from the others. The father kept saying that thee were carrying the “light.” What does that mean? What made these characters immune to their inner self? I usually get annoyed with all the books about how society is so cruel and how rapidly humans resort to savagery, but now I’m more concerned not with the norm, those who fall, but instead I want to know about those who stand. Those who always seem to stand up to deteriorating society and don’t give in to the devastation around them. What is so special about them?

“Twelve years of Catholic school had taught me that I would be held accountable not only for what I did, but for everything I considered doing. Twelve years of beating cancer had taught Lucy that she was invincible and that nothing, none of it, was ever going to catch up with her.” (Patchett 29)

By this point of Patchett’s novel, I’ve decided Lucy is a bit more out of the box as compared to Anne with her bubbly personality. Anne perceives Lucy as a strong willed person doing anything and everything to achieve that perfect face. What throws me off, however, is how Lucy perceives herself in her novel Autobiography of a Face. In autobiography, Lucy struggles so much with death and judgment that it doesn’t sound anything like the person Patchett is describing. It’s still early in the novel, so most likely things will progress or change in the near future for the two.

Truth and Beauty was one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.

The constant enduring love that Ann had for Lucy was touching in so many ways. No matter what happened Ann was always there for Lucy, and would go to great lengths to come through for her friend. I was particularly moved by the story because it was a passionate friendship that reminded me all too well of a relationship I have with a friend of mine. No matter what shenanigans she gets into, I am always there for her, and lend the listening ear she needs when she needs it.

Although there was a huge stretch of the book that was rather slow and didn’t hold my attention so well, the ending made up for it. I found all the talk of writing fellowships and such rather boring, but throughout it all there were interesting parts that kept my attention.

The story overall was touching, and deep. It really made think about how powerful friendships can be and made me realize an importance that all of them have.

I really enjoyed the way that Ann wrote. Her style was clear and understandable and her style really made the book more interesting and worth reading.

“There was no graffiti anywhere in the bathroom except on these latches. Someone, certainly the same person, had scratched onto each rectangular piece of metal a message. Sitting on the toilet in the first stall you could read God is Near, and on the second, Be Here Now.” (Grealy, 116)

I liked this passage because I felt that it helped Grealy understand that she was not alone and that there were other people who suffered just like her. Grealy often felt lonely, and was constantly made fun of, or stared at by strangers. Every Friday before chemotherapy she would go down to the bathroom just to read one of the two messages; I think they gave her strength to push through the pain and never give up. There is an example of this later in the book when she needs to go to the bathroom and gets out of bed to go on her own. Unfortunately she is unable to make it and she just lies on the floor waiting for someone to find her and help her back into bed. While she is lying there she remembers one of the things she read on the stall. “I suddenly had a glimmer of what the person had meant when he scratched that message in the bathroom door eleven floors below: Be Here Now. I felt a bottomless sense of peace, of stillness. I decided it was simply a matter of will, that if I really concentrated I could make it back.” (Grealy, 135) Thinking of that sentence is what gave Grealy the strength to get up and make it back to her bed. It kept her going even when she was about to give up.

“Horrified as I was that people might feel sorry for me, I also knew that I possessed a certain power. After all, people noticed me. Wherever I went, even just to the store with my mother, I was never overlooked.” (Grealy, 101)

In this passage Grealy talked about how she hates it when people feel sorry for her. Grealy always wanted to be different or to be special and when she was finally different she didn’t want it anymore. “I was special. Being different was my cross to bear, but being aware of it was my compensation.” When Grealy was first told she would be getting ride to the hospital in the ambulance she was excited, but when the day finally came she no longer enjoyed the attention and felt self-conscious. She realized that many people pitied her and she didn’t like this idea. Grealy started to feel as though she deserved everything that happened to her and it was her own fault. It makes me sad to think that a child had to go through all of this, and to top it off she carried around the feeling that she was only getting what she deserved. “If I couldn’t overcome my growing depression, I deserved it, and how unfair of me to inflict it upon everyone else, upon my mother especially.” (Grealy, 93) It seemed as though Grealy went through everything alone and she had no one to turn to when she felt down. Although her mother was always with her during her chemotherapy I always felt she never showed understanding toward her daughter and what she was going through. Without having someone to turn to Grealy felt alone.

Autobiography of a Face

“It’s impossible for me not to revisit this twenty-year-old playground scene and wonder why I didn’t go right when I should have gone left, or, alternatively, see my movements as inexorable. If the cancer was already there, it would have been discovered eventually, though probably too late. Or perhaps that knock set in motion a chain of physical events that created an opportunity for the cancer to grow which it might not otherwise have found. Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future, and just as an answer to a riddle seems so obvious once it is revealed, it seems curious to me now that I passed through all those early moments with no idea of their weight.”

Ms. Grealy endured a lot as a child. She was diagnosed with a cancer most people don’t survive, and yet she seems to think of it as if as a small detail in her life. As if it were surreal to her, like it didn’t really happen.

What I find interesting about this piece is that I can relate to having one particular memory when I was younger that is significant in my life. I think we all can relate to having one of these memories. They may not be very significant now, showing up more in our adult years, or maybe for some of us they play a specific role right now.

When she speaks of not “going right when I should have gone left”, there are situations that, as humans, we wonder what might have happened if we were to handle a situation a little differently, mostly when we see that we have made the wrong decision in the first place. Now in Lucy’s case, she was thinking more towards the idea of not finding the cancer soon enough, and I do believe she was thankful for being hit, because if she hadn’t gone to the doctor, the cancer would probably have gotten worse, and she maybe would have died.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

“They went on. He kept constant watch behind him in the mirror. The only thing that moved in the streets was the blowing ash.” (McCarthy, 24)

The other day I was at a bonfire. It wasn’t really cold or even dark yet, but the mosquitoes where out and we were hoping the smoke would keep them away. The few logs we used were slightly damp, so we covered them with tons of dry leaves and pine needles, hoping it would help the fire. It didn’t really. Once we lit it up the leaves burned too quickly. Tiny pieces still on fire shot up into the air before landing on everyone on my side of the fire as they burned up completely. The fire barely lasted ten minutes before all the leaves were gone, leaving just the charred logs, but it left us covered in ash. The ash got everywhere, it covered our hair, skin, and clothes.
While we were trying to brush it off, it struck me that this was probably how the father and son felt. Were they annoyed, like we were? Or had they gotten used to it? McCarthy tells us that whatever happened to their world, happened a few months before the boy was born. By the time we are reading their story, he has to be around 8-10 years old. How long did it take them to stop caring about it. After the first few months? Or was it only after the man’s wife committed suicide. I think it finally hit me how bleak their world was. After years and years of falling ash, it would have covered everything. Their world has no color at all, something I couldn’t even have imagined. The only time they would have seen any color aside from ash gray would have been the nights they could have a fire.

“They sat at the window and ate in their robes by candlelight a midnight supper and watched distant cities burn… Beyond the window just the gathering cold, the fires on the horizon.” (McCarthy, 59)

It’s ironic how the very thing that tore apart their world is the only thing keeping them from dying during the cold nights. And half the time they can’t risk a fire if they want to stay hidden from the other people on the road. Winters in Michigan are cold enough. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be for them, without shoes and warm clothes, to have to slog through the snow day after day. McCarthy also uses fire as a means to recognize the different kinds of people. The father and son repeatedly mention the fact that they are “carrying the fire”. To me, the phrase seemed more like something the man told his son to help him believe they are the good guys. And it works. The son even believes the stranger at the end won’t harm him because he says that he is also “carrying the fire.”

“He took the boy’s hand and pushed the revolver into it. Take it, he whispered… If they find you you are going to have to do it. Do you understand?… You know how to do it. You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand?” (McCarthy, 112-3)

I have to admit that that passage terrified me. In the beginning, I thought that the revolver was for protection from the others on the road. Like when the son was being threatened and the father shot the man without thinking. Or to keep anyone else from stealing their food and supplies. It wasn’t until the sequence where the mother decides to kill herself rather then continue on with her family that I realized the revolver was more of a last resort to keep them from being taken by the others on the road.
There is a passage where the father realizes that the son would never be able to shot himself. And that to protect his son, he would have to kill him himself. A mercy killing. It reminded me of the end of Of Mice and Men, where George shots Lennie as an act of mercy to keep him out of an asylum and the hands of the other workers. Both the father and George act as the protectors of the boy and Lennie, respectively. But how are they protecting them if they end of killing them? Is the loss of life different because it was done out of mercy instead of hatred?

“Where men cant live gods fare no better.” (McCarthy, 172)

Where are all the people? It’s hard to believe that whatever disaster destroyed America also managed to wipe out the entire population except for the father and son. Flashbacks show that there were thousands of people in the streets after the catastrophe. The only major signs of those people now is the fact that the houses and stores they search on the way to the coast are stripped of anything useful for their journey, and the few the pair encounter along the way.
The cruelty of the surviving humans is horrifying. It’s amazing how fast society can fall apart and a every-man-for-himself free-for-all becomes the unspoken norm. Hobbes wrote that without a government, man would become no better than a beast (Leviathan), and in this reality he was right. Hannah said that there are always “Those who always seem to stand up to deteriorating society and don’t give in to the devastation around them.” Like the father and his son. The father is willing to do anything to protect his son, even kill another man over it, but what prevented him from succumbing like the others?
I think the answer is pure luck. After the disasters, the streets were filled with thousands and thousands of people. But at the time of the story, almost a decade after, the vast majority of them have disappeared. It makes sense that disease and other disasters/attacks would have killed many more. And not everyone would have been able to survive the months after, especially not the winters. Countless others probably committed suicide like the man’s wife. The father and son were lucky, or unlucky depending on the way you look at it, to have survived as long as they did. I doubt that, if more of them had lived, society would have crumbled like it did. Still, that doesn’t really answer why the few were able to resist losing their humanity. What made them different from the others?

What a depressing book. I liked that McCarthy never actually said what had happened to the world/alternate reality/America? I thought that the vague references he made to the burning cities, ash covering everything, the road that had simply melted, etc were enough background to the story. The actual plot itself was pretty redundant now, with all the books about the end of time, and easily predictable. McCarthy’s style and the way he deliberately left out details is what made the book stand out to me.

Autobiography of a Face

“It’s impossible for me not to revisit this twenty-year-old playground scene and wonder why I didn’t go right when I should have gone left, or, alternatively, see my movements as inexorable. If the cancer was already there, it would have been discovered eventually, though probably too late. Or perhaps that knock set in motion a chain of physical events that created an opportunity for the cancer to grow which it might not otherwise have found. Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future, and just as an answer to a riddle seems so obvious once it is revealed, it seems curious to me now that I passed through all those early moments with no idea of their weight.”

Ms. Grealy endured a lot as a child. She was diagnosed with a cancer most people don’t survive, and yet she seems to think of it as if as a small detail in her life. As if it were surreal to her, like it didn’t really happen.

One thing I would like to point out in this passage is the fact that Lucy tried to think of something else when she was receiving radiation, when she pretended she was in a movie. What I noticed was that I’ve seen how others and myself included are prone to doing this when in a not-so-comfortable situation. And in moments of extreme pain or suffering, it would make sense to try to think of something else to distract you from what is going on.

I practice yoga, and one of the most important things that I have learned from it is that we all take our breath for granted. When in a difficult pose, when there is some slight discomfort, our brains tell our body to just stop and get out of the pose as soon as you can. Well that’s kind of difficult when your instructor tells you to hold it for six more breaths, then you start to think, crap, when is this going to end, ok, six…five…four…etc. My teacher Brian Granader was teaching a short form ashtanga class once, and when I was experiencing exactly what I just wrote above, he started talking about how we don’t really think about breathing in our daily lives, that it just subconsciously happens. And when in a difficult pose, and feeling discomfort, why not try acknowledging the pain, and just be with it. See that it’s there and try to just breathe through it. And of course, it worked, and once I started to be with this discomfort and realize that yes, I was uncomfortable, but I could breathe through it, it made the pose much easier and it was much more relaxing.

I thought about this as soon as I read the part about Lucy pretending to be in a movie. Yes she was in an innumerable amount of pain, but in other circumstances, what if we learned to just be with our emotions and our discomfort. Instead of shying away from it, why not acknowledge it and just feel what we feel? That might make things a little bit easier.

Autobiography of a Face

“ ‘Just a minute while I get my hat.’ ‘You don’t need it anymore Lucy, your hair is fine, come on already,’ she called back to me frustrated that we were going to be late.
I stopped in the middle of the stairs and, genuinely, surprised, considered what she had said. Running my fingers through my hair, I had to admit she was more or less right…I went out into the world, bareheaded for the first time in years…We went to the store, and people gave me second looks as they always did, but not one person called me Baldy.
The next day I went to school bareheaded, and no one mentioned anything. Had I been wrong in thinking that I needed to hide behind my hat, had it all been a mistake on my part?”

Lucy’s hat was the “security blanket” for her during her cancer treatments. She was uncomfortable with herself, thought herself ugly, and was going through one of the most difficult types of cancer out there. Now what I want to know is why younger children need something like a security blanket, or a teddy bear, or in Lucy’s instance, a hat? Is it that they need some kind of consistency, something that won’t change while they are changing so much themselves? I personally have no idea, but the thought is interesting.

One of the things that I think Lucy did beautifully here is how she illustrated the time when she realized she no longer needed her hat. Like when a child stops taking his teddy bear to sleep at night, or a blanket. When kids no longer need a night-light because they aren’t afraid of the dark anymore. Something that I thought was really interesting is how she shows that, even when she doesn’t need her hat, nothing really changes, and I guess that makes sense. All that was different was the fact that she had this hat she wore everyday. What would change if a child stopped sleeping with his teddy bear? Nothing terrible would happen, he would still fall asleep.

Autobiography of a Face

“I blamed myself for the despair I felt creeping in; again it was a result of having expectations. I must guard against having any more. After all, I still had it pretty good by global standards. “I have food,” I told myself. “I have a place to sleep.” So what if my face was ugly, so what if other people judged me for this. That was their problem, not mine. This line of reasoning offered less consolation than it had in the past, but it distanced me from what was hurting most, and I took this as a sign that I was getting better at detaching myself from my desires”

It is great to be thankful for what we have, and if we really think about it, we do have a lot more than the rest of the world does, and we should be extremely grateful. As Americans, and just as people in general, we don’t really think about what we do have, we think a whole lot more about what we don’t have. And once we get what we’ve been wanting, it will be cool for about a week, and then we start to focus on what we don’t have, yet once again. This vicious cycle I think has been greatly increased by our almost religious consumerism as a very rich country. We just want and want and want, and it never stops. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have nice things, I’m just saying that we need to concentrate on what nice things we do have, and not concentrate on the other nice things we simply “have to have”.

Take cell phones for instance. How many of us teenagers out there think that our phone is just a piece of crap? And that we need to get a new one, like the enV touch, or maybe even the new Blackberry Tour? I know that’s what I think of my phone, and then I thought about it, and I know kids in our school that don’t even have phones. And may I point out that it did change my perspective, and I didn’t even have to think about it on a global level like Lucy did.

Now Lucy’s face is quite different than the latest cell phone. She went through a lot of pain, and out of all of those reconstructive surgeries, you would have thought that one of them would have worked. I almost feel that with Lucy’s face, she almost deserved for one to work because of what she has gone through. Though I think this happened for a reason, she wouldn’t have been able to write her book the same way if her face had been “fixed”. Granted she could have written the part about her adolescence and her first few reconstructive surgeries, and the story would have ended with a happy ending. But human life isn’t always a happy ending. Though you can choose to be happy or not. But that’s beside the point. This is such a real story, you can feel the life in it, though it is quite unfortunate, its still real, and personally, I like it this way.

Truth and Beauty

“Without writing, Lucy was just another patient in the surgical ward, waiting for her tissue expander to fill with saline and stretch out her skin. Without writing, I was another waitress like all the other waitresses in Nashville who were waiting for their big publishing deal. They wrote songs. I wanted to write a novel. I was starting to see it was all pretty much the same thing. Lucy and I had ceased to be distinguishable from everyone else and every day the ground was getting softer, swallowing us up a little bit more.”

I have never had a gift with words. I don’t think myself as a good writer, and I have to go over things I write over and over for them to just be ok. I see people who write and write well as, well, really good writers. I take more than four or five drafts to write a paper, along with much peer review. People who consider themselves writers seem to think (sometimes) that their writing is no different from everyone else’s. Like the books they write are just another book on the shelf at a bookstore, and no one will really take a good look at it. I love to read, so that makes up for the not-so-good writing in my book (no pun intended) and I love to read the way writers look at things from such different perspectives. Every writer is different and has something to bring to the table. So I do not agree with Mrs. Patchett at all here. Though that may be what she feels like.

The other part that I wanted to talk about is that feeling that without something in your life, your life is just normal and like everyone else’s. At one point, I thought that without my riding horses, my life was just like any other high school kid’s. I then realized that it didn’t really matter if my life was like anyone else’s, it just mattered that I was happy with what was happening in my life. Plus, there were other high school girls that were riding horses.

Truth and Beauty

“She works in an office and it’s boring. She was saying that I was so luck because my career was going well, like that was the only thing that mattered. And then I thought, remember when I used to want to be a writer so badly? I forget about that all the time. I think it’s been this way forever, but I used to be so worried I wasn’t going to make it. I wonder if I had found the perfect man and fallen in love but had never been able to get anything published, would I be just as miserable as I am now?”

Regret is a large part of our thinking. What would have happened if I went right instead of going left? What if I would have left for work three minutes earlier and been in that huge car accident? This kind of thought plagues our thinking, and really shouldn’t even be in our thoughts. Though the latter of the above questions is rightfully so much of an exception, why worry about what happened? We can’t do anything about it now, there’s no way we can go back and fix anything that we have done, unless of course someone has a flux capacitor laying around anywhere. The point is that we make mistakes, and we do things that we shouldn’t, but we learn, and though it may be difficult, it is necessary. And think, if we didn’t learn from our mistakes, we would all be very different peopl

Truth and Beauty

“ ‘Honey, Stuart is your friend. He’s your doctor and your friend. He’s not supposed to be in love with you.’
‘But he’s single. He wants to go out with me for coffee, he wants to talk about other women, but he would never be in love with me.”
‘Are you in love with him?’
‘I could be,’ She said.
‘Oh Lucy, don’t do this. You really care for Stuart. He’s a good friend. Don’t turn it into this.’
But now she was really crying, and I wanted her to settle down for fear she’d break something open. ‘I’m so tired of being lonely,’ she said.”

Lucy seems to have a real problem being single and not being loved. Though she has innumerable friends that come to visit her in the hospital, not to mention her family and most importantly she has Ann. She seems to fail to be content with all of the love she receives from these people. She doesn’t think it’s the same as being with someone. Why does she feel the need to have a relationship with someone when she has these great relationships all ready? And she seems to be pinning a lot of it on her facial features and not a whole lot on personality, and not to sound mean or unsympathetic, by Ann’s description of Lucy’s behavior at some points, I can see why she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Also Lucy has a lot of baggage that comes with her. The operations, her physical state, being in a hospital a lot of the time, as well as the pain she carries with her. I totally feel for Lucy. I understand the fact that she just wants to be seen “that way” by someone other than a friend, and that is something that she shouldn’t be too sad over.

All right, so I decided to look up another interview featuring Lucy Grealy. Here’s the link to the article.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_n2_v26/ai_18082720/

I want to take a look at these two interview questions by Andrew Sussex, and Grealy’s response to them, because both these scenarios were featured in Autobiography of a Face and Truth & Beauty.

ANDREW ESSEX: Your book captures the cruelty of children with particular clarity. Is it natural for kids to be so cruel?
LUCY GREALY: I think kids have always been that way, so I suppose it is natural. The worst forms of cruelty have to do with group dynamics. Kids in groups will tease you about the way you look. If you look O.K., they’ll tease you about what your father does for a living, or how much money you have, or the house you live in – whatever. Teasing someone about the way they look is the easiest form of cruelty.

AE: It seems to me that childhood cruelty is so effective because it’s honest. It’s not agenda-driven, like the adult version.
LG: Well, I don’t think that children really understand how they hurt people. As an adult, you know exactly how to hurt, and what your specific tactic will be. When adults want to be cruel, they do it very well. For me, being ignored is the worst form of cruelty.

This first quote is from Autobiography of a Face reflecting Grealy’s first question and answer, portraying children cruelty. “’What on earth is that?’ ‘That is the ugliest girl I have ever seen.’ . . . these boys were older than the ones in grade school, and for the very first time I realized they were passing judgment on my suitability, or lack of it, as a girlfriend. ‘I bet David wants to go kiss her don’t you David?’ ‘Yeah, right, then I’ll go kiss your mother’s asshole.’” (Grealy 125). I agree with Grealy to a certain extent that children cruelty is natural, but what happens when they begin to mature as an adult and no one has taught them between what is wrong and right? I find this as a form of appeasement. Yes, children cruelty may be natural, because they don’t know any better, but if they continue to be cruel they develop into an adult who understands how people are affected by it.

For instance, Truth & Beauty depicts a similar scenario as stated above, but instead of children cruelty, Patchett shows Grealy’s reactions towards adult cruelty. “By the time she got to Aberdeen, it was junior high all over again . . . A handsome young man came up to her in broad daylight to say that his friend over there wanted to ask her out on a date while the friend screamed, ‘No, stop!’” (Patchett 69). In my opinion, I find these two scenarios very similar to each other; the only difference is that one is child cruelty and the other is adult cruelty. I disagree that adult cruelty can be “agenda-driven” because both scenarios seemed immature and natural reaction to me. In conclusion, adult cruelty is still natural and honest like children cruelty; it’s just more developed and adults have a better understanding of how cruelty can affect people.

“While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark” (Grealy, 27)

One of the things I loved about this book was that the story contained in the book was scattered with deep revelations Lucy made. She would constantly include ideas and philosophies that made the story much more real and easier to relate to. It was often difficult for me to relate to the actual physical details of her experiences, since I have never been exposed to the kind of pain she experienced throughout her surgeries and chemotherapy and the constant harassment she received because of her deformities. However, even though I couldn’t relate to her physical experiences, I could easily relate to the emotions and the opinions of life Lucy encountered and included in the book. She made astounding realizations that I had never really considered, but agreed with as soon as I contemplated them. This quote is a perfect example. As time moves forwards, our minds quite often stay put or wander backwards. I know I spend a large amount of my time recounting past events in my mind and thinking about what became of those events and what could possibly become of them in the future. I truly do seek meaning in the things I experience. However, doing this causes me to miss out on the present because my mind isn’t living in the moment; it’s living in the past. Lucy hit the nail on the head when she made this statement. It’s a suggestion that the readers can relate to. It also made me wonder if Lucy was experiencing the same thing when she wrote this autobiography. She had to recount the events of her past life while writing and I’m sure her mind wandered and tried to make sense of the things that occurred and fit them to the bigger picture of what was her life. The action of recounting these events may have even caused her to make the revelation the above sentence describes.

“Was this feeling that everything was happening for the first time real, did grief heighten vision, or was it only an illusion, a way to distance myself from what was happening?” (Grealy, 167)

This was another one of Lucy’s philosophical realizations that I could definitely relate to. I agree that during times of grief in my life, I notice the little details of life that help make it worth living but are usually ignored. These help me realize how truly amazing it is to be alive and that I need to appreciate them for their worth, instead of taking advantage of them.
I think this quote also explains why Lucy has such intelligent philosophical insight throughout the book. The majority of her life was filled with grief from her facial deformities, the reactions to these deformities by her peers, and all the surgeries she had to undergo. However, while she was grieving, she paid special attention to the small details of life and came to thoughtful realizations as to why or how they occur. These small details and occurrences may have provided her an escape from the grief and a distraction from the misfortunes that were happening. However, maybe the grief she experienced did heighten her vision and help her become more aware of the things that many of us overlook. I believe that she used her philosophical observations and analyses as an escape from what she was experiencing. She looked at the world in a different way than many people do because she experienced many things that most people don’t have to experience. She used this different perspective on life to her advantage.

“If this type of attention wasn’t always comfortable for me, it nonetheless further defined me” (Grealy 101)

In my opinion, this sentence describes one of Lucy’s main struggles: her face defined her in the eyes of those she knew. Lucy’s voice throughout the book proves that she was a deep individual, with outstanding opinions and ideas. She realized things most of us overlook and had many dimensions to her being. However, the majority of the people she encountered would see just one. When most people looked at Lucy, the only thing they would notice was her deformed face. Her face and the medical story behind it defined Lucy to the majority of those she knew. She was the girl with cancer. Few people actually took the effort to learn about her beyond this initial title. This could be because her illness made her different and many people fear those who are different, so they wanted to avoid deep contact. It could also be because people assumed they already knew her because they knew her story and struggles and didn’t see the need to dig deeper. However, Lucy was more than her story and struggles. The majority of those in her life weren’t fortunate enough to realize this missed out on learning who Lucy truly was, all because they let her story get in the way.

“I felt no connection with that kind of happiness: I didn’t deserve it and thus I shouldn’t want it. It was easier to slip back into my depression and blame my face for everything” (Grealy, 127)

This quote gave me mixed emotions regarding Lucy. Up until this point in the book, I had considered Lucy to be a strong individual who was willing to overcome the challenges she faced. This was demonstrated when she put all her effort into not crying during the painful treatments so that she could appear brave for her mother. However, as soon as I read this, I began to question her willpower to overcome the struggles she had been handed. This passage implies that Lucy was giving in to her misfortunes. Instead of making the conscious decision to pursue happiness despite her deformities, she decided she just wasn’t going to be happy. Worse yet, she chose to blame this depression on her face and misfortune; while the real culprit was her outlook that depression was the easy way out. It may be true that it’s easier to use your misfortunes as a reason for settling in life, but life is much more fulfilled when you choose to overcome these misfortunes instead of succumbing to them. Lucy was settling for depression in her life, even though a small amount of effort would have made happiness perfectly attainable, regardless of the burden she had to endure.

“Now I know that joy was a kind of fearlessness, a letting go of expectations that the world should be anything other than what it was” (Grealy, 194)

In my opinion, this sentence was the most truthful sentence throughout the entire book and explained one of the main messages the book provided. Joy comes when you accept what the world is and stop expecting that it should be different or better. When you stop pointing out the many faults of the world, you begin to realize its true beauty. The world is truly beautiful where it is at, but the beauty is often overlooked because people have an unreachable expectation of what it should be, and it always falls short. Accepting and realizing the magnificence of the present world does require an amount of fearlessness because letting go of any type of expectation requires fearlessness. It requires a change of outlook, which is usually accompanied by the fear of not knowing which outlook is best.

Lucy was not joyful throughout the book mostly because the world was constantly falling short of her expectations. She expected that once her face was satisfactorily sculpted that her life would truly begin and the world would finally align in her favor. However, this expectation had become so unreachable over time that it could never be attained and would only lead to disappointment. If Lucy could ever let these expectations go, she could finally experience true joy regardless of the hardships she faced throughout her life.

One of the first things I noticed when I began reading Autobiography of a Face was Lucy’s relationship with animals. When she is with animals it doesn’t matter what her face looks like. They make her feel safe and give her the comfort no one else can give to her. “I considered animas bearers if higher truth, and I wanted to align myself with their knowledge. I thought animals were the only beings capable of understanding me.” (Grealy, 5) No one understands Lucy and what she is going through, most of the other kids laugh at her and make fun of her all the time and her family doesn’t know what she has to deal with. When she is with animals she doesn’t feel ugly and she doesn’t have to worry about being teased. “The horses remained my one real source of relief. When I was in their presence, nothing else mattered. Animals were both the lives I took care of and the lives who took care of me. Horses neither disapproved nor approved of what I looked like.” (Grealy, 152) Lucy gets a job working at a stable and it is the one place she can go and feel comfortable with the way she looks.

Autobiography of a Face Entries

I read all of the books a long time ago. Unfortunately I of course don’t remember enough to quote off the top of my head, and as i result I’ve now read them all 2 times. Smooth.

“My friend Stephen and I used to do pony parties together” (Pg. 1)

The very first sentence really struck me, because as you progress through the story and even just the first chapter you realize that this is an extremely peculiar position for Lucy. With the problems she’s had in her life and the scars its left, you know that the last thing she wants to do is be paraded around in front of kids, whom as she pointed out, can be very cruel. But Lucy is torn between her passion for horses and the solitude that they provide for her and having to parade the ponies and herself in front of a group of loudly judging youth and silently judging adults. In some ways I think the adults might be worse, the children don’t know better so they speak out, but the silence from the adults means that her face truly is bad and by keeping quiet they think they’re effectively avoiding the issue while in truth they’re highlighting it.

“The only time I was ever completely myself was on Fridays. There was no way to escape the pain.” (Pg. 90)
The passage made be think about how people act in our own lives. Obviously high school is a spawning ground for people that put on different faces, act differently then they really are, everyone does it. The most of us doing this are doing it to be accepted, to belong to a group because without one you don’t really amount to much, or so we feel. But Lucy doesn’t pretend to be anyone other then herself just because she doesn’t feel cool enough, she does it out of necessity. Its impossible to imagine that someone that young could bear that kind of stress for so long and it because necessary for her to be someone else. I think that the quote is dead on, the only time most people are ever truly themselves is when they’re in pain.

“It was easy to spot potential offenders: they walked with a certain swagger, a certain sway.” (Pg. 141)

At this point people are acting how us the reader would expect to Lucy, a certain amount of distance between herself and “normal” people, yet no cruel jeering, no true harassment. Or nearly none, the swaggering boys with be a problem always, now in high school and again when she crosses the sea and lives in a different country. Age doesn’t matter; those certain boys will walk with that swagger their entire lives, long after the rest of us have come to the realization that it was never funny, it was heartless. This passage may not have particular meaning to Lucy, other then the obvious, but it made me wonder what makes people like that. Are they born that way? Was it their parent’s fault? Was something done to them when they were younger? Or are they just people who never mature out of their 8th grade mindset? Reading this passage here, and the similar one in Truth and Beauty makes me feel embarrassed, probably for sharing a gender and thus by default being included in that merciless group.

“I became pretentious.” (Pg. 177)

The rest of the book introduces us to the Lucy that I picture whenever I think of this book. Consequently I’m not very fond of this version of her, despite what she’s been through I find that she quickly becomes hard to like. Which I suppose means she finally did find the perfect shield, she’s a quick study at being pretentious and flaunts it at every turn, though I do believe she truly does become the poet she wants to and at that point being pretentious isn’t just a shield its just adapted itself into her personality. I think that might be a natural quality of poets who take themselves quite seriously, they never expect you to understand the depth of their writing, only they can “truly” appreciate their masterpiece. Which strikes me as odd, when you’re writing poetry to be read and shared then the meaning of the poem is in the eye of the beholder, and Lucy strikes me as someone who believed their was one meaning to her poem and it was hers. That was all a little harsh, and maybe way off, but it is nice to read her that she found some measure of happiness in college, being her own person and being more accepted then anywhere else.

“Lucy, not a television star, occasionally a triumph, went back to work on her poetry, leaving drafts around the house the same way she left her scattered clothes,” (Patchett, 36)

When I first read this, I was surprised by the authors’ use of the word “triumph”. From both “Autobiography of a Face” and “Truth and Beauty”, I never received the vibe that Lucy had triumphed over anything. Even in her battle with cancer, she was never a patient that had overcome the grips of death, for I don’t recall the doctors ever telling her she should be in fear of losing her life. To say she came out on top would be an overstatement in my opinion, for she was extremely cynical, and although she had great friends, she simply took advantage of their loyalty to her at times. To be honest, I found her quite shallow, and I don’t believe someone who took everything in their life for granted could ever be considered someone who was successful. She left her friends and problems as she did her clothes, “scattered” around the house. Ignoring one for another at the time, she simply didn’t appreciate all she had in front of her. No doubt she had to live through a tough ordeal, but I simply do not feel “triumph” is in any way the word to describe the outcome.

“…the more I thought about them in my head the more valuable they became to me,” (Patchett, 94)

In this passage, Lucy is describing drawings she found in a book of American and German contemporary paintings. In her letter to Lucy, she admits that although she was not originally a fan of contemporary artwork, she now finds this book interesting and simply cannot get it out of her head. The lines that were once useless scribbles now have a whole different meaning to her. The part that somewhat grabbed my attention was the quote I mentioned above, for although Lucy is describing the drawings, isn’t this how most thought processes work? Things we never think about are of no importance to us, for if they were, they would be something we thought of constantly. Our families, loved ones, careers, and futures are all things the average person thinks of quite frequently, or at least are things that shape our decisions in our daily lives. The more we think of them, the more possibilities, reasons, etc., our mind can come up with to make them all that more important to us.

“I wasn’t hurt by a single thing in this world while they lined up for their turn on the pony, some of them excited and some of them scared, but all of them neatly, at my insistence one in front of the other, like all the days ahead.” (Grealy, 13)

This is an awesome metaphor for life. It’s like a little bit of advice from Lucy to everyone who reads her novel. It’s as if she is trying to say, this is what I learned through my whole journey. That she is saying: this is what I learned from having cancer and half my jaw removed. You should look at one day at a time. Some of them will be scary days, some will be sad, and some will be happy and full of joy. But, regardless of what they include or what happens in them, they’ll all be neatly lined up, waiting for their turn to impact you life, waiting for their turn to make a difference.

Not only does this quote teach the reader a lesson, it also shows Grealy’s writing style. She sneaks words of wisdom into the writing, in a very poetic way. Since Lucy was always worried about being a poet and what people would remember her for. Lucy would be happy about being remembered as a poet. She always dreamed of it and was always writing little poems and messages. Lucy was a poet.

“…it didn’t occur to me until then that people might actually pity me. The idea appalled me.” (Grealy, 101)

Lucy wasn’t looking for pity, ever. I know a lot of people have read the book and said that she just complains all the time and that’s what she wanted, someone to pity her. But, when you step back and look at what Lucy went through, you realize that she wasn’t complaining at all; instead she was simply telling her story.

Then people question why in the world would anyone ever want to relive all that. The answer is simply. Lucy wanted to let all the cancer patients out there that they aren’t alone. That someone else was going through her experience too. Lucy wanted them to feel loved and special because she never had. Although she was never scared, Lucy was alone for most of her chemotherapy struggle. Her mom and dad were supportive but they could never really understand what she was going through and how hard it was for her.

Or maybe that’s not why she wrote it, maybe she wrote it simply because she needed something to write. But, the point is she didn’t want pity. She didn’t want to be the one that people gawked at in the supermarket, or stared sideways at on the street. She wanted to fit in and feel normal, like every other human being on the planet.

“My face was my face, and it was stupid to wish it any other way.” (Grealy, 151)

There are so many young women across the world that need to look at this sentence and understand it. People need to stop obsessing with the way that they look and just be happy. This is like another one of Grealy’s hidden tips and words of wisdom. Even though Lucy wasn’t perfect, she accepted the fact that her face was her face and that she couldn’t change it. But when looking at all the plastic surgery she had, you’d never know it.
This is a classic example of being two different people. Humans are the only creatures on the planet that are capable of smiling on the outside while being sad or angry on the inside. So on the outside, in her conscious self, Lucy was mostly happy with the way she looked. But on the inside, Lucy was self-conscious and embarrassed when people would stop and stare and her. She didn’t want to be known as Lucy, the girl with half her jaw missing. She wanted to be known as Lucy, the poet or Lucy, the writer.

“I edged inside the closet and began kicking the contents of the floor into the kitchen.
‘Don’t bring out everything!’ Lucy said.
‘How else will we have any idea what you have?’”
(Patchett, 132)

I saw this passage as symbolism for the way Lucy went about addressing problems and situations throughout her life. Her friends were constantly attempting to sort through the many issues Lucy had let multiply until they were out of control, such as her drug use, unpaid bills, etc. Lucy completely acknowledged that these issues existed, and more simply chose to put them off or assumed that they were all part of her “artist” lifestyle, and would sort themselves out in the end. This was her approach to particularly paying bills and beginning her writing career. Lucy was never the type to go about finding a solution herself, but rather waited for something to come along and save her when it was nearly too late, such as her friends, or a short term writing gig. She was more willing to let her friends be brought down by the overwhelming reality of her situation than take care of it herself to save her friends the trouble, which is made obvious in the quote above.

So…

I finished reading Truth and Beauty. Finally.

That book was ever so boring. Ann’s voice was too steady and dry. The only appraisal I have for her is when she described Lucy’s extravagant sexualities. Those were entertaining I must say.

I really admired Lucy’s writing. She was fluffy at times, but every sentence was a kaliedoscopic whirlwind of ideas and descriptions that somehow fitted together effortlessly. This is how I understood her writing.

What are we supposed to be debating? The controversy of Ann’s book at that university? I think that was just a room full of prude parents and even pruder children. ( Oh sorry, I meant university children). There will always always be people who like something and those who don’t. That’s just how it is. I guess that’s just what happened at the university where Ann’s book was required reading. Let’s see if any parents this year will complain.

Actually, Ann Patchett probably saved a lot of the juicy details from us. It’s either that or Lucy did, because it’s not like the sexual excerpts in the book (only scattered her and there really) were straight out of a homoerotic novel. Please.

If I were Ann Patchett that day when she had to speak in front of those -er… single-minded university people, I would have just said “Suck it up.” and walked away. Really I would.

And you know what’s funny? When I heard her voice in a short clip from that speech, I immediately thought: OMYGOD THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I IMAGINED SHE SOUNDED LIKE!!! I SOOOO CALLED IT!!

This concludes my positive vibe association with Ann Patchett and her novel.

I need to talk about something.
It’s going to be hard to write correctly, so I’m just gonna slap it down.

I found a direct correlation between Lucy and Ann.

Lucy’s father had died. Ann’s best friend had died. And at the time of their deaths, neither Ann nor Lucy felt the need to put their own narcissistic needs aside and inquire about their beloved.

That sounds a little confusing, but lemme break it down for ya.

Lucy Grealy’s father had become ill one day and had to be transported to the hospital. He stayed there for quite a while (I can’t remember how long, but I just know it wasn’t for no few days). During the time her father was hospitalized, none of the Grealy offspring went to pay their respects to their father. WHAT IS THAT???
And Lucy just blew it off. I don’t know if she didn’t believe it, or she didn’t care or she thought it was a joke. She didn’t mention that her dad was abusive, or simply a bad parent of the sort. No. Nothing like that. She even used to say how when she and her siblings were young, they would greet their father jubilantly when he arrived home from work. So, I would think that when the man half respondsible for your existence on earth gets sick and has to spend days in the hospital you would be A LITTLE CONCERNED.
But, Lucy apparently didn’t care. How could she. I understand though, when you are not close to someone and they die, the usual feelings of grief do not apply to you. But, WHAT IS THIS. HOW CAN YOU NOT EVEN GO AND VISIT YOUR FATHER AND WATCH HIM SILENTLY DIE BEFORE YOUR EYES AND WAIT WHILE HE TAKES HIS LAST BREATH OR FLASH HIM YOUR KINDHEARTED LOVE SMILE SO WHEN HE DIES THATS THE LAST PICTURE HE HAS IN HIS MIND: HIS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER THAT SURVIVED CANCER’S UNIQUE SMILE GLEAMING BACK AT HIM AS IF TO SAY. DAD YA DID GOOD. AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I’LL MISS YOU, BUT FOR NOW I WON’T LET YOU THINK OF THAT JUST KNOW THAT I UNDERSTAND YOUR PARTING FROM THIS EARTH AND MY LIFETIME

BUT
I
LOVE
YOU.

Maybe I’ll never understand why Lucy did this. But hey I tried.

As for Ann Patchett. Hmmm… Little missy Ann the Ant. Okay. You Know what? I understand that she was furious with Lucy and all because of her drug addiction. Yeah. I TOTALLY get that. But, (and I’m gonna go 1st person directive here) you KNOW how lonely your best friend is. You KNOW how she gets when she’s alone, escpecially when she is alone with heroin or some sort of false happiness. AND. YOU ALSO KNOW that whenever you stop by or are in town or no, whenever you are in Lucy’s presence, that she will feel happy and love you and you will love her and she will know that if only for the time spent with you.

But then, when you were coming up to the city and yeah, you were a little mad at Lucy previously for her actions, you didnt even want to stop by her place.

and why????

Because.
Ann Patchett.
YOU
WOULD
RATHER
SPEND
THE DAMN
NIGHT
WITH YOUR
DAMN BOYFRIEND
FOR A
“ROMANTIC EVENING”

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU COULD DO THAT IN TENNESSEE OR THE NEIGHBORING CITY OR ACROSS THE GLOBE OR ACROSS THE NATION OR NEXT DOOR OR SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN WHERE LUCY LIVES.

But, the fact that you didnt decide to call Lucy when you were in town just because you’d rather spend time with your boyfriend and get a little steam escape from your “Lucy vent” is ………
i dont know I have no words.

But, here goes my fairness button. This stupid little “Let’s check perspectives button” that I have.

Yes. I understand that you wanted this vent time from Lucy. Yeah. Loved ones hurting themselves and not knowing what or how or why is maddening sometimes. I know. And yeah, New York with your boyfriend is romantic. And, thinking, well it’s only one night you didn’t go see Lucy. Yeah. And she probably would have died sooner or later from the same thing even if you were there that night you decided to stop being a 24/7 friend.

But . After all the crap you’ve done for Lucy and all the time and love and devotion you had given her in the past, I would think that you would have stopped in that night and made a date with her and cherish that night. Like every. Other. Time.

But. It’s time for a change. And sooner or later the past is put in the vault and ya gotta move on.

So, when Ann Patchett finally types that last sentence “That was my mistake.”

I said. “You’re damn right.”

“Permian football had become too much a part of the town and too much a part of their own lives, as intrinsic and sacred a value as religion, as politics, as making money, as raising children. That was the nature of sports in a town like this. Football stood at the very core of what the town was about, not on the outskirts, not on the periphery. It had nothing to do with entertainment and everything to do with how people felt about themselves” (Bissinger 237).

This quote showed me that to the people of Odessa, football is LIFE. Those who watched the Permian Panthers had nothing else to look forward to besides friday nights. These people were born and bred to love Permian football. The oil business was horrendous and they were in the middle of the desert, but life was wonderful if the Panthers were winning. Football is what kept everyone going; football was a young boy’s ticket out of the middle of nowhere.

Autobiography of a face:
“I was still blissfully unaware, somehow believing that the only reason people stared at me was because my hair was stll growing in.” (6)
This quote really stood out to me because Lucy is only 14 years old and at this point she is still naive. She does not understand yet how cruel the world can be. She doesn’t see that people will stare at her and label her as “the girl with cancer.” It’s not just the people that are in Lucy’s surrondings, it’s everyone in the world. I know when i was younger and i saw someone with a disability or disformity I use to stare because I was a little girl who had never been exposed to such things before. As I got older i realized the pity i felt for that person because no only do they have to deal with their problem, but they have to deal with everyone who stares at them, and i’m sure that for once, they would like for someone not to notice. So now i try my best not to stare. People who sae Lucy should have tried such things. Lucy was pretty sick of people always staring at her and it would have been nice to not have people stare at her.

“Not that I considered myself a weak or easily frightened person; in more casual games I excelled, especially at wrestling (I could beat every boy but one on my street), playing was (a known sneak, I was always called upon to be the scout), and in taking dares (I would do just about anything, no matter how ludicrous or dangerous, though i drew the line at eating invertebrates and amphibians). I was accorded a certain amount of respect in my neighborhood, not only because I once jumped out of a second-story window, but also because I would kiss an old and particularly smelly neighborhood dog on the lips whenever asked. I was a tomboy par excellence.” (15)
This quote shows us that Lucy enjoys being a tomboy. She enjoys the attention she gets from the neighborhood boys because she is stronger and better than them in multiple games. She likes the respect she recieves from them. This also shows us that Lucy is willing to do anything for acceptance and attention. She feels like an outsider and wants feel like she belongs, even if she has to do gross and disgusting things to do so. Lucy enjoys the special treatment she gets due to her cancer.

“Suddenly my perception of the world shifted. I wasn’t the only person in the world she suffered.” (86)
When Lucy’s mother took her to her kemo appointments she always told Lucy not to cry. What kind of mother doesn’t support her child in a moment like this? This bothered me for a while but than I realized the reasoning behind this. Lucy’s mother did not know how to handle this. She didn’t know what to say or what to do to comfort Lucy. Sher figuered if Lucy didn’t cry, it must not be too hard and Lucy could handle it all by herself. I tried putting myself in Lucy’s mother’s position and I have no idea how I would help my child. What is the right thing to say or do? No one really knows the correct answer to this.

“It gave me pleasure to think that the boys who teased me openly at school and the adults who stared at me coverly elsewhere would never be able to stand this pain, that they would crumple. My whole body was tense and my stomach upside down, but i was convined that because I did not admit these things, did not display them for others to see, it meant I had a chance at really being brave, not just pretending.” (143)
Lucy takes great comfort in believing that she has and can withstand more pain that anyone else that she knows. She understands that cancer is a very difficult thing to battle and she believes that she is handeling it the best out of everyone. I have been in a position similar to Lucy’s, with an injury, and assuming it is a great deal of pain, but if anyone can handle it, it’s me because I have a high tolerance of pain. It is just something that people say to themselves to make themselves feel better.

“I saw sex as my salvation. If only I could get someone to have sex with me, it would mean that I was attractive, that someone could love me. I never doubted my own ability to love, only that the love would never be returned.” (206)
When I read Truth & Beauty and I got to the part where Lucy said she was relieved to have lost her virginty I was furious. I didn’t understand how it was a burden. Now that I have read this quote and have seen Lucy’s side I completely understand. Lucy had never had a boyfriend up until this point. She had never had anyone show any affection to her, besides her own family, and she was starting to believe no one would. Having sex proved to Lucy that men can actually feel attraction towards her

“As a child I had expected my liberation to come from getting a new face to put on, but now I saw it came from shedding something, shedding my image.” (222)
Lucy always said that her life would start when she got her face fixed, but that day never came for her. She learned that you can’t expect for your life to start tomorrow because tomorrow may never come. You need to start your life today, because today is here. She learns that not everyone is beautiful and beauty does not bring your freedom, like she expected that it would. Beauty is hard to define and Lucy is not ugly in everyone’s elses.

“Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces behind to turn into ghosts that will inevitably resent and haunt us.” (Grealy, 222)

This is much like the other quote that I posted. Society is trying to turn us all into conformists. Grealy makes an interesting point about all of us turning into ghosts and then our “old” selves haunting us. In a way it’s very true. You can try to be something that you aren’t, or you can simply accept the fact that you are you. This is hard to do when you have society changing the way that everyone looks.

But, if we just simply follow what Thoreau and Emerson taught us it will be must easier. We should be ourselves and not conform to what society wants us to. We should stand out and take a stance on anything and everything. Instead of waiting for someone to do something for us, we should find out or do it. If we don’t do this, what Grealy says will happen; everyone will just turn into ghosts. If this happens, the world will lose everything unique and original. If this happens, there will be less color in the world; the world will lose its vibrancy. All the differences in the world are what make it interesting to live in.

It’s ironic really, that society wants us to be ourselves by acting and looking like someone entirely different. It causes your girls to want to be skinny and wear short shorts and clothing that barely covers what it’s supposed to. It causes diseases like anorexia and bulimia. It creates the idea that if you are not skinny and perfectly made up at every single minute, then you are no longer beautiful. One must remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to someone out there being super skinny is not as beautiful as actually being the right weight, instead of a skinny stick. So, Grealy sends another message: be yourself no matter what. Don’t care what the person sitting next to you looks like because they are not you. You create your own style and your own looks.

“But she also had lovely light eyes with damp dark lashes and a nose whose straightness implied aristocracy. Lucy had white Irish skin and dark blond hair and in the end that’s what you saw, the things that didn’t change: her eyes, the sweetness of her little ears.” (Patchett, 11-12)

The reason this stood out to me is because Lucy didn’t think she was beautiful. When Lucy looked at her face, all she saw was half her jaw missing. All Lucy saw was cancer. All she thought when she saw her face was of how alone she was and how no one could ever love her.

More than anything Lucy wanted to be beautiful, and it never occurred to her that she was! She had “lovely eyes with damp dark lashes” and “white Irish skin and dark blond hair”. Lucy didn’t realize that even with half her jaw missing she was still beautiful and people thought so.

Before I even started reading this book, I went online to find a picture of Lucy. I wasn’t sure what to expect but when I saw the picture, I could hardly believe that she had half her jaw removed. Sure Lucy’s face wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, but really who’s face is? I thought Lucy was gorgeous. As I read, I couldn’t understand why she thought that she was so ugly. Was it her constant surgeries where she had pale skin from her leg on her face? Or was it simply that she had trained herself to think that she was ugly and unlovable? Whatever the reason was, if Lucy had been able to realize that everyone, including her best friend, Ann Patchett, though that she was beautiful maybe she would’ve liven a better life.

“‘Someday you’ll both be famous writers,’ she said. ‘And these letters will be very important to you.’” (Patchett, 59)

This quote is the perfect way to talk about Patchett’s writing style. While Ann Patchett writes beautifully and expresses everything that she needs and wants to say, she has a way of backing it all up. Every couple of pages is a letter written from her best friend, Lucy. Patchett uses these letters to prove to the writer that Lucy really felt this way.

I really liked the way this novel was written. The letters from Lucy helped to reinforce everything that I knew was happening to Lucy. They also explained what it was really like for Lucy. In her novel, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy doesn’t really seem like the same Lucy in Truth and Beauty. The Lucy in Face seems braver and more poised. This can be attributed to the fact that she didn’t include every single bad thing that happened to her. She didn’t want to seem like she was complaining and only writing this novel for pity. (Like I said in an earlier post, Lucy didn’t want to be known for the girl with cancer. She just wanted to be Lucy.) But in Truth and Beauty, Patchett can be as open as she wants to be. Lucy isn’t the writer, so Lucy isn’t complaining. Patchett made it easier to understand what Lucy was going through and what Lucy was like because you were reading it from Lucy, in Lucy’s words as a friend, not as an author or poet.

As far as writing style goes, Autobiography of A Face was such a refreshing change of pace. I was delighted to find myself in the comfort of an informal memoir as opposed to a cold and unattached apocalyptic journal. Even though McCarthy’s lack of punctuation was about as informal as one can write with the exception being Kelsey’s beloved House of Leaves, I found Grealy’s writing so relaxed and exciting as well. This was a book I enjoyed reading. One reason beyond Grealy’s beautiful use of periods and quotation marks was that I was able to make so many connections between myself and Grealy as a character and author. Two passages stood out in this way.” One of my favorite experiments was to a pick a word and repeat it ceaselessly to myself until I was in aw of it, until it transformed itself entirely into an absurd sound having nothing at all to do with the thing it signified.” (43) I do this all the time, my favorite word to deconstruct is ridiculous although having written the above passage, I am now beginning the process with signified. The fact that Grealy flows effortlessly from something informative and serious pertaining to her cancer into a silly and random side note just thrills me. Grealy does this quite often throughout the memoir allowing me not only to relate my own experiences with hers, but also to appreciate that like all the rest of us, she may get sidetracked and she may have a moment of random reminiscence. I just love that it comes through in her writing whether she did it on purpose or not. The second passage I mentioned can be found on page 47. “wearing pajamas during the day, even though everyone else was wearing theirs, made me nervous and depressed.” I completely agree, pajamas are only to be worn while sleeping. “Pajama Day” at school is like a nightmare for me. It always reminds me of a mental institution, everyone is so lazy and relaxed; shuffling mindlessly through the halls. This is why I love memoirs, they are so easy to relate to. Then I catch myself forgetting that this is someone’s actual life. Not only were the funny and joyous occasions real, but so were the painful and sorrowful ones. This novel made me laugh, but of course I feel bad having such a good time reading it; it’s such a depressing story. In the afterward, Ann Patchett writes “Certainly, Autobiography of a Face can be read as an account of a child’s cancer and disfigurement (a word Lucy despised), but it can also be read as it was written: a piece of literature.” (232) It was these words that made me feel ok about enjoying the book because Lucy Grealy wrote it to be enjoyed.

When I read Truth and Beauty, I noticed some differences from Autobiography of a Face. In the beginning, Patchett talks about the university they attended together, Sarah Lawrence. “Even at Sarah Lawrence, a school of models and actresses and millionaire daughters of industry, everyone knew Lucy and everyone knew her story.” (2, Patchett) I thought this was a direct contradiction to what Grealy wrote about the school. “Some students dressed entirely in black or sported bizarre haircuts indicating the overzealous use of a razor blade. . . Everyone cultivated on air of being an outsider, beyond it all, utterly cook.” (192, Grealy) Grealy made the college seem like somewhere she fit in, but Patchett made me feel as if Grealy were an outsider. The point I’m attempting to make is how interesting it was to read what Lucy Grealy saw and then to see how others saw Lucy. Part of me really liked the contrast, but another part of me couldn’t stand that Lucy was so oblivious to what others actually thought of her. She was so concerned that everyone thought she was ugly, which they may have, however, that was certainly not all that was on their mind. After reading Autobiography of a Face, I genuinely liked Lucy, however, after finishing Truth and Beauty, I did not. I think even if I had read Truth and Beauty alone, I still would have liked Lucy even though it portrayed her as a bit more controversial ungrateful than she was in Autobiography of a Face. If I had only read Truth and Beauty, I could have seen what other people thought about Lucy without having to take her own thoughts on the subject into account. Again, it was the contrast that bothered me so.

In response to Ken’s post on the complex and simplistic mind:

I’m sure Ken actually followed the rules and blogged about Autobiography of a Face before reading Truth and Beauty unlike myself, however, I would like to comment and or add on to his post. Ken wrote “Toward the end of the novel, Grealy also drops the idea of being greatly associated with animals” I agree and I especially liked the symbol he mentioned about her “eccentric friends” who could care less what she looked like and loved her for herself. I do feel that Lucy Grealy never quite gives up her love for animals (though love doesn’t seem to describe it well enough.) I noticed that Lucy always seems to have cats running around her home. “I’ve got these three cats staying with me who are really over the top. . . They’re good company though.” (77,78) It’s clear Lucy really identifies with animals throughout her entire life, especially when she feels alone. “I considered animals bearers of higher truth, and I wanted to align myself with their knowledge. I thought animals were the only beings capable of understanding me.” (5, Grealy) While searching for a horse quote, I found another one referring to her cats. “I am taking care of a cat for the cat’s protection league. . . I’ve never seen anything so terrified and lost.” (151, Patchett) I particularly like this passage because the reader can tell how well she relates to the animal. When I red this, I was happy to see that Lucy was capable of taking care of something in the way people sometimes take care of her. This way, I felt as though Lucy wasn’t completely helpless. One last passage to beat this point to death: “In those woods in Iowa, Lucy ruled the horses. Lucy ruled the world.” (50, Patchett) Again, Lucy is at peace with the world and herself when she is around animals, the only thing she feels connected to. I’m curious why Grealy leaves out her continued association with animals near the end of her memoir. I am also extremely curious as to why she never mentions Ann.

When I printed out Abigail Cutler’s, My Pornography, I wasn’t quite sure what the basis of this so ca