Over the last three days since my last post, I have been looking deeper into the first part of the novel. I went and looked up a few sites and maybe did a little research and found some more things about the novel. One thing I found is that the man’s first dream about the monster symbolizes humanity. The monster represents how ruthless humans have become in this new apocalyptic environment. The man and his son are the last humane people left shown by the light they emit that filled the cave. I come to the conclusion that this cave could also represent the earth as a whole as the man and his son try to survive as the last hope for humanity. In the first part of this novel, it is seen that the man and his son are in conflict with God, the broken society, and nature simultaneously. Other things I find are about the son and father. The dialogue between the two is dark and the man is brutally honest with the boy. The man tells him that they will die eventually. The conversations between the two of them are important because this is how we see their bond. Throughout their dialogue, the man is trying to teach the boy how to live in this world. He tells the boy to, “remember that the things you put into your head are there forever.” The man and his son are forced to have a close relationship because of their circumstances. The scene in the story about the coca cola is another significant point in the novel. The son receives a gift from the father from a past he never got to be a part of. The man wants his son to get a taste, pun intended, of something good from his past as to show him that the world wasn’t always like this. The bond between father and son is taken to a new level; They are the only people they can rely on. Their survival is based on their relationship and they could not make it alone without one another. The son would not be able to protect or provide for himself. The narrator says,” That the boy was all that stood between him and dead.” The father would not have a reason to keep living on in this harsh world. Ultimately, the novel foreshadows the father and sons death when the man tells the boy they will eventually die.

  The novel also gives us insight to the way the man thinks. He “mistrust” his own dreams that momentarily pull him out of the immense struggle of his survival. I disagree with his statement, “the rights dream for a man in peril [are] dreams of peril.” Dreams can bring some hope into a dark situation and the man would need good dreams to help in his and the boy’s struggle. However, dreams could work in an opposite way and the man understands this. He understands that having good dreams would be a false paradise and cause him to put his son’s life at risk because he can’t make the same difficult decisions. In the circumstances of the father he needs both harsh and pleasant dreams, in my opinion. A balance in the two would help keep his spirits up and he would still be able to make tough decisions. Another important aspect of the novel is the father’s health. The novel tells us that most people wear mask to protect them from the ash in the air ,but the father doesn’t wear a mask. The father is also coughing up blood and this could foreshadowing the father’s death.

In my last post I talked about how the man and boy are not named and this would make it easier for the reader to place themself in the character’s shoes. I tried to place myself in their shoes, but realistically that is impossible to do. These characters face so many problems and have so many elements coming against them that you could not imagine yourself in their place. They face an immense struggle that is hopeless in the fact that they will die and and there is nothing that will change that fact.Ultimately, the only hope that they hold on to is the hope that they find in each other as they keep pushing on to survive.