Thursday, March 5, 2009

THE ROAD

From our class dicussions of the Road the past few days, the question of why do the people in the book fight for survival keeps comming up. What reasons do you think they have to stay alive, or why do you think they should just give up?

27 comments:

CJones said...

Now knowing what they are running from feel that they should try to fight for their lives. I feel this way because you never know what could be out there, there could be help or something to change everything. I feel that a human life is a precious thing and no matter the circumstance you should fight for your life.

09dparker said...

It's pretty much the strongest will survive so if you have someone weak that is slowing you down than you will die. The people that have thhe guns and fire power will turn out safe and the people that just have nothing will get eaten. The reason why people are become like savages because there aren't any rules or consequnces to one's actions so people an get away with anything.

davies molloy said...

As we talked about in class, the man and the boy are driven by an unnaturally powerful will to survive. It is hard to explain that instinct, while i understand it, it is a pointless, frivolous and demanding task that requires your fully focused attention. I feel that they feel that the boy only stays alive for his father, and the father stays alive most likely to not only prove his wife wrong, but to keep his only son whom he loves alive and well, to see what dim future might arise from the ashes of this broken world, perhaps he feels the need to live day after day to see if maybe it is possible to rebuild the tattered remains of his life, to live as a family again with his child, and to once again feel the sun whine down onto his ragged countenance and to proclaim it into the heavens that he survived this awful tragedy.

IMPERATOR said...

Well in a situation is the survival of the fittest. Thats why the ones that are helpless like the old man, the man who was struck by lightning, and the people found in the house were not worth saving. The people with weapons are the smart ones becuase they are willing to defend themselves and the others who just move on and have no weapons but their fists well you are dead then.

RyanSmith said...

I agree with Colin, it's a human instinct to try and stay alive under any circumstances and you never know what is out there as far as help,medicine, or civilization if you don't push to get there.

zach ackerman said...

The reason they have to stay alive is the chance that maybe places were not affected. The boy and man are headed towards the coast it could have not been affected and they could be safe as soon as they get there. The image that keeps popping into my head is in I am legend at the end there was still a civilization running so maybe the man and boy will find that.

Zuri Thorpe said...

Throughout the story one of the main issues that all of the characters face is the will to live. What are they living for? I think that if I was in this situation I would continue on just because. My life is important to me, and I think that when my time comes to die it will not be caused by my own effort. I believe that the people in the story especially the father and son, know that there is someplace out there away from all the hardship that they will be fine in. This is what carries them when they are starving and feel they have nothing to live for.

09jmarshall said...

it would be alot of fun (for awhile) if i could run around and play with all of the cool stuff left behind after the disater like:exotic cars,jetpacks,water parks,and fighter jets, etc.I would finally get a chance to go inside area 51 and i could live inside the white house and do alot of cool stuff i otherwise wouldn't be able to do. But fighting cannibals and phsycopaths wouldn't be very much fun.Plus it seems like thier is a constant danger of radiation posoiing.i would most likely keep trying to live as long as i could, iam still young, and there are alot of things i haven't expirienced yet and would like too. Even if there is "no hope", suicide is the weak way out. But i think that there is always hope as long as there are other huimans alive.

Kashon Wells 09 said...

I believe that they should fight for their lives. I think if they gave up it wouldn't be smart cause they would never know what they could have had. If they walk 3 more miles there could be a reservation with families and food. That’s why it wouldn’t be smart to give up yet. I believe the boy and his father are trying to get south for a reason that we don't know yet.

Stefan said...

I think that they should keep fighting for their lives. They most likely don’t know where they are and they don’t know if they could run into a civilization of people who are just like them. They just don’t know. It wouldn’t be smart if they gave up, and we have found out if they do that they will be trapped forever underground or killed.

Mike Childs said...

Well naturally its instinct for humans to want to survive. But in The Road it seems that there is nothing really to live for. I think they should give up because they have seen the horrors of what this world has turned the people into, cannibalistic killers that do not have a care for anyone else but themselves.

Julian Jimenez said...

I think that many people's answers to why they fight for survival is that they still want to live. I know its an easy answer but it still shows peoples will to stay alive and eventually try and find a little bit of hope that things will ultimately get better. Another reason to stay alive is to just see what is going to happen in the world and even if there is a small fraction that it is going to get better but I would still take that chance.

Todd Ferguson said...

I think that all humans have an instinct to survive no matter what. I also think that the people had hope that there was civilization so they all tried to wait it out for as long as possible.

zach schwartzman said...

I think that the man and the boy are going to really fight for their survival and fight to stay alive. I think that in this story the father and son are going to learn how fragile and precious life is. Feeling this way thus far, I dont think that they are going to give up and that the father and son are going to become extremly close.

floridaboycraig said...

The characters in the novel fighting for survival keeps coming up because the narrator is showing us that everyone only care about themselves and will do whatever it takes to get what they want. The people want to stay alive because they may feel as if they are the last surviving people, they can do whatever they want. Reasons they should give up is because there would be no one to have fun with or just enjoy life with.

Cameron said...

There are several reasons why the people in the book should keep fighting for survival. Perseverance is a key word because when you give up, you fail. Life is a huge reason to live for. God gave us life and we should cherish it no matter how bad our situation is. There is a possibility of a positive change that they should live for. Things will always get better, but it just takes time.

James Raymond said...

The reason for this idea of survival is because mostly of this gut feeling to keep up with the world and the changes that she goes through. The other reason for this is because, like any father who loves and cares for his kin, the Father wants to be with his boy when times get tough. He wants to be there for him when he needs assistance or protection.

Kirby Riehl said...

The people fight for survival because no one wants to die and it is the motto of this book "The Strongest Will Survive". The mom gave up because she was not strong at all and she knew thats why she did what she had to do. The man goes on because he doesn't want to die and does not want to kill his son, or see him die. They give up because they are not strong, thats the only reason of what i can think of.

sep said...

I can understand why giving up would be easy since the world sounds really blank and empty in the book, but I think they should fight for survival because eventually all of the survivors could start a new civilization and in a few decades or so, the world could be okay again. So they should carry on for the people of the future.

kicker said...

I think the last thing the man and the boy should do is give up. Survival is human instinct. The situation the boy and man are in now can only get better so i think they should just keep on surviving.

Dirty Pete said...

Survival is a basic human instinct. We feel the need to keep ourselves existing as long as possible, prolonging our inevidable death, even if we have nothing to live for.

ttk said...

I think that survival is neccesary and that you should take any steps necessary to stay alive and keep your family alive as well. I think that most people stay alive in perilous situations because they are afraid of death and the unknown and leaving there family and making them suffer on a multitude of levels.

Anonymous said...

The reason they need to fight to stay alive is because they are hoping that there is a way out of all the pain and torcher that the world is going threw. I would and i would fight for my survival because there really is no point of staying alive and u want to stay alive longer so you can experience the world.

Joe Dingle-EL said...

Now i would say that they should fight and not kill their elf like coward. I would jus fight for my life until i die. I think there something out there to help them like the goverment or something. maybe that what the man believe is down south maybe he know something that we dont.

Andrew Cosgrove said...

To survive is human nature. When man is threatened with death his body and minds reacts in a way that fights for life. Maybe the reason why someone would try to survive in a time of death is the fear of not knowing what lies behind the next life.

nick price said...

I do not think that they should just give up and not try to survive because they would die, and the question of 'what if' will be omnipresent. What if they hadn't given up? They could have found a place to live, maybe civilization, and live normally for the rest of their lives, instead of just ending them on a road in the middle of nowhere. Not joining his wife in killing herself was the man's best decision he had made in the novel.

Andrew Cosgrove said...

Humans will always fight for survival till their last breath because it is genetically imprinted in our brains to stay alive for as long as we can. It may be the fear of not knowing what lies beyond life but there is this grip on life that every person has and does not want to give up.