This is clear when we compare the will to continue of the Man to the woman.Ĭoncerning the influence of dreams in relation to the contents of one’s mind, the Man survives far longer than the woman because he can accept the inevitable. If one cannot afford to remove oneself from reality, it must at least be pushed to the dark corners of one’s mind for retrieval at a more convenient time. The weight of their unending journey on the road would be overwhelming without recognizing and compartmentalizing the ceaselessness. The Man’s ability to face their isolation allows him to stay grounded in his desperation. The woman can no longer think about their situation and subsequently loses the will to survive and go on, a fundamental necessity of the post-apocalyptic experience. The use of the Man’s philosophy not only serves the purpose of avoiding the harsh reminder of reality but also allows him to be able to conceptualize his situation. Instead of succumbing to the comfort of fantasy, his wife loses her ability to ruminate and consequently her ability to cope with her suffering. She tells him that she no longer dreams or feels sorrow. The Man recalls his and his wife’s last conversation before she decides to escape the torment of their circumstances. One can only wonder if the Man’s adopted conception of dreaming is a consequence of his wife’s suicide. My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so dont ask for sorrow now. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. McCarthy engages the Man’s philosophy using another character too: the Man’s wife. The Man is the first subscriber to his philosophy.
WILLIAM MCCARTHY DEATH DREAM HOW TO
For the better, the Man must forget his past and relearn how to live with new guidelines and rules. McCarthy’s analogy of the blind man who slowly forgets the visible physicality of life is like the loss of the Man’s old life, “fading from memory” (18). One might think that the acknowledgment of this bleakness would lead to an upheaval of his demonstrated fortitude considering his and his son’s journey, but the disappointment of a sharp reminder of one’s reality is much more of a blow to morale. He forces himself to think about the grimness of his future. His mind strays to the end of his existence, and the end of the world as he knows it. And with the heavy weight of reality, the Man’s thoughts turn dark and gloomy. Instead of yielding to the appeal of delusion, the Man must stay present for the sake of his son. It would be easy to get sucked into this vacuum of wondering but daydreaming is not an option for the father. The Man describes these fantasies as “siren” (18), seductive, teasing and fatal to the heart. The use for frivolous fantasy is nonexistent in this post-apocalyptic world. aching blue” and a “flowering wood” (18), he consciously stops himself. When the Man finds himself dreaming of “the sky. McCarthy aptly gives us evidence of this tenet at work immediately after the Man presents it. If the Man removes himself from his own reality, the motive for his persistence in getting to the coast would be lost. In the Man’s situation in particular, dreaming about the past is the sign that he does not exist in the present, a dangerous result when he is the caretaker of his own survival, as well as his son’s. The Man believes that dreaming about an optimistic future or remembering past joy is weak. His view is that if one is in a dire situation, one must only dream of life of that gravity, and to reminisce about a happier time is to succumb to one’s doomed situation. To begin, we must examine the Man’s belief in the significance of dreams. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Lying there in the dark with the uncanny taste of peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and death. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses the Man’s philosophy on dreams to follow the state of mind of his own characters. The combination of the will to survive and unavoidable despondency yields a certain type of recollection of memory. As the Man attempts to walk the narrow line separating blind optimism and consuming despair, he uses his dreams and memories to keep him situated on the difficult path of realistic survival.
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