Jia Yan Jiang PD1
Blog #6
Aim: How can we ensure for a successful project & presentation?
Do Now: Take out any materials for your projects & presentation.
- Preparations for presentations during the first half of the period.
Presentation Day 1
Group 1:
The Fork in the Road: Between Peace and War
- What happened prior to the beginning of the novel? —> The nuclear war.
Food Shortage/Cannibalism
- People have reverted back to cannibalism due to food shortage.
- They were even eating their own kinds just to survive.
- Nuclear war destroyed everything, such as animals, limiting their food sources.
- "Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous” (110).
Distrust
- The apocalypse caused by the war lead to distrust between man kind.
- “'Were they the bad guys?’ ‘Yes, they were the bad guys'” (92).
- The only name mentioned in the book was Ely. However, he might’ve also didn't want to give his name due to distrust.
- “'You don’t want to say your name’ ‘I couldn’t trust you with it’” (171).
World Desolation
- There were no electricity
- “He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was gone.”
- Nuclear winter and fallout
- Father was ill, likely to be lung cancer
9/20/19
Presentation Day 2
Aim: Summer Reading Project/Presentation. What happened prior to the beginning of the novel and what would drive humans to make the choices that they do in the text?
Do Now: Prepare to present your summer reading project.
Group 2:
The Road: Igniting the Fire
- What happened prior to the beginning of the novel? —> A meteor strike.
Leads to volcanic eruptions
- “Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement” (McCarthy 4).
- Volcanic eruptions leads to a large amount of dust and ash.
- “They hiked back down to the highway through the mud. Smell of earth and wet ash in the rain” (McCarthy 185).
- Volcanic mudflows can be destructive, it can bury the entire town with debris and mud.
Book Cover Symbols
- Coca Cola: symbolize on American culture when there was still nothing to worry about; when the world was still peaceful.
- Pears: the man and the boy found their hope during tough times.
- Bunker: symbolized a paradise; however they cannot stay for long because they had to keep moving.
torch: “carrying the fire”. The willingness to go on during tough times.
- Glow: representing the good guys.
- Baby over spit: hunger & violence
- Flare pistol: weapon/protection
Why did human make these choices?
- Fear of unknown
- Distrust
- Love encourages morality
- Isolations
- Inhumane choices
Group 3
The Final Eruption
- What happened prior to the beginning of the novel? —> Super-volcano eruption.
- “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. 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” (McCarthy 1).
- Everything is dark and covered with ash. Ash will slowly cause people to lose vision which will eventually cover everything and one cannot see anything but darkness.
- “He thought the month was October but he wasn't sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here” (McCarthy 2).
- The eruptions limits the areas where people can escape and the road was the only choice. In order to keep themselves alive, walking down the mysterious road leading them to the south was the only option.
- “An hour later they were sitting on the beach and staring out at the wall of smog across the horizon. They sat with their heels dug into the sand and watched the bleak sea wash up at their feet. Cold. Desolate. Birdless” (McCarty 215).
- Super-volcano eruptions caused the temperature plummets about 21 degrees. Life starts to die, environment getting destroyed.
What would drive humans to make the choices that they made in the text?
- Desperation. In the apocalypse world, survival of the fittest is the only option that will make the people to do anything they can in order to survive.
Group 4
Lamenter
Possible Causes
MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
- 13,890 Nukes
- 4,416 cities in the world
- Overkill
Yellowstone Eruption (super-volcanoes)
- Unlikely
- Unlikely
- Location
- Incomplete destruction
Meter Destruction
- Astronomical chance
- Does not result in fires
- Preventable
What they believe —> Super Viruses
- Extremely hard to cure
- Hard to notice
- Easy to spread
Hints Hidden With The Road
- Fire: devastated land
- “The city was mostly burned. No sign of life. Cars in the street caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust. Fossil tracks in the dried sludge.” (page 12)
- Cannibalistic Cults
- Humans have resorted to cannibalism
- “People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides. Others would come to help them. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road.”(page 32)
- “ Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt.”(page 91)
Reflection:
All the group did a great job at presenting their summer reading projects. It was very interesting to see how people come up with different causes that eventually lead to the novel itself, The Road. The novel itself not only symbolize the cruelness of the world, it also symbolize serious environmental problems. Everything was destroyed in the novel, seeking for help was almost impossible. The world is dark and filled with ash everywhere. The horrible environment makes it impossible for anyone to survive long. From all the presentations, I believed that people should make effort on helping to make the environment better, even though compared to the novel we are at a much more cleaner environment, caring for the environment is still a main thing we should all focus on.
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