People usually keep their phone near them. Even when they sleep. So if you know where the phone is via tracking, then you know where the owner of the phone is. And ultimately where the owner of the phone sleeps.
> The boy offers to give the man his pistol but the man tells him to keep it. That indicates the man is not trying to trick him.
Yes and the nice cannibal they killed offered to give them food and shelter. Remember how nice that cannibal was? The pistol was worthless and if I remember correctly, it didn't even have a bullet left. Of course he let him keep it. It's no threat.
> Talking about odds in a fictional story is misguided.
No. It's a matter of determining what is most likely.
> The odds are 100% whatever the writer intended.
Yes. The author wrote everything that led up to the meeting for a reason. Everything the author wrote leads to the man and woman being cannibals. It's pretty obvious. It isn't a children's book. For children, the author explains everything clearly and spoonfeeds you. But for adult books you have to think about what the author is trying to say. Did that world seem like it had any good samaritans that you envision. No it did not. For a reason.
What the author intended is 100% obvious. You don't like it because you childishly want a happy ending. Cormac wasn't writing disney books or children books. If you are still confused and you seem to be, go read his other books. You'll understand what kind of writer he was.
> One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him.
Yep. I remember the nurse telling me to count backwards from 10 and I remember being a bit annoyed by it but still doing it. I don't know what number I got knocked out on. I don't even remember getting knocked out. The only thing I remember is hearing voices as I slowly woke up. No memory of anything in between.
> Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior?
No. Computers, machinese, animals, plants can display "intelligent" behavior. They have no consciousness.
> My problem with your reasoning is that it relies on a literal interpretation of the words spoken in the book.
What? Now you are just desperately grasping at straws.
> The father says that "there are no other kids his age", yes, but remember...most of the book is told through the father's eyes.
And? So what? The kid also says so, not that it matters.
> There is no information technology anymore...
That's right. Before the internet and IT, nobody saw any children. This comment is the dumbest thing I've read in a long while.
> all he knows is that he has not seen any kids and that he hasn't heard of any kids. He is an unreliable narrator.
The kid also said so. And I don't think you know what "unreliable narrator" is. There has to be clues within the story to imply that he is unreliable ( psychologically, memorywise, etc ). Not that he doesn't have access to a smartphone.
> Have you ever picked up a six year old? They weigh practically nothing.
Yes. Not only that, I was six year old once. Long before I was 6 years old, my parents stopped carrying me around. And you are being intentionally sneaky here. Who said anything about picking up a 6 year old. I said carry a 6 year old how many miles they had to go.
> Perhaps if he gets off to the idea of betrayal, or if he really does think that having a kid follow him for 10 miles would be easier convincing him would be easier, but I have a hard time believing that.
Yes. It's easier to believe that in a starving world, a random kind couple is willing to take in someone else's child to feed. Something his own father struggled immensely to do. That is easier to believe.
It's obvious what happened. It's why you ignored every one of my points except the absolutely nonsense about "no more information technology..."
Let me guess, you are the type of person who watched the movie No Country for Old Men and believe that chigurh didn't kill the wife. Or that the girl in the red dress in schindler's list wasn't dead but playing dead because she was saved by some magical good nazis. At this point I hope you at pretending to be trolling to save yourself some embarrassment.
I'm so dumb. I forgot that before information technology, kids were invisible. Thank you.
> If he was one of the cannibals, he could have just shot him and got it over with
In the book, the cannibals like to keep their "herd" alive in the basement. Remember? Why did they keep their humans alive?
> Overpowering him, kidnapping him, or just shooting him would be more easy.
No. It would be easier to convince him to follow them willingly. Would you rather drag a corpse 10 miles or have the the corpse follow you 10 miles. I can't tell if you are trolling or not? Throughout book, exhaustion and the physical toll play a prominent role - of just pushing a cart, father carrying the boy, etc.
It's getting exhausting repeating the obvious. The conclusion of the book is the father dead and the orphaned boy ending up with cannibals. Exactly what they wanted to avoid and breaking the promise that the father made to his wife. If that is uplifting to you and you find moral value in that fine. I guess if you keep looking for something, you'll eventually find it. Even if it is not there.
> It felt to me that the family that takes in the boy are not bad people.
What family? You really believe the man and woman who took in the boy had a "family"? A world where boy's own mother abandoned him and his father to kill herself because there was no hope. A world where there are no plants, animals, fish, etc left. A world where a a woman gives birth and then she and her friends cook the fetus over a campfire. You think in a world where there is no food, no possibility of food, where everyone is either starving to death or cannibalizing, that there is a happy family? It's a world where everyone is starving to death. You think "a family" is going to take in an extra mouth to feed?
Did you miss the parts in the book where they explicitly mention how there is no children the boy's age left? The boy desperately wants a friend but there are no children his age left. Except for that one "imaginary" kid he ran into that disappeared. Why do you think that is?
Also, the father and son were being hunted by a pack of cannibals who mortally wound the father. What are the odds that the cannibal hunters caught up to him. What are the odds that a magical good samaritan family stumbled upon him?
When I first read the book, I thought the kid was saved. Then I reread it and boy cormac really made it crystal clear how hopeless that world was.
> It's true this is done for literary effect, but it does make it harder to read.
What literary effect? I didn't even notice there were punctuation issues until I read the guy's comment. Maybe since it was basically a book where most of the dialogue is between two people? It was one of the easiest and most straightforward reads of my life.
> > James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.[1]
...“to make it easier, not to make it harder” to decipher his prose. He wrote that way to make it easier to read. And I agree with him. His prose just flowed. Also, the problem with joyce isn't the punctation. Even with proper punctuation, joyce would be difficult.
But if people have issues with it, then so be it. Are there any examples where his punctuation caused issues for readers?
> I have read the book, and it is about sticking to your morals no matter how evil the world will become.
What morals? They stole other peoples stuff. They abandoned the poor people in the basement to die at the hands of the cannibals. They "helped" the guy they met on the road but that was due to childish naivety of the son. It was superficial and meaningless help. The book was entirely about amoral animalistic survival than morality. Notice how it was mostly the son who wanted to be "moral". If anything, the book is saying being moral is childish in an amoral world.
If anything, it showed the inability to stick morals. The most important "moral" of the story was the father's promise to the son and his wife, not to let the son fall into the hands of the cannibals. Throughout the book the father promises to kill them both if it came to that. In the end, the father couldn't bring himself to kill the son and left him to the cannibals who were hunting him.
In your response, you say we don't know whether the "good guys" got him or the "bad guys" did. It's obvious the "bad guys" got him. On your first reading, it isn't clear, but after subsequent readings, it is obvious there are no good guys left and the cannibals who were hunting ( or possibly other cannibals ) them got him.
> That is the message of the book.
If that was the message, the book showed how stupid and pointless it was. Not that it was a good thing. If there was a "message", it was that the mother was right and the father was wrong. But that isn't the message either.
Rather than taking the book for it is, people are trying to find a positive message to make themselves feel better. That's a childish notion. Not everything is a disney movie. Not everything has to have a happy ending or a positive message. You don't have to be uplifted or find morality in a book.
> I obviously can't argue further as I haven't read it.
You should. It's the best of its kind in my opinion.
> I will remark that different people will react to the same material variously uplifted or beaten-down, and neither reaction is less valid (unless they just misunderstood the plot).
I'm open to people having subjective feelings - like whether they enjoyed it, they found it too graphic, not graphic enough, etc. But uplifting is different. There has to be something concrete to back up the feeling of being uplifted.
> Personally, I tend to find depictions of nobility and perseverance in the face of imminent doom interesting and moving if not uplifting.
But that's the point. It isn't nobility and perseverance in the face of imminent doom. The mother thought it was inevitable doom. The father had hope. It's perseverance in false hope. Nonexistent hope. It's like you seeing a person jump 100 stories from the twin towers and flapping his arms in the hopes of flying and saving himself. Would you say that is uplifting? Of course not. Unless you were being edgy or silly.
Instead of reading silly amazon reviews, go read the book and see for yourself.
> But the love between the father and his son persists to the very end.
So what? Of course the love between a father and son persists. It's only natural. But that's not the point of the book. The book is about finding hope. The father is desperately trying to save his son. To find hope for his son. He thinks there is hope along the coast. That's why they are on "the road". When they reach the coast, they find a leaden sea holding no life. All marine life is dead. They find no hope. There, cannibals that were hunting the father and son shoot the father with an arrow and the father dies. The son buries his father and the cannibals find the boy and "take him in".
This is just reviews with the word "uplifting". Many of the comments with "uplifting" is just saying it is not uplifting.
"This is an unusual book. There is nothing uplifting here, so don't expect it."
"As uplifting as a charred word void of virtually all-living species. As uplifting as a dead land shrouded in night, blanketed with ash and gray snow, legions of charcoaled corpses ornamenting the highways and hallways. As uplifting as the vicious gangs who prowl the countryside surviving on the last food source - other humans. As uplifting as the Halocaust, Idi Amin's Uganda, or Pol Pot's Cambodia."
Read the book. There is nothing uplifting about it. The only thing uplifting about it is that we don't live in such a world. It's as hopeless a world as you can possibly create. It's a world where the wife and mother of the protagonists goes off into the woods to kill herself rather than face the horrors that await her and her husband and her son. That's how bleak and hopeless the world is. It's a world where the father carries a gun to take out his son and himself in case the cannibals get them. It's a world where the father fails to keep his promise to his son and dies, leaving him to a pack of cannibals. And that isn't even the worst of it. What exactly is uplifting here?
> It was, I'm told, a very good book that I noped out of about ten pages in.
That's strange. The book grabs your attention from the get go. It starts strong. Stays strong. Ends strong.
> I made it that far before becoming incredibly annoyed at the way literature critics were praising his new invention of post-apocalyptic stories which nobody had ever read before ever.
This makes absolutely no sense. Were you reading the book and reading reviews at the same time?
> Also, if I remember correctly, he felt that the rules of punctuation didn't apply to him. Maybe that paid off if I'd read more than ten pages.
His punctuation was fine. The book reads well. His words and sentences flow. I found it easily one of the most accessible.
> it's just not a story I want to hear. If I want to be depressed and angry Hacker News.
Ah there it is. People with petty gripes always have an agenda. So your "gripes" above are just because you want don't like apocalytic stories and want to warn people off it? Why not just say so instead of making up silly criticisms? Also, it's a work of fiction. It isn't real. Really nothing to get depressed or angry about. If anything, it should make you happy since we don't like in such a hopeless world. But really, like all great literature, it should make you think.
> I haven't read it myself, but I've seen many report that it was uplifting to them.
Uplifting? There was nothing uplifting about The Road. It's a world without hope. From the description of the forests, seas, societies and families, cormac builds a truly hopeless apocalypse with no hope for redemption or salvation. A world where hope cannot exist.
> Amid the utter horror and hopeless bleakness a parent does everything they can to protect their child.
A father tries to do everything he can to save his son, but ultimately, he fails. It's a world without hope after all. The father dies and a bunch of cannibals "take in" the boy.
It's one of the rare books that I finished in one sitting and then read again a few days later.
> Second, get off your drugs. SSRIs and benzos and other psychotropic medications have serious side effects that will cause you to have suicidal and homicidal ideations.
But aren't therapists the one peddling these drugs to their patients? You say see a therapist and then say avoid the drugs they peddle? What your local street drug dealer is to the drug cartels is what your therapist is to big pharma.
Also, is there any data or evidence that therapists help? Are we sure they don't make things worse?