"Fuck Formality," And Other Insightful Inmate Thoughts

I pride myself on being a very objective and aloof person.

Yeah, right. I’m a sobbing mess of pent-up emotions and unshed tears for every little thing.

This is why the thought of a prison doing such a common and heart-warming thing such as putting on a play seems to me like the cutest thing and makes me almost sigh in adoration. At the beginning of the radio clip, I had the wrong idea that when they said they were presenting Hamlet in a prison, they were literally converting the play to take place in a prison, in that way broaching a new take on the plot. So when the auditions came by, and the constant mispronunciation of words such as ‘Rogue’, ‘flaggen’, and ‘rennish’ were a common occurrence, I seriously questioned the director’s interests and the actors’ obvious inability to read.

But then I finally learned the reality of this scheme and it left me jaw-slacked. The narrator spoke of this play as being “different because it’s a play about a man pondering a crime and its consequences, performed by violent criminals living out those consequences.” Never have I ever witnessed such a display where the same actor playing a killer or an alien, is in actuality that same thing. This is a completely new take on Hamlet seeing that the actors themselves personally feel the emotions portrayed in the text. They can fabricate true conflict by giving great reasons to kill him and good reasons not to (because they certainly have the experience and guts to do it). In that same way, it makes Shakespeare’s Hamlet convert into a personal chronicle of the prisoners and become a reality on stage.

Besides the creativity of it all, as much as it is a completely imaginative innovation that for me means a great deal, there is also a sort of medicinal quality to the project. Forgetting that these actors are former gangbangers or post-office employees that in some way managed to get themselves thrown in this place, they are humans that want a new chance at life, and by no means are living anything close to it. One of the men who play Hamlet, Edgar, spoke of how the director and the play makes him feel human. He said that, after “all the humiliating things they do to us,” such as pride their bare legs open, spread their cheeks wide and other degrading things they wouldn’t do otherwise, “for that minute when they [the director, the play] come, I can at least feel human. In a way this is a coping mechanism and hope for them that is rare in their circumstances. The director has made this a production that has managed to not just entertain, but enlighten and relieve.

Another interesting thing is how they used four Hamlets instead of just one. According to them, it was solely due to the purpose of giving everyone lines and not burdening anyone with those never-ending histrionic soliloquys. But I find that to be so interesting because, seeing as Hamlet is such a complex character, with a variety of conflicting thoughts and multiplicity of mood swings, what better way to portray that than by making him out to be represented by four different people? In this way, they perfectly accomplish depicting the “fractured quality of bonded personalities” that is the character of Hamlet.

It’s funny when you think of taking advice from a prisoner. It’s like, “Oh, I’m having boyfriend problems, let me just as the woman who got put in prison due to her jealousy and her stabbing her husband to death.” Yeah. No. But for some reason, when these prison mates talk of the play and their opinions about it, they say some things that, for me, seem really interesting. They have such a fresh perspective on everything. Big Butch, for example, critiques Horatio for supposedly being Hamlet’s best friend but how he’s always saying “yes, milord,” and that if you’re someone’s real friend, you’re going to tell him everything and fuck any formalities. You’re not going to wait until the end of the freaking play to demonstrate that you care after acting like a completely subservient stranger the whole play. Then he considers Hamlet’s inner conflict and his hesitation for killing Claudius and wonders why it you already know you’re eventually going to do it, why bother waiting? And how “If I’m strong enough to believe in ghosts, than I’m strong enough to believe in what the ghosts tell me. “ The last one being so dry and funny that I couldn’t believe it. Those are questions I would have never thought of and it makes me feel stupid. Inmates make me question my intelligence. Who would’ve thought?

This is a turn from the usual interpretations of this well-known play. Taking people that are assaulted, strip-searched, and humiliated to share this opportunity to express themselves is a real feat. Not only are they creating a completely new analysis of the work, but it also makes for a very inspiring process. For them, this is a break from their harsh reality and a chance to finally use their minds for something important. One of these guys, Brad, says, “If you don’t keep exercising your mind, you lose it.” And it’s true. This is a way to make Hamlet more real and to give them a chance to, via the meaning and concept of the play, think about their actions and their wrongdoings and give them any hope they had ever lost.

Psychoneurosis and Other Bits of Hope

The psychology of the human mind is extremely interesting.

Okay, the truth is I only find it interesting because it explains love and hot steamy sex and all those other entities that all teenagers find interest in.

Or maybe it’s just me.

….

AWKKK WARRRD.

So. Ernest Jones analysis Hamlet from the psychological perspective. (Isn’t every analysis psychological though? Ooh. Deep.) According to him, Hamlet “never intended us to regard” him as “sane” so the “ ’mind o’erthrown’ must have some other meaning than its literal one.” Basically what everyone already knows, which is that Hamlet wants everyone to think he is insane but never truly is. This concept is further affirmed in Robert Bridges’s The Testament of Beauty described how Hamlet seemed insane as to confused people but never really left his reason.

Hamlet’s insight that “would take the world three subsequent centuries to reach” was granted to him by Shakespeare’s extraordinary powers of observation and over-all awesomeness. Hamlet, yet again, is then a very intelligent character. And this character is a perfect example of what Dover Wilson calls “that sense of frustration, futility, and human inadequacy.” I wonder if this is Wilson’s weird way of describing insanity or maybe he’s just onto a completely new topic of sanity and responsibility. Since Hamlet is a supreme example of these feelings that much of mankind recognizes personally, then Hamlet is a symbol for humanity and its negative feelings of inadequacy.

So in we go into the main idea of this analysis: Psychoneurosis and all its messed-up, lunatic, weird, Freudian (ergo the ‘weird’) glory. For those ignorant and unknowing of the concept ‘psychoneurosis’ (Never mind the fact that I myself just figured out it existed all but two minutes ago when I looked it up), it is state of mind where a person is thwarted by the unconscious part of their mind, the infant’s mind that was once hidden and yet still appears side by side with the adult mentality. Basically, their child-like state of mind never developed and is at odds with their more rational ‘adult’ mind. So you’re in constant internal mental conflict with yourself and unable to make decisions.

Maybe this is why Hamlet fails to ever come in agreement with himself? There is the slight possibility that this disease applies to him and when he was a kid he was in love with his mother. So of course, he was jealous of her affection towards his father and felt a bitter sense of replacement. Oedipus Complex, much? But there are three things that make this theory highly impossible. If this were true, either way he would be aware of that fact, which would make him being crazy implausible. (Fun Fact: Crazy people don’t actually know or even believe themselves to be crazy).

Just pretend you never know that former bit of enlightenment. Please.

The second one is that there’s no evidence of him recovering any memories from his childhood. Darn it.

And the last one is that his mother marrying Claudius wound deprive him of the same amount of affection as his dad’s presence did, so there’d be no reason for the histrionics. Because if this were to happen, he would be secretly glad of his father’s death and not casting evil glances and laser-beam glares at Claudius.

There goes our theory. How sad.

So the only thing that can explain his self-frustration and the delay in which he fills his father’s begs for revenge are that while he may try to follow through with parricide and incest, the thought of both actually disgust him. So he is not really crazy, but his display of lack of sanity isn’t just to confuse and trick other people. In the end, he is actually trying to make himself believe that he is crazy in order to justify his actions. But he views “Bestial Oblivion”, in other words, the incapability to remember (maybe a side-effect of insanity?...I wonder) with contempt. So he acts crazy to fool himself, and yet it doesn’t seem to work. It ends up as just being believed by others. But there is only so much you can take trying to seem a certain way until you finally end up becoming it.

Talk Talk Talk and No Action. Tsk.

I wonder if I should do it. Maybe I shouldn’t. But maybe in the long run it will reflect positively on my role as a very well rounded student. But then again, I’d also have to wake up extremely early on Saturday to carry piles of dirt around when I could be dreaming blissfully in the softness of my bed.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Thinking things twice never works out. Overthinking things brings about cowardice and the eventual happening of inaction.

In Friederich Nietzhe’s analysis of the character Hamlet, he takes into account his overly thoughtfulness and compares him the ‘Dionysian’ man.

Friedrich made up the whole concept of the Dionysian state as being based off the god of wine, which stands for intoxication, impulsiveness, intuition, and exuberance. And apparently, said state brings about an indifference towards reality which makes memories and the like slip from your conscience. And when you’ve awaken from this state and are brought into reality, you experience a nausea that renders you so full of will and self-discipline you’d probably seem as if you have a stick stuck up your ass.

Apparently, Hamlet is like the Dionysian man in that he is impulsive and accepting of reality. They both have “gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action.” Hamlet is an intellectual who is smart (obviously) but that intelligence causes him to overthink things which is actually him doubting himself and pronouncing himself a coward. But in not acting he is actually still in silence that may bear all of his arguing thoughts as well as possible evil plots. This thought is even expressed by Hamlet himself in a soliloquy where he is having an argument with himself. And those types of people find it ridiculous to try to set the world right, and the possibility that they, a grain of sand and hugely populated world, could make a difference, is laughable. They are realistic.

“Action requires the veil of illusion,” and in sarcastic humor, Nietzsche refutes “Jack the Dreamer’s” cheap wisdom of reflecting too much on all the possibilities not letting him get to the action. In essence, you need to have hope and some sort of positivity to do something because actions are humans’ idea of something done to receive something in return. We need to have an illusion that what we’re doing will succeed. Hamlet and the ‘Dionysian’ man don’t act, not because they spend too much time hoping on all the possible leprechauns and smiley rainbows they might encounter, but because they are realistic and know that they can’t change the world.

Any by change the world I mean somehow bring your dad back to life and make your uncle disappear with a flick of your hand. Or that’s what Hamlet would want.

Friederich is actually onto something here because even halfway through the play, it is visible that Hamlet only talks endlessly and rants like a freaking parrot and yet doesn’t do anything regarding his thoughts.

Talk talk talk and no action.

That’s Hamlet for you.

Please Don't Go Insane. Or Do.

The intricacies of the human mind are so that not even we can understand ourselves completely. No matter how much we try to dissect our faults and our every talent, there are still some aspects we fail to ever grasp.
And let’s face it. We’re pretty simple. Not like a piece of very stale, plain bread, but simple in that we don’t have multiple personalities or a possessed uncle going all Ax murderer on the local neighborhood, which end up affecting us psychologically. Well, some of us.
So the fact that trying to discern every inch of us is termed difficult, imagine trying to suss out the infamous Hamlet, the embodiment of twisted branches and puzzle pieces all wrapped into one persona.
In a brief critique of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe gives us a glimpse towards Wilhelm Meister’s journey in trying to truly capture Hamlet’s character on a stage. This personal account travels through Wilhelm’s thoughts of Hamlet being too complicated and impossible. He endeavored to figure out the young prince’s personality before his dad’s death, endeavoring to “distinguish what in it was independent of this mournful event.”
This seems to be like a very difficult task seeing as the play starts out after Hamlet’s dad’s death and rarely do we find any references to how Hamlet was before hand, if at all. In order to figure out if the death affected him whatsoever we would need to either see some flashbacks, some one speaking of how Hamlet was before, or somehow conjure a way to bring Shakespeare back to life with magical powers and ask him ourselves.
But we don’t and we can’t.
Either way, Wilhem manages to describe Hamlet as a prince born to be king and well aware of it, pure in sentiment and ‘artless in conduct’, and ‘pliant courteous, discreet, and able to forget and forgive an injury.” Apparently, the murdering of his father is no meager injury. God knows how Meister managed to gather up all of this information. It was probably due to inferences taken from passages said later on in the work.
Then he brings up Hamlet’s reaction towards his father’s death as being one of not ambition or happiness in succeeding him in the throne, but of bewilderment. Maybe if he had managed to acquire the throne, the play in itself would not exist. The whole plot revolves around his uncle stealing his place and ergo creating the suspicion that would lead to unravel the unruly plot. He is deprived of what is rightfully his, and instead of seething like a raging lunatic, he is stuck in a state of neediness and degradation. But maybe this is him in a state of shock which later falls away to reveal his inner lunatic.

How poetic.
His mother remarrying just two months after doesn’t help. It’s like, “God, woman, do you have no decency whatsoever? And what is up with your heart? Is it so plastic and fake that it can mold to accommodate to anything that your eyes happen to set sight on?” Jeez. That’s just the cherry on top of a fantastic family tragedy that ends up robbing any hope Hamlet had on a shoulder to cry on. Goethe proceeds to say, “With the dead there is no help; on the living no hold. She also is a woman, and her name is frailty, like that of all her sex.”
The first sentence just ingrains itself into my mind. Maybe because we really can’t find solace in the dead and because we never truly obtain a strong hold on other living people, unless we happen to be old millionaires that sustain gold-digging bimbos who couldn’t manage on their own and ergo follow everything we say and lack any respect. But those are rare cases so let’s just assume this pertains to all of us mere mortals. As to the second part, the guy is basically dissing Hamlet’s mom as well as the female gender in terms of their frailty and weakness, which is kind of biased, let me say. Not every woman is a defenseless damsel in distress. Please.
Then he goes to say that it is after seeing his dad’s ghost that Hamlet grows “bitter against smiling villains and says “The time is out of joint: o cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!” He is not brought on by mere anger but more so the idea for setting things back to how they should be and yet his is a soul that is unfit to perform great action against this injustice. Goethe describes this as an “oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. “ This imagery capture the crucial circumstances in which Hamlet seeks t revenge and to make everything better and ends up deeming an unworldly chaos that amounts to unimaginable heights. Disaster.
Hamlet is of a “lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature” whose strife for unburdening himself and finding some sort of peace of mindset actually works to pin him into insanity.
TUN. TUN.TUN (Insert high-pitched screams)

(Curtains close)

Thank you.

Death: I Cannot Attend. Sorry.

With life comes death.


There can’t be one without the other. We know that eventually we are going to be ashes spread across a flowing river or rotting flesh buried in the muddy pits of earth.

Whether we consent to it or not is a completely different matter. Woody Allen, in his typical witty humour, once said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Obviously, he is one of those people that are startled by death and ergo refuses it. But some people embrace death. They don’t fear it and they swim through life floating on with no worries as to the inevitable. Some even anticipate it.

In Emily Bronte’s poem, “Fall, leaves, fall,” she orders the leaves of youth to fall, and instructs the recently blooming flowers to die. She commands youth, in terms of summer, to leave, while she beckons winter, the end in terms of old age and death, to approach. She desires winter. She is openly pining for death. She “shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow.” The thought of snowy death consuming the life that existed in the presence of the flower enthuses her.

She has no fear.

In The Road, death is a very popular theme, seeing as the novel subsists on survival and the resoluteness to stay alive. Unlike Emily, though, the father and son don’t embrace death. They hide from it, and yet they have simply grown resigned to it. It is clearly engraved into their minds that death is a high possibility and it resides nearby.

They don’t exactly summon it.

But they accept it.

Blind Eyes, Departing Lives, and Evil Little Snakes

Cruelty is what leads rough men to willingly throw live snakes into a roasting fire and stand by while they thrash, scream, twist, burn. And indifference and lack of altruism leads them to walk home to supper, minutes later, as if it were just an ordinary day.

This is a memory that clogs the man’s mind, a memory that took place when he was his son’s age. God knows in what circumstances and his reasons for witnessing said atrocity in the first place, but there must be a reason the recollection is so distinctly exposed.

Snakes are a symbol for evil. Adam and Eve and just the fact that the food chain and Animal Planet portray them as sinful, wicked creatures leads towards this denotation. So the destruction of evil, the burning and suffering of wickedness, is taken as a good thing and even praised. The man recalls this memory, and I have yet to know why. Maybe he’s merely seeing the indifference with which we view death when we find it just and deserved. And in a way it makes life easier to deal with, and it makes the suffering and emaciated people somewhere down the road, or the carcasses on the rubble streets seem less impacting. Less traumatizing.

He and his son happen to come across some imprints and corpses scattered around. When the man tries to shield his son from said sight, and tells the boy, “I don’t want you to look,” the boy responds with, “They’ll still be there.” This brings us to the topic of turning a blind eye. When you know something is obviously and clearly there, but its existence affects you negatively, we sometimes try and make ourselves believe its not their. We lie to ourselves to protect our wellbeing. But not acknowledging something won’t make it all the less real. The boy sums up a concept that plagues us everyday. No matter how hard you try to pretend or not believe something, it will still be there. You might as well accept things as they are.

After the treading past the dead-infested woods, they make their way through the country, Cormac describing them to a T: “The country went from pine to liveoak and pine. Magnolias. Trees as dead as any. He picked up one of the heavy leaves and crushed it in his hand to powder and let the powder sift through his fingers.”

Nature in general, trees, represent life. They symbolize the act of growing, living and existing. So the man and son are actually walking through a road of life, longevity, and immortality. The liveoak being such a twisted and spaced-out tree, demonstrates the twists and warped courses one takes while alive. The magnolias represent perseverance, blooming in an all-out lifeless world. This walk through the country seems like a positive outlook and reassurance for both characters. But then we find that the trees are dead. Life has departed. Just its ashes remain. But the man lets the ashes of life slip through his fingers. In a way, this means he is not truly grasping the fact that life can end so easily. He still has hope.

And that’s all he needs.

Fuel and Punishment in Commissaries of Hell

Fuel.

Oil and petroleum distilled from the earth’s crust come to mind. Power stored to make cars run, lights ignite, and set the world in motion.

And in The Road we see fuel in its common form when the father is in dire need to build a fire.

But fuel is not only the physical and concrete article that powers energy, but a more figurative symbol for a trigger, motivation.

Fuel is what inspires perseverance in the man, and in turn, his son. Fuel is a symbol for the catalyst, the stimulus that keeps these two going. In the father’s case, his incentive to persist in the struggle for survival is his son while the kid himself is probably pushed by the fact that his father is a constant that regularly bleeds motivation. And we can see this when his father asks him if he believes him and the son proceeds to say, “I believe you, I have too.” Because believing in his father is the only reason he hasn't given up, the reason he's still trying.

Fuel is why they carry on.

“We carry the fire.” They carry enough drive to handle the scattered carcasses piled on a deserted and ash-strung floor that remind them of death. They carry enough fuel to handle anything.

Speaking of carcasses littered everywhere imaginable, McCarthy vividly describes the beginning of this frightful era, his beautiful words contrasting with their gruesome significance:

“The world soon to be populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunnelled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.”


You can’t help but picture surly shadowed men sinking their teeth into the flesh of your child, their screams daunting and rendering you agonized with the memory. Cities that are only upheld by strings of robbers and evil thieves crawling out like unwanted and suspicious bats come nightfall. The nylon nets protect the mysterious and dreadful food that you might as well have gotten in the deep confines of a burning and excruciating hell.

Cormac sets the beginning of this horrendous tale as something comparable to the pits of the underworld, which is known a place of eternal punishment, torment, and anguish. And so it’s as if the people caught in this abyss are in some way being punished.

Punished for what, I have no idea.

Sixth Senses and Punctuation

The closest we will ever come to obtaining any type of supernatural power will be when we use our sixth sense. Which in this case would be? I like to think of it as our ability to read people. Sometimes we meet people and we decide that we just don’t like them because is something there, subtle, and yet extremely powerful. Gut feelings go a long way. I find myself having some sort of six-sense-y feelings towards the old man the father and son meet.

But they’re more awe-inspiring feelings and less I-feel-like-this-guy-is-going-to-behead-me-with-a-chainsaw feelings. For some reason, I feel like he’s some sort of prophet or sign sent by God. A sign of hope, maybe? But if he were sent by God, who in his right mind would say, “There is no God and we are all his prophets.” Firstly, let me say that having your boss send you to help his campaign for presidency and then stating that said candidate doesn’t exist? Yeah. That won’t help your case much. There’s also the fact that it’s a juxtaposition given that he says there’s no God and yet we are all his disciples. In order for there to be disciples pertaining to him, he must exist. So maybe he’s trying to transmit the fact that….okay, I really can’t come up with anything. Epic fail.

So. The old man somehow atones his resource of food being random people. Who, he doesn’t know. Then he admits that he made those people up. So where in the world are you getting your food from, you dingo? He also lied about his name, too. Fishy? TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!

Please?

I’m still with the idea that he’s sent from God for God knows what reason. The point is, he’s probably going to play a role in the ultimate ending. Which brings me to, how in this world is this going to end? Apparently, McCarthey didn’t know either, his exact words being, “I had no idea where it was going to end,” when Oprah asks him whether he knew this in the beginning. That makes two of us.

So I guess we’re just going to have to be held in suspense. The funny thing is, when he wrote, he didn’t know what exactly he wanted to write. It just flowed and shaped itself into what ultimately became this masterful work. It’s kind of the like the road the father and son are taking, they don’t know where it’s leading, they’re just wandering around, with no direct goal in mind (besides the obvious, survival, I mean) and eventually they’ll get their ending. Whether it be happy or sad, it will be how it was meant to be. Period.

What also got to me was McCarthey’s view of achieving ‘perfection’ or his ideal novel when writing. And he said something that truly got to me:

“You have this interior image of something that is absolutely perfect. That is your guide. You’ll never get there. But without that you won’t get anywhere.”

It’s true. We will never amount to perfection because it just doesn’t happen, and let’s face it, we’re not Jesus. But if we set up goals for ourselves, high goals, then at least we’ll try and we know we will achieve something that at least is in hopes of reaching fulfillment and success. Without aims in life, we wouldn’t strive for anything, to become anything. We’d be…nothing.

As for finally fulfilling my curiosity? The reason he doesn’t use certain types of punctuation (Quotations!) is “to make it easier, not to make it harder.” Apparently good writers can not use quotations and still make it obvious to the reader who is supposed to be talking. And that’s exactly what I feel and I never question it, in this novel. You’re a good writer, Corman. Be proud.

One day I shall be able to abstain from using punctuation and still sound smart. Er. One day.

Focused on the Future

When I take time out of my life to randomly go to dry, middle-of-nowhere desserts and climb steep rocks (which is very frequent, let me tell you), I make it a personal rule not to stop on hills. Why? Because if I do that means I can be attacked by anything that flies. Meat-eating birds? I think not. So, actually I do tend to stay on hills seeing as I have the perfect, dominant view of anything and everything. All the more protective and efficient, no?

But seeing as this is my own (I like to think, clever) logic, why is it that the father says that people don’t like to stop on hills, ergo their (he and his son) stopping to take shelter on one. I see the fact that it’s smart to go somewhere where the average cannibal, psycho humans (which in this case is the whole population) like to accommodate themselves. But I would just love to know why these people don’t stop to rest at hills. Maybe hills are a new perspective, a new height, which they can’t fathom. Or maybe they’re just so up high that the pressure of the atmosphere affects people’s sinuses and causes unimaginable pain. And that’s why they don’t care for staying there. Or not.

But apparently not everyone harbours the same feelings towards hills. Because that is where they meet this old man who just happens to think they are going to go all Robin-hood/raving-hyenas on him. Basically, he’s peaceful. The son begs his father to help him and give him some food, and during that process, the old man says something I just can’t get off my mind. He starts out by saying that he knew this (the apocalypses) was going to happen, and when asked if he tried getting ready for it, he said, “I don’t know. People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.”

It’s true. We spend so much time thinking of the future, or doing specific things, not for the enjoyment of it, but because they go towards affecting our possible future. Which reminds me of a quote I came upon one day when reading Looking For Alaska by John Green that says that “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” And it’s true. We spend so much time focused on planning/controlling our future that we barely pay attention to the present which is the one we do happen to have control of. And in this case, I guess it would have been very helpful for the old man to have gotten mentally as well as materialistically prepared for this suffering, but then life would be about living for the future. But once the future keeps passing by and you keep on working towards that perfect future, there will come a time where you won’t have a future. You’ll die and you still won’t have appreciated the present.

All because you were too busy planning the future that you never got around to enjoying it.

Dead Bodies and My Gag Reflexes

There’s something about dead bodies that just gets to me. That probably explains my gag-reflex at seeing pictures from the holocaust and my lack of enthusiasm for such entities. And so when McCarthy says that “the charred meat and bones under the damp ash might have been anonymous save for the shapes of the skulls,” I get a little peeved. Okay. A lot.

But yet I still notice that the description itself is beautiful in way that the charred meat is the burnt remains of what used to be alive and bones are obstructed from the view by damp, dirty ash that reminds them of the destructive place they inhabit. Later on he goes to explain that there is no longer any smell. So there’s no smell for death? There once was a smell when they were alive, and probably when the flesh was burnt, but now it’s almost non-existent. There’s no smell. It’s as if they were never there.

This occurs when they pass through an abandoned town and find a metal trash dump. After falling asleep a few hours later, the dad is woken up by another dream. A dream in which “he’d been visited by creatures of a kind he’d never seen before.” Said creatures didn’t speak. And that’s all he could remember. No matter how hard he tries, all that is left is the feeling of it. But why did he dream of that? Is it possible that the world is going to be taken over by mute aliens who make a habit of haunting your dreams? TUN TUN TUN. Or maybe they’re coming over to save every single living human being. Okay, who am I kidding? No one would intentionally try to save the human race (let’s just face it, we suck). Maybe they came to warn him that all that waits in the future is more foreign concepts and shades of grey that don’t make sense (this being because they’re probably more ashes, atop of more ashes, atop of sad remains of death). Maybe.

After he wakes up, he has another conversation with his son. It surprises me how naïve and unknowledgeable the boy is. It never ceases to amaze me that he asks the most random questions like if they could go to Mars if they had a spaceship or crows could fly there in their feathery wings. The fact that he asks the questions truly wanting a response and actually being so youthful in asking whether people know where Mars is. It is cute and sad at the same time. Because while the boy learns about all these ‘brand-new’ things, I think about the life he could have had where these would have been basic knowledge. But he doesn’t.

Let’s not forget the constant “Okay’s” this little one has made his signature style of conversation. “Dog’s lay eggs. But all dogs are dead.” Response: “Okay.” He asks “Are we going to die?” only to be answered by a “No, because we have magical faeries that will send us female counterparts so we can fornicate and save the human race,” and his answer? “Okay.” Now for an actually quote from the novel, when his dad tells him he threw away his flute, he asks “You threw it away?” And when they father answers in the affirmative all he says is, you guessed it, “Okay.” Okay is usually used to agree with something. The boy is so simple and trusting that whatever his father says, he accepts. He accepts every little thing and so I wonder if deep down he’s that resigned.

If deep down he’s as passive and docile as he outwardly seems to be.

Dream Until Reality Doesn't Exist

We dream to escape.

We slip into trances where everything goes our way and for a second there, everything seems perfect.

And then we get back to reality. Our dreams are fun and all, but they have one tiny fault: they frustrate you when they disappear. “Rich dreams which you are loathe to wake up from.” Because then we have to accept the fact that we’re back in the real world, where those things just don’t happen.

But the father has to come back to a reality, not just where those things don’t happen, but a reality where those things are “no longer known in the world.” Where they don’t even exist. And dreaming is the remedy, however small, with which he can escape his pain, anguish, anxiousness, and fear. Dreaming is his way of coping.

And then he wakes up.

And his mind is clustered by thoughts consisting of “How many days to death? Ten?” and the like.

A life where every hour is spent with the knowledge that you’re going to die and it’s only a matter of when. And I feel pity because even in this perfect (relatively) world, we know we’re eventually going to die but it seems so far away that we don’t give it a second thought. Well, most of us, considering when I was ten there was a period where everyday I imagined dying and the pain and the suffering and the overall gory-ness of it all. (I was not crazy, no matter how emo-friendly, weird, and strangely disturbing my ten-year-old mindset may seem).

The point being that even though with life comes death, and we all know it, we don’t really give it a second thought because we see death as we see a sunset. You can see it, you know it’s there, but you can’t touch it and it can’t touch you. Its an intangible concept that happens in the unforeseeable future. In the very faraway future. Basically, when you’re breaching on geriatric and the wrinkles sown on your flesh are so that they can tell a story.

And we have the sufficient amount of money to not give a crap about food and survival.

That’s just the way it is.

Your Point?

Since when can you smell water?

Yeah, you drink it, but even then it is practically tasteless. All we know is that it’s healthy and one of the main things that keep us alive. So we drink it. But it’s not because we like it.

The thing is, we tend to not appreciate things when we have them. Which can be seen when the father finds “a cistern filled with water so sweet that he could smell it.” Maybe the absence of something makes you notice it all the more, noting the aspects you barely knew existed once upon a time.

Water is a symbol for life. But we have yet to figure out that ‘life is a gift and not a given right’ (Nickelback). We live as if it is written in stone and the world is lucky to have us claiming our territory. Which in reality is a misconception, considering our presence means agony for this Earth and we're the ingredients for its future demise.

We don’t notice the sweetness and the pure bliss of living until we end up in a world where the only humans who exist are trying to eat our flesh and instead of pink sunsets you see a constant grey. This is the dad appreciating what before he wouldn’t have given a second thought. Life in all its non-post-apocalypses glory.

It’s times like these, when their suffering is described and the hunger is all but screaming, and the cannibals are oh-so-very near, that I wonder how this book is going to end. I could totally flip the pages until the very last one and fulfill my curiosity. But who even does that? I never have, and never will, ruin the anticipation and the pure essence of reading a book, by ruining the end. That's just blasphemy. But I still want to know. I want to understand the meaning of this novel and whether father and son are going to, after this huge struggle, die (which would lead to me pounding my head repeatedly against a very, very, hard, solid object). Or if the world is somehow going to magically surge into a replica of the dream it was before. Because the ending will be what truly gives this novel a purpose.

Or else its just a pile of ash and depressing words and pitiful moments that drown in negativity.

And pointless.

What Once Was

You might think that the things in this world that truly hold any power are communist dictators and corrupt governments as well as over-indulged celebrities.

But ever thought of the power of words?

How every syllable of every string of letters makes you feel, makes you think, or means something?

What truly sucks is when certain words just don’t mean anything to you. Partly because you’re not cultured enough to know their definitions and you feel stupid at not having ever heard them in the first place. Which is what I felt at hearing the phrase, “Shh. The phalanx following the carried spears or lances tousled with ribbons…” Phalanx? Is that some biology term like trachea or femur? Nah. Apparently it just means ‘a compact or close-knit body of people.’ Now I know what to say next time I’m walking down the hallways in order to seem like a walking dictionary. Be ready, oh people of CNG. Here, I come!

Or not.

So that’s basically the one word I found which could account for a foreign concept.

But that’s not it. Words? Yes. They might have a specific definition that states what they mean, and what they're supposed to mean to everyone around the world. But there’s more to them. The definition of snow is 'a precipitation in the form of ice crystals, formed directly from the freezing of the water vapor in the air', but for someone whose father died in an avalanche, snow might mean death and ergo bring a sense of dread.

Just like in The Road the author tends to make a huge deal of the word ‘ash.’ And not make-a-big-deal in the way that he says that ash is some alien-like force made to create mass destruction, but make-a-big-deal as in repeating the word so many times to the point where you just can’t help but think it means something. And by ‘mean something’ I mean something more than the obvious 'powdery residue of matter that remains after burning.'

Throughout the novel, “ash” is used repeatedly to describe their surroundings. Everything is covered by ash. Constantly. I have to admit in the beginning I was considering yelling at Cormac McCarthy for his repetitiveness, unoriginality and inability to obtain a thesaurus. But I guess there must be a reason, no?

Ash is the remains of what once was power, happiness, hope, love, fire. Fire in all its powerful and amazing beauty. And ashes are the sad remains of what used to be so glorious. They’re the reminder that once upon a time their was something meaningful there and now all that’s left is a pile of powder all pale and a lack-luster gray. Here, they’re a memento for what used to be America and what is left of it. And in a pessimistic way, the ashes are always there to assure them that what they’re living in is a disaster of what once was an almost perfect place.

A reminder of what once was and will never be.

Fire and the Canine Species

I’ve always had a soft spot for the canine species.

And I’m sometimes repelled at myself for feeling a much harder tug at my heart-strings when I see an unfed dog walking along a deserted road then when I see an actual person begging for money on a random corner so they can make it through the day.

I’m not proud of this. But I can’t help it.

So it’s safe to say that when I there was a dog in the distance and the son begged his father not to kill it, which he didn’t, I felt relief.

But that’s of no importance.

What truly got my attention was when the father told his son that nothing bad was going to happen, he backed up this statement with “Because we’re carrying the fire.”

Of course, literally, this could mean they have some sort of torch that has the double-use of providing light and the ability of burning someone’s ass in the rare chance they got too close.

But we’re not talking literally, are we?

So what could ‘fire’ possibly mean? Destruction? An eternal love? Desire and determination? All I know is that fire is something that burns so passionately and determinedly and has a magnanimous power for creation or destruction. And maybe the both of them have this undying flame of determination that renders it impossible for anything to get in their way. They carry resolve, desire, hopes, and persistence. What else do they need? (Besides a world that hasn’t gone all Abra-kadabra/WWII/destruction on them…?)

But who’s complaining?

Who We Are. That's Just It.

Who are we?

I’m serious.

There’s a part in The Road where the boy happens to see a living human being and in turn asks his father, “Who is he?” only to have the father respond, “I don’t know. Who is anybody?”

It’s like in those interviews (god, how much I dislike interviews) when they ask you all the questions possible and then they come up with the five-star bonus question that will decide your fate: “Who are you?”

And God knows what to respond to that. ‘Is’ is a term that can be interpreted in different manners. By is do you mean the talents he obtains as in he is smart, musically-gifted, or artistically amazing? Or do you mean what is he in the character traits that make him selfish, resolute, and a hope-less romantic? Maybe. But ask someone who they are, and there are going to be some difficulties. Because, in reality, who are we?

Beats me.

And then I come upon the scene where they find this random guy who ends up scraping a knife against the boy’s throat only to be rewarded two bullets through his flesh by the protective father. And then I think:

We’re survivors.

But then I was like, “Dude, they are the ones that are making ends meet because they don’t have the sufficient amount of resources to live. They are survivors. People who live life with cash as an every-day commodity and whose biggest issues are whether their blackberry is stolen or if they’ll get a date to prom? We’re not survivors. We’re hopeless pawns that just follow the materialistic/uncaring trend to the finish line.”

So much for that dramatic statement.

Well.

I happen to come by the part where the man carves a flute from a piece of roadside cane and has the son play a tune. And I can’t help but think that maybe what they say about music is true. Like Jazz in Coming Through Slaughter the flute itself might be a harmless try at reaching peace. A type of comfort and hope. Like Kurt Vonnegut said in his novel A Man Without A Country (I highly recommend this book, by the way) :

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

And so maybe it makes no sense and isn’t supposed to mean this in the novel, but maybe the flute and the music is a symbol of hope and reassurance that God does, indeed, exist, and that they are there for a reason.

So who are we? I don’t know. Does anybody know? But what I do know is that life is not just placing things into categories and definitions. The son is all up on thinking this is worthless and they might as well just give up. But following though with that decision will define who he is, the definition being a coward.

Our actions make us who we are. That’s just it.

But the father pushes him on, and who knows?

Maybe hope and music mean something in the end.

Destruction and Other Foreign Concepts

Loneliness.

We might sometimes say we pride ourselves on enjoying some ‘alone time’. But spend some time breathing your own air and you’ll start to get bored. Spend a little more time alone and you just might get anxious. Spend a tiny bit more time confined in a place where you are your only company and you’ll start to feel lonely.

And loneliness is just the worst of all. We need human company just as much as we need oxygen. It’s a necessity.

So I try to imagine life without human companionship save my son (Not like I actually have one. Jeesh. But I can imagine). I try to see myself surrounded by a very little amount of survivors that mean absolutely nothing to me in comparison to the huge, desolate mass I am living in.

But I can’t.

And yet I see the dad going inside what used to be his home and find himself attacked by carefully detailed memories that rush towards him all at once. The people who he loved and loved him in return are just images in his brain. And they keep reminding him of what he had. And what he now lacks.

He and his son find themselves in the middle of the snow, trying to manage on whatever little resources they have. And the dad is a master at selflessness when he gives the cocoa to his son and is pleased with just a small cup of water. “You promised not to do that,” says the boy. So apparently his dad is always negating any type of remotely comforting food or entity as long as he can give it to his son.

Does love really make you so noble? I consider myself extremely greedy when it comes to food (Hey, I’m not proud of it) and yet if there was someone who I cared for more than myself and who I loved with my entire heart? God only knows what I would do.

But what I do know is that I would not want my son being born into this type of life. Which is exactly the case. He has never tasted a soda until this day. He didnt’t know what the States were, and for the first time in his life he has come across the glory of what are mushrooms. Seriously, this boy was not born before everything crashed down into a pile of death. This kid was born into this life, and ergo doesn’t have anything to compare it with, which I find preferable to having this perfect pre-apocalyptic world and to compare to my current dooming present.

And I think that’s what the mom thought, too. Of course I find her extremely selfish and bitchy for killing herself in order to be the “lover of Death” because she couldn’t handle strategizing the “pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall.” I mean, if you’re by yourself, with absolutely no one who is impacted by your presence (or the lack thereof) then do it. Go stick a bullet through your brain because chances are either you do it or nature will wither you away at the snap of its fingers. But if you have a son and a husband that love you dearly and you mean something to them? How could you be so selfish as to put your happiness and relief before your kid’s? Yeah, you’ll die eventually, but at least have the decency to try.

But not everyone is brave. Some of us are cowards and we don’t know yet because we have never come to face a situation that would un-shield that side of us. And some of us are heroes. But we will never know.

Because ‘destruction’ and ‘survival’ (real survival) are foreign concepts to us.

Thank God.

Alabaster Bones, Memories, and A Pretty Messed Up World

So I find myself in an isolated place where creatures with white eyes and alabaster bones drink water from a lake and where people walk with a chrome motorcycle mirrors on a shopping cart to check if they’re being followed.

Fine.

Not ‘people’. More like two persons. Father and son trying to live in this atrocity of a mess.

Where in the world is this taking place? Ah, wait. I already know this. (I just wanted to make everything all the more dramatic). It’s in post-apocalyptic America, just in case it was still an unknown fact.

The idea itself is pretty thoughtful. But I can’t help but ask myself some things.

Every time the boy or the father talks, not once do I see the existence of quotations. Of course, this must be done on purpose, but what type of tone or message it’s trying to convey is beyond me. Does Corman want to somehow explain to me that with the destruction of almost every living thing and very visible material and city chaos, there also comes the extinction of writing laws?

Guess so.

And since when do ‘slutlamps’ exist? Maybe it’s a commonly known term which I just happen to not be very acquainted with. But even if it is, how can I not imagine a very, how shall I say this? Promiscuous, (in other words, slutty) female with lights piercing from every visible crevice in her body. Why is that?

As for the actual story, I’ve got to say there is a very interesting and creative plot thing going on. People isolated from humanity and they’re left in a messed-up, ash filled world. Never heard that one before, have you? Well. I have.

I’m not saying I don’t like The Road. I mean, there are some very interesting ideas mixed into it that truly make me think. Like when the father says that “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” Which in a weird way makes sense, and makes me wonder if that were to happen to me, just how out-of-my-mind and suicidal would I be? But let’s not go there.

And maybe the way the man happens to come across what used to be a farm and describes the very recent trash on the floor, as well as the newsprint and the broken china while furniture and a stuffed animal take up a boy’s room. What used to be a boy’s room. This makes it seem so recent. It’s as if just the day before someone had been living here and so I wonder if this so-called catastrophe is recent. And then I remember that in the beginning the man states that they had been like this for years. Which in itself is so pitiful in the way that everything looks just like it did that oh-so-unfortunate day, and everything is a walking memory of the good times that are gone forever.

The concepts and the quotes, as well as the thoughts, are pretty deep. And not just deep as in ‘they sound so metaphorical and yet they make no sense’ deep, but more the ‘this is truly inspiring and I wonder what that would be like’ deep.

And I still can’t help but wonder.

Recycled Air

“Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am king of Corners. And Robin who drained my body of its fame when I wanted to find that fear of certainties I had when I first began to play, back when I was unaware that reputation made the room narrower and narrower and narrower, till you were crawling on your own back, full of your own echoes, till drinking in only your recycled air. And Robin And Jaelin brought me back to that open fright with the unimportant objects.”

Here. This moment. Now. Who I am right now and my beliefs at this given time.

Buddy Bolden finds himself reflecting on himself, right then and there. Anonymous, he is protected from judgment and finds himself in a white room with no history and no parading (ie. no social standards, former bias, or need to be a certain person). He, in this scenario, is in his Utopic state of uncaring.

Fame is something that is a part of his life, and apparently, he used to harbor many uncertainties and hesitations before fame had built him up, one ego level and supercilious point at a time. Not only that, but he had yet to know (until from his own personal experience) that fame makes people pale in comparison to you, until you’re this huge work of art made to be praised and admired and glorified. But then you’re so secluded in your grade-A Star world that there’s only enough space for you to walk so casually on. It gets to the point where you’re so special that you’re seen as a prize to be conquered or an ideal to gain. Nobody understands you and then you’re so secluded and miles away from the rest of humanity, that you’re only breathing your own recycled air.

Because no one is there to breathe it with you.

Fame gets to people. In more ways than one. It isolates people, it depresses them, it is a huge gift that comes with hazardous side-effects.

It’s meant to be taken step by step while trying to not let it take you over.

To not destroy you completely.

Too bad Buddy didn’t follow the rules.

All You've Done is Cut Me in Half

“Our friendship had nothing accidental did it. Even at the start you set out to breed me into something better. Which you did. You removed my immaturity at just the right time and saved me a lot of energy and I sped away happy and alone in a new tone away from you, and now you produce a leash, curl the leather round and round your fist, and walk straight into me. And you pull me home. Like those breeders of bull terriers in the Storyville pits who can prove anything of their creatures, can prove how determined they are by setting the, onto an animal and while the jaws clamp shut they can slice the dog’s body in half knowing the jaws will still not let go.

All the time I hate what I am doing and want the other. In a room full of people I get frantic in their air and their shout and when I’m alone I sniff the smell of their bodies against my clothes. I’m scared, Webb don’t think I will find one person who will be the right audience. All you’ve done is cut me in half, pointing me here, Where I don’t want to find these answers.”

Friendships don’t last forever.

I’m just being realistic. Of all the people you know now, only one (if at all), will probably maintain their ‘homeboy’ station in your heart when you’re bordering on geriatric. And even some friendships seem to last for only a short term. In the first sentence, the word 'had' demonstrates that Webb and Bolden used to be friends, but it’s a thing of the past.

By using the phrase ‘Even at the start’, he demonstrates how the following will be something Webb did occasionally during their friendship, which was try to ‘better’ Bolden. Even the latter thought of himself as someone who was yet to be the best person out there.

Bolden proceeds to compare himself to a dog in the way that---after he succeeded in maturing, supposedly--- he sped away happily into a new town, leaving all of Webb’s annoying tendencies (and probably a vapid home) behind. And yet no matter what, Webb came back like those breeders (which give the aura of a cruel, tough, and authority-endowed persona) and ‘tore’ Bolden in half. And of course Webb knew he had stopped Bolden’s chance at happiness, and even in that moment, knew Bolden would always reminisce, crave, and be engulfed in the memories of that glimpse at bliss.

In the second paragraph we deduce (quite obviously) that Bolden is a bundle of conflict. All the time, every single day of his life, never has he been completely satisfied with what he is doing, which leads one to infer that he has never been satisfied with himself. He always wants what he doesn’t obtain. Common nature, and yet with his inability to ever enjoy himself when he finally attains them, quite sad.

He gets annoyed by being surrounded by people (maybe because he’s so different and can’t relate to anyone in life) and yet can’t mange loneliness and craves the “smell”, the knowledge or feeling that he is not alone in this world. He is lost and scared and can’t seem to find a way to a peaceful time on Earth. And while he knows there are reasons he is the way he is, and Webb has “cut him and half”, rendering him vulnerable to anything, pointing him here---the reasons for why he is who he is---, he is too much of a coward to bare himself and find out.

Hopes, Façades, and Unrevealed Secrets

Known for being one of the most prized works of literature, “The Great Gatsby” has been already been specified as a masterpiece that demonstrates life in “The Roaring Twenties.” “The Roaring Twenties” being a decade of hope, miracles, and whatever else can be said for positive and exultant feelings.

And so maybe just the setting itself can be looked upon as a reference to hope and expectations for that all-mighty happy ending (which, being realistic here, will never occur in this extremely screwed-up world).

But nothing can contend to the ultimate power of hope when involved with someone of the opposite sex.; that unwarranted amount of ambition and sometimes gag-worthy romantic actions that one does in order to win the heart of a certain special human being, in hopes of finally capturing their heart.

Hope. “To cherish a desire with anticipation.”
Example: Daisy Buchanan.

Daisy Buchanan is a symbol for all the inordinate amount of optimism and expectations for whatever it is that warrants enough importance to make you prone to disappointment.

James Gatsby holds great expectations when it comes to said girl. She is the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason he is who he is today.

And yet, it is not a newfound concept that hopes and expectations are sometimes met with blanking and utter disappointment.

“ There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusions. “

Gatsby has engulfed himself in endless wires that travel through his brain setting Daisy as this fairytale heroine and has brought himself to make Daisy to be this unrealistic epitome of perfection. He has spent five years building Daisy up to some type of unflawed and seamless precision.

Daisy is the epitome of Hope and Expectations and the proof of how we might not always get what we are hoping for.

For Gatsby, it’s his dreams of her living up the ideal he has stuck in his head. For people back in the 1920’s it was probably the possibility of a sprouting and better America. For us, well, there are tons of simple (and sometimes materialistic and extremely shallow) hopes that affect us every single day.

But we have them.

Another maybe tiny symbol would be the high stacks of books piled up in Gatsby’s house. Did we ever happen to see him in the actual act of absorbing literature? That would be a negative.

So Gatsby might be somewhat of a farce. Like those guys that pretend to own sports cars so they’ll obtain the oh-so-admirable blonde bimbo with the single digit IQ that is supposed to be made up for in the size of her breasts?

Well, our friend Gatsby here has books instead of sport cars and his ultimate goal is more the image of intelligence (and his claim of going to Oxford) than a female companion.

Yes. His books are the symbol of a façade. They are there to lead a person to believe something that is not entirely covering the facts.

Of course, they could also be representing Gatsby himself in the way that they hold secrets and stories that are unknown because they have yet to be opened. Kind of like Gatsby and his mysterious past that is yet to be determined.

So we have hopes that never reach our expectations, façades we put on to try and please other people or come off as something we are not, and secrets we keep and very rarely let out until someone happens to earn the sufficient amount of trust to have us open up to them completely.

So we live life following these repeating actions that characterize us as humans. Just like Gatsby himself is a compressed mass of ambition, loneliness, naivety, and then sometimes confidence, wealth, and a bleak sort of happiness, he is a symbol of everything we encounter as humans.

A symbol of Life.