The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

            The Road by Cormac McCarthy takes place in a post- apocalyptic world where a father and son fight to survive. The world that surrounds them is filled with dark landscape with dead trees and fire. The father and boy have a goal to travel south and reach the blue ocean, which the boy has never seen. Color is a main theme in this book as the only color that surrounds them is dark depressing colors so the father has hopes to show the boy the color blue. During their journey the face many difficulties as in this world there is very little food and cannibalism is people’s main source of food. This is the main issue that the father and son need to watch out for as people are driving around searching for other people to eat. Humanity no longer exists, people only have one goal to survive and they will do anything to achieve that. Throughout the entire book the father has dreams about the past during the beginning of the apocalypse when his wife was pregnant with their son. These dreams show what happened to his wife and the reason of why he is going to see the ocean. There are many obstacles in this book that the father and son face like encounters with cannibals, sickness, hunger, and many more. Throughout all of these difficulties and lack of humanity the boy still is a caring thoughtful person. It could be implied that the boy is going to be the reason for change.

            This book is an excellent book for high school juniors or seniors to read because there are many themes that take place and other literary techniques. McCarthy’s writing in the book is simplistic to show the dull world, which contributes to the effectiveness of the book but also makes it easy for students to read. Teaching this book, students will have to identify all of the symbolism that takes place, including fire, the boy, and many more. Students have a lot to identify in this book because the themes of love, hope, and faith take place and students will have to find how they contribute to the effectiveness of the book. Discussions will be effective in the classroom because each student will have different interpretations about the events that take place and will want to share the different ideas that they have. Having these different ideas about what is happening it can be a good idea for teachers to assign an argumentative essay, an essay about what students think happened at the end, or an essay about the symbolism that takes place; whether the boy is actually carrying the fire of change or not. This book can create many different ideas of lessons teachers can give their students, but there could be some possible issues. Parents may not feel like they want their child reading about the apocalypse because there is some very dark events that take place. A specific event that could be an issue is when the father and son are in the house and they find the basement full of people about to be eaten and the people come home causing the father and boy trying to escape. This book may have some dark themes and events, but if parents read the book they will realize the benefits of teaching it is. The many literary techniques McCarthy uses and the use of hope in such a tragic world. I read this book in high school and it has been one of my favorites ever since. Unlike most books a teacher does not have to constantly ask students about the themes or symbols because they are easily identified. Students will enjoy reading this because it is very intriguing and keeps readers wanting to find out what happens at the end. 

Readicide

Reading this text, what I found to be interesting was all of the statistics that it gave about students in other states and other countries. The most important part I thought that really stuck with me is when it talked about how schools are taking less time for reading and more time for test preparation. I thought the point Gallagher  made where how administration does not understand the importance of some novels, that they think teachers are only teaching stories. That administration does not all of the important aspects of reading different books to discover theme and to develop stronger reading skills. The other part that I found to be very true because I can relate to this, but that the over teaching of academic text is ruining students from wanting to be lifelong readers. I liked how it pointed out where having students constantly be reading academic text takes the relaxation out of reading. Reading a text and having multiple questions at the end of each chapter that they have to answer to help them with a test just makes everything stressful for students. Lastly, a part that I thought was true was at the end of the book when it discussed how students get confused when reading and do not always comprehend the text. I feel like this is one of the main reasons why students do not like to read. Reading can be difficult for most students and they do not like the struggle that they have to go through just to understand the main idea of the text. The book gave a long list of ideas that teachers can use to help these students, and while reading the list I realized all of the things that I do and not even realize it. I know how helpful these ideas of slowing down to reread, annotating, and making other connections help me so if teachers teach these skills to students then they can become more confident in their reading and develop higher reading skills.

Reading this article, it made a lot of good points about students and how to use a variety of different ideas to strengthen their development of academic skills. A point that I liked that majority of teachers try to incorporate in their classrooms is the idea of popular culture. What I liked about this section of discussing popular culture is that they said the definition can vary. An idea that I really liked and would want to use in my classroom is when it discusses comparing popular culture in today films, magazines, books, and articles to classic literature. I thought this was a good idea because they all share similar qualities and students may not know that. Having students look at classic literature in more of a popular culture way can get them to relate more to the literature and make them more interested in finding the similarities. After reading that, the article then suggested having students study their everyday culture in their own life, either urban or rural communities and schools. I liked this idea because a lot of time people do not consider the different popular culture that occurs between these two. Both of these communities are very different and many students have different ideas on what their popular culture is based on their surroundings and where they grew up.