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-There are different types of affliction from reader to reader, but truly, the mother of all afflictions is laziness. And the only way to cure it is throughout discipline.

-There is no such thing as discipline.
-What?
-There is love, love for reading, there is no hate for reading and then analyzing from an unconscious state, there is no meaning. And no result. For example, you have love for burgers or for abs, more love for one of the two, no discipline really, no discipline in the picture.
-Oh...  


One insight made by Mrs. Chung really took my attention, and that was the reiteration of the craft and style of the novel, where Fitzgerald is able to make such fine a piece of a Hitchcock murder sequence with a relative simple structure, as said before in a The Road analysis, Gatsbys narration captures the magic of "setting descriptions to evoke complex emotions". Just as McCarthy, but with greater wit.

Overall, the article was beneficial on boarding a simple readers perspective, making it entertaining and informative. 

Images

He squatted and scooped up a handful of stones and smelled them and let them fall clattering. Polished round and smooth as marbles or lozenges of stone veined and striped. Black disclets and bits of polished quartz all bright from the mist off the river. The boy walked out and squatted and laved up the dark water.

One relevant aspect from The Road which may often be overlooked is imagery. McCarthy utilizes a concise and objective narrative which helps images to be more vivid and flagrant. According to this perspective, metaphysical reflections convey from these images, since the short direct descriptions tend to reflect more an idea than a simple sequence of events. In the passage below, when the events are taking place the following excerpt stands out from the context, serving as an interpretation for a deeper meaning of the actual road deviation: "They came upon the road unexpectedly and he stopped the boy with one hand and they crouched in the roadside ditch like lepers and listened. No wind. Dead silence." The mans state of vulnerability can be seen past the passage. Being evident the position in which he is encountered with no wind and no sounds, a pseudo emptiness I would say.

They moved on east through the standing dead trees. They passed an old frame house and crossed a dirt road. A cleared plot of ground perhaps once a truckgarden. Stopping from time to time to listen. The unseen sun cast no shadow. They came upon the road unexpectedly and he stopped the boy with one hand and they crouched in the roadside ditch like lepers and listened. No wind. Dead silence. After a while he rose and walked out into the road. He looked back at the boy. Come on, he said. The boy came out and the man pointed out the tracks in the ash where the truck had gone. The boy stood wrapped in the blanket looking down at the road.

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?

Ive always had a fascination with apocalypse, some way or another individuals tend to push themselves towards to these wicked interests...(sex, death, violence, psychedelia..) Currently, I'm not that really into it as before, but I recall having serious psychological issues at the ages of 10 to 12 thanks to this fetish. Reading McCarthys novel and all the post-apocalyptic embroidered setting I couldn't help the feeling again, the bizarre excitement that it produced.  Although The Road is not a dystopia, some characteristics in its narration make a comprehensible resemblance to the whole futuristic degradation of reality, along with some philosophical underlying meaning: 

"What is this place, Papa?
It’s the house where I grew up.
The boy stood looking at it. The peeling wooden clapboards were largely gone from the lower walls for firewood leaving the studs and the insulation exposed. The rotted screening from the back porch lay on the concrete terrace…. This is where we used to have Christmas when I was a boy."

 

There's a movie I really like and its called A Scanner Darkly http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/scanner_darkly/. Its affiliation to the novel can be made throughout their main characters, Fred and the man, respectively. I thought of the same type of mental alienation and functionality for both characters, since both motives are alike in the sense that both rise from the decadent reality they live in. Fred from the imminence ofsubstance D and the man from the harsh condition he lives and the responsibility to save his son. There is always an over understood feeling that "happily ever after" for these characters is not a possibility, meaning that an unhealthy curiosity for armageddon to happen lies within the reader, or in this case myself.

"Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571"

Cannibals

"They came shuffling through the ash casting their hooded heads from side to side. Some of them wearing canister masks. One in a biohazard suit. Stained and filthy. Slouching along with clubs in hands, lengths of pipe…. Then he heard on the road behind them what sounded like a diesel truck…. The truck had rumbled into view. Men standing in the bed looking out…. The truck passed on and the black diesel smoke coiled through the woods. Lumbering and creaking like a ship."

An important element played by McCarthy in The Road is cannibalism. Used mainly as form of ornament in order to embellish the whole setting, consequently producing an enhanced feeling of paranoia throughout the novel.

A famous contemporary episode of cannibalism was in the Uruguayan flight disaster in 1972, where a plane carrying forty-five people crashed in the middle of the Andes, in the border between Chile and Argentina. After the death of almost one quarter of the passengers due the crash and several avalanches, the survivors ran out of supplies and had to take the gruesome decision of eating the meat of their comrade corpses. Most of them where their team mates since a rugby team was traveling on the airplane, reflecting the radical physical transgression the survivors where going through. All morality is gone, and reflecting on a Darwinism regression enters a superfluous state. However, surviving is not wrong. 

Cannibalism is not considered a mental disorder by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Why does society condemn this conduct so fiercely?

NA Way

There was once a worthy urban knight,
he was feeling alright, with some spliff in his thighs,
ready to win some dough, trying to keep it low
he didnt know, hittin' the club would be a very big no,
mainly due desintiny, a big form of felony,
this is of yet of no matter, no matter,
he proceeded to take his Escallade and his jacket,
being in no time all set and ready,
he drove the night, unconscious and racy 

The pack was waiting,
for some party, wild and crazy,
he gave the bouncer a sudden innuendo,
but the reality was he was playing nintendo,
meaning he entered easily,
"tonight it will be nice and easy"
he was dancing, bottle poppin'
it was all pretty, no secret pockets
everybody was buying what he wanted,
big money just for himself, the real omen

"I found me some quality stuff"
"I bet you did, it looks like some rush"
Take a sample, no need to pay me this time,
just maybe, you could hit me up with some beer and lime,
greed, oh greed,
it takes all it needs,
some pills, in his lime flavored beer,
where placed by this Bill
which this worthy urban knight trusted
I mean, he gave him stuff with and did not taunter

Anyway, the night flew,
and the knight would never knew,
Bill, his beloved brother
finally took his pride one way or the other.

Leonore

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore. 

A horrifying Terpsichore consumes the entire poem narration, revolving in some way or another always around the symbol of Leonore. It is important to realize that the alleged motivator of the poem was her in the first place, meaning that her presence encapsulates the "sorrow", the overall "bleak" feeling of the text.

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" -
Merely this, and nothing more. 

Continuously throughout some form of repetition Poe reiterates the presence of Leonore, and in peculiar kind of rising action, he portrays a feeling of remorse and desperation.  

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore:
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

The authors state is deplorable, and the need for nepenthe symbolizes the crucial emotional weight held by the author due the loss of Leonore. Her memories, his despair.

Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

333 My theme is alwey oon, and evere was --
My theme is always the same, and ever was --

334 Radix malorum est Cupiditas.
'Greed is the root of all evil.'

 
















The guy's an ace, he really is.
Perhaps the “corny ale”, the cold. Hes eyes were break dancing, I swear.
Hes here for gluttony, or somethin. I think he is kind of a queer too, clever as hell, I was about to let him go.
 
Sex: Male
Age: 44
Race: Caucasian
Height: 4ft 9
Build: Lean
Complexion: Skinny
Accent/ language used: British
Hair Colour Hair Length: Blonde Short
Odour – smells or Colognes: Cheap
Glasses: None
Facial Hair: Never, really
Tattoos/scars: None
Prominent or unusual features: Allegedly Castrated/High voice tone
Jewellery/Watch Bag Disguise Clothing: "Fashionable"
Actions/Interactions with other offenders eg nicknames used: The Pardoner

This pardoner had hair as yellow as wax,
But lank it hung as does a strike of flax;
In wisps hung down such locks as he’d on head,
And with them he his shoulders overspread;
But thin they dropped, and stringy, one by one.(10)
But as to hood, for sport of it, he’d none,
Though it was packed in wallet all the while.
It seemed to him he went in latest style,
Dishevelled, save for cap, his head all bare.
His wallet lay before him in his lap,(15)
Stuffed full of pardons brought from Rome all hot.
A voice he had that bleated like a goat.
No beard had he, nor ever should he have,
For smooth his face as he’d just had a shave;
I think he was a gelding or a mare.(20)

Julius Caesar, Morbid Circumspectus

The destruction of male chauvinism occurred in the the year 47 B.C.E.



The procession in the Nile epitomized the pitiful state in which Julius Caesar was in, as he walked besides Cleopatra in a beautiful act of submission. Perhaps he had some logic, fluid of thought. But the truth is, logos can never reach the fluidity of ubiquity. Cleopatra embodied ubiquity, she successfully managed to control it at her will. Unfortunately for Julius Caesar, and for us as the male gender, women were and will always be able to give us the exclusionary perception of being fulfilled, complete. Caught in the illusion of carnal divinity. Throughout the ages, in a grotesque, dull decadence, since Julius Caesar gave away Alexandria to Cleopatra, we, condemned men cope with our crippled self to counteract this reality.



721 Tho redde he me how Sampson loste his heres:
Then he read me how Sampson lost his hair:
722 Slepynge, his lemman kitte it with hir sheres;
Sleeping, his lover cut it with her shears;
723 Thurgh which treson loste he bothe his yen.
Through which treason he lost both his eyes.
724 Tho redde he me, if that I shal nat lyen,
Then he read to me, if I shall not lie,
725 Of Hercules and of his Dianyre,
Of Hercules and of his Dianyre,
726 That caused hym to sette hymself afyre.
Who caused him to set himself on fire.


The Wife Of Bath utilizes with great mastery the arts of beguilement and deceit, and despite her pejorative figure throughout the tale, when talking about Jankyn, a more tender, humane character arises. Assuming a mediator role between the reader and the overall theme of the tale. As the passage shown above, she recalls some fortuitous examples of "morbid circumspectus" from women to men, being it the elemental theme portrayed by Chaucer in the tale.



1242 I prey to God that I moote sterven wood,
I pray to God that I may die insane
1243 But I to yow be also good and trewe
Unless I to you be as good and true
1244 As evere was wyf, syn that the world was newe.
As ever was wife, since the world was new.
1245 And but I be to-morn as fair to seene
And unless I am tomorrow morning as fair to be seen
1246 As any lady, emperice, or queene,
As any lady, empress, or queen,
1247 That is bitwixe the est and eke the west,
That is between the east and also the west,
1248 Dooth with my lyf and deth right as yow lest.
Do with my life and death right as you please.
1249 Cast up the curtyn, looke how that it is."
Cast up the curtain, look how it is."



A fixed closure demeans the initial rampage of the text, however, a suitable union of the juxtaposing themes within marital relations was reached towards the ending by Alisoun. Revealing the real harmony behind Cleopatras obliquity, the parallel state woman convey when wanting to really serve its concubine, even if it justifies all means possible.



231 A wys wyf, if that she kan hir good,
A wise wife, if she knows what is good for her,
232 Shal beren hym on honde the cow is wood,
Shall deceive him by swearing the bird is crazy,