The Road, Reading Blog #6 - The Pursuit of Happiness

There are very few things in this world that could ever be considered perfect, but they do exist. Everyone has something, even if they only imagine it, even if its presence is only a fleeting dream, that they know to be perfect. Not so for the travelers in The Road. No, their very existence is imperfect, and they have no presumptions to the contrary. The very food they eat, the water they drink, the supplies they find -- all is suspect. Even when, by some miracle, those worries are completely assuaged, as they are in an underground shelter they find that contains "everything" (139), there are still other worries to contend with. They worry about the possibility of discovery, about their future, about their death. They worry about their past, about the death they've seen, about the murderers they've escaped and the slowly murdered people they couldn't help -- or at least the son does. Truthfully, there's so much to worry about, so many things that will never be perfect, never be okay, that they have to choose what to worry about. Their anxieties are the very foundation of their identities, as they have no perfect things to marvel at or enjoy, only pain to see and take in.

The man concerns himself only with survival, mainly that of his son. He worries about how to fulfill their needs, and keep their hearts beating and their lungs breathing. Others are plainly of no concern to him, only an irritation to tolerate when the boy takes an interest. And the boy does take interest, in many more people, places, and ideas than his father does. He sees himself, consciously or not, as a person with a place in the world, and his worries reflect this. He wonders about a "little boy" he's seen (110) and the people who built shelter (142) and wants to reach out to them, despite his father's resistance. He is very much concerned with the world around him, with others and with morality, with good and bad. Though he's never known anything to be perfect, he longs for perfection, for goodness, in himself, and in his world. And in such a world as his, I think the longing is as close as he's going to come to perfection.