- shooting the 'roadrat' (pp. 62-69)
The episode shows how easily life is extinguished by anyone with the ability and the animalistic desperation felt by all people when faced with life and death. The writter achieved this responce by mainly influencing the characters speech into short threatening whispers, as though the character of the father knew hat he had to kill the "roadrat" and that in turn the "roadrat" would have to do something in turn to survive. This episode implies that in the future plot one of the two main characters may die, when the other is helpless to do anything for them, this is because if the father had not got the gun then he would hav ebeen helpless to go along with the "roadrat", if the boy was ever in the position of the father needing him, but the child being unable to help then the father would die. The scene seems to get darker with the enitial hiding away from the people and truck to killing one of the "roadrat"'s was a leap that the father would not have taken as after this event, only one of the two has the easy way out of shooting themselves. This event shows the degree's to which the father would have let people live as he tries to do everything in his power to get the "roadrat" to follow them, before letting him loose so he could get a good head start away from those likely to kill them, this scene also shows that the father was prepared to give his wa out of life to the "roadrat" in order to ensure his sons and his own survival. Repition is used to reasure the boy by his father saying "It's okay." and the tone used throughout the novel is also present in this as it shows the short sentence structure and few commas. This is a key episode as it gives mortality to the characters and shows how prepared the father is to ensure that they survive.
The episode shows how easily life is extinguished by anyone with the ability and the animalistic desperation felt by all people when faced with life and death. The writter achieved this responce by mainly influencing the characters speech into short threatening whispers, as though the character of the father knew hat he had to kill the "roadrat" and that in turn the "roadrat" would have to do something in turn to survive. This episode implies that in the future plot one of the two main characters may die, when the other is helpless to do anything for them, this is because if the father had not got the gun then he would hav ebeen helpless to go along with the "roadrat", if the boy was ever in the position of the father needing him, but the child being unable to help then the father would die. The scene seems to get darker with the enitial hiding away from the people and truck to killing one of the "roadrat"'s was a leap that the father would not have taken as after this event, only one of the two has the easy way out of shooting themselves. This event shows the degree's to which the father would have let people live as he tries to do everything in his power to get the "roadrat" to follow them, before letting him loose so he could get a good head start away from those likely to kill them, this scene also shows that the father was prepared to give his wa out of life to the "roadrat" in order to ensure his sons and his own survival. Repition is used to reasure the boy by his father saying "It's okay." and the tone used throughout the novel is also present in this as it shows the short sentence structure and few commas. This is a key episode as it gives mortality to the characters and shows how prepared the father is to ensure that they survive.
Is the fathers desire to take the Road Rat with them not down to the fact that a gun shot would alert the other men and place them in greater danger? Additionally killing the Road Rat 'wastes' a bullet and further increases the pressure on the Man to keep the boy safe.
ReplyDelete