- the baby on the spit (pp. 210-215)
this episode impacts on the reader by showing how far people are willing to go to go without starving in a dead world, the "charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit" show that the young have no place in the post apocolyptic world and that they are easy food for the elder people walking along. The writer makes this stand out by not changing the rhythme or tone, just letting the event take place making it seem the norm, from the fathers reaction of just picking up the boy and whispering "I'm sorry." he could have been witness to this kind of thing before as other than his action with his son he shows no emotion towards it unlike how he had been repulsed by the semi-eaten people in the cellar. at the end of the episode we are told that they have eaten the last of their supplies and wilol begin to weaken within two days, this could be that they have finally run out of food and they are going to die or it could continue the trend of the rest of the novel in which just as the end seems inevitable they stumble onto anther supplie of food. A moment of increased tension is when the boy finds that the "black thing...skewerd over the coals" is infact a recently born baby that had been beheded and gutted, then over cooked and burnt. The tension is increased as the rhythm of the story lowers and then speeds up as this revalation appears. This episode is very much like when a number of semi-eaten people are found in a cellar as the rhythm fluctuations are similar. The language used echoes that of the previous eisodes as it is simple and yet affective at numbing emotion from this horrific scene. Death is foregrounded by the charred infant and the lack of food which is with the man and boy. This episode is key as it shows the desperation that the man and boy could get to, they could become cannibals in order to stay alive.
this episode impacts on the reader by showing how far people are willing to go to go without starving in a dead world, the "charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit" show that the young have no place in the post apocolyptic world and that they are easy food for the elder people walking along. The writer makes this stand out by not changing the rhythme or tone, just letting the event take place making it seem the norm, from the fathers reaction of just picking up the boy and whispering "I'm sorry." he could have been witness to this kind of thing before as other than his action with his son he shows no emotion towards it unlike how he had been repulsed by the semi-eaten people in the cellar. at the end of the episode we are told that they have eaten the last of their supplies and wilol begin to weaken within two days, this could be that they have finally run out of food and they are going to die or it could continue the trend of the rest of the novel in which just as the end seems inevitable they stumble onto anther supplie of food. A moment of increased tension is when the boy finds that the "black thing...skewerd over the coals" is infact a recently born baby that had been beheded and gutted, then over cooked and burnt. The tension is increased as the rhythm of the story lowers and then speeds up as this revalation appears. This episode is very much like when a number of semi-eaten people are found in a cellar as the rhythm fluctuations are similar. The language used echoes that of the previous eisodes as it is simple and yet affective at numbing emotion from this horrific scene. Death is foregrounded by the charred infant and the lack of food which is with the man and boy. This episode is key as it shows the desperation that the man and boy could get to, they could become cannibals in order to stay alive.
A better response than the cellar. The despondency with which this section is written as well as than Man's exclamation of 'I'm sorry' helps to show how much has been hidden from both us and the boy in this novel.
ReplyDeleteIt also raises many questions about why the men kept the woman alive, whether she was complicit in any planning etc
or whether she was used by the two men as they walked the road, kept as an oblect to satisfy themselves in a dieing world, but the woman could also be showing that the world is still alive, that new life can be created but it is man which is killing this new life?
ReplyDelete