The Road (Reflective)

            In The Road, the man's recurring memories and dreams painfully emphasize, the hopeless destruction and violence that characterizes his situation in present reality. These small flashes of memory from the father help to form a vague picture of what was before and what the circumstances were. He wants to remember the past, but when he does, he has trouble focusing on survival. The man dreams of the past, and when he wakes to look around him, the contrast is sometimes unbearable.The lucid pieces of his past life remind him that such a life did once exist, regardless of his present circumstances. 
            Nevertheless, by remembering the past, the man feels he's changing his memories of it, so he tries not to remember too much so that he may maintain them. However, there is a point in the novel where the man actually welcomes his past memories. On page 48 there is a quote that states, "He woke toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road. Everything was alight. As if the lost sun were returning at last. The snow orange and quivering. A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember." Typically of what the man sees as grey and black is now moved by the sudden awakening of colors. Instead of suppressing memory in this case, he states his desire to make a list of what has been lost. This is quite different from the man's typical avoidance of good memories elsewhere in The Road. An example of the man avoiding his past that I find most memorable is on page 85; this is where the man spreads the contents of his wallet neatly on the road. He puts down his money, his driver's license, credit cards, and a picture of his wife. It seems in this instance that this is a way for the man to try and disengage himself from the past by disposing of what he had left of his past identity. It's a sad moment, but necessary if the man is going to continue on with his son without being weighed down by the past.
            Although the man's dreams of the past in some way confirm the existence of his previous life, the existences of "things no longer known in the world". (111) He still believes that each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. "What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not" (111). This passage reveals  the importance of memory for a person.  The human mind remembers, meaning it will attempt to validate circumstances that may no longer be in existence. Failing to remember these circumstances will attribute them to being forever lost. Lastly, the setting of the The Road is so horrific that the man finds himself needing his memories in order to survive. The book presents the past as an unavoidable puzzle. Even though memory connects the man to his past of beauty and goodness, it only reminds him that those things no longer exist.