9/13/19
Henry Cao Period 7
Aim: How does The Road ask its readers to explore the extremes of violence and compassion?
Do Now: Write down the names of the two most important people in your life.
How do you rationalize?
You are in a circumstance where you can only save one of the two people you wrote down. They are both
begging for their lives;sacrificing yourself so they both can life is not an option, neither is sacrificing both.
What do you do?
- Iandra (father and mother) first comments on how hard this is to answer but would pick her father over mother
because she thinks he has more life skills to move on.
- Andrew (mom and brother) would choose his brother, pointing out how his mother would want him to choose
his brother.
- Katherine (mom and grandma) would pick her mom for “obvious reasons.”
- Will (mom and brother) would pick his brother because his mother would want to him to save his brother.
- Ryan (mom and sister) would save his sister because he thinks she would be able to help him more throughout
his life
- Edmund (brother and friend) decides to sacrifice his identical twin brother because if he got himself into that
situation, it’s his fault.
Ms. Fusaro highlights how this essentially means that while we are saving one individual, we are also
killing someone. This is entirely based on perspective. For instance, terrorists can be seen as terrorizing
and inflicting violence for no purpose. However, in another perspective, terrorists have a drive and purpose
to do everything they are doing. The latter view has a sense of compassion while the earlier view shows nothing
but violence.
Exploring The Boy’s Compassion
We are encountered with several circumstances where the boy shows unyielding compassion:
the man struck by lightning, the dog, the other boy.
What are we supposed to understand about the boy’s compassion?
- Alan comments on how the Boy still has the part of him that makes him human so he outweighs their
violence and potential harm against them, choosing the more human approach to help them.
- Shannon says that the Boy’s compassion can be regarded as selflessness. This allows him to give up
is food to help others even though it diminishes their chance in survival.
- Steven also comments that the Boy shows compassion for the man scorched by lightning and
fire represents his humanity and questions whether or not his compassion and humanity correlate.
- Diego mentions how the Man is always praying to god, asking for help. However, the Boy’s
compassion has the blessing of God in him, showing the irony in how the dad doesn’t realize that this
goodness he seeks is next to him.
How do we know they are the good guys?
- Kelly starts the discussion by explaining how everything they do is for the sake of surviving and going
forward. But in the perspective of someone else, they’re pillaging and stealing clothes which makes them
seem like the bad guys.
- Will suggests that both characters are good in their own respective ways. The Boy shows more compassion
and humanity but the father sees that being good means eliminating threats to their survival and not helping
others to increase their own likelihood in surviving..
Morality
Intent vs Environment
- Shannon explains that the Man does things with good intentions, which reminds her of The Walking Dead
where a character sees others killing zombies and is seen as bad guys even though the killing of zombies was
in good intention.
- Terrance highlights how the author didn’t name the characters because he wanted the reader to decide for
themselves if the Boy and the Man are still the good guys. Throughout the passage of the novel, the question
of whether or not the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys are the bad guys is always brought up. It is
not a definite answer whether or not they are good people, hence, their names are not given to allow for
interpretation.
Ms. Fusaro never does anything with bad intentions but she still makes bad decisions. She wakes up at 4 to
get to the gym at 4:45 so they don’t charge her extra. In a hypothetical situation, she doesn’t pay attention to
lights and ignores street lights to ensure she makes it to the gym on time. She knows it’s not a good choice but
she’s not harming anyone and how she doesn’t deserve life in jail for it. But what if she hits someone and they
get hurt?
- Alan argues that she’s still in the wrong because she is jeopardizing someone’s life for her own money.
- Andrew agrees with Alan since ignoring the lights means that she’s becoming responsible for any accidents
that may occur.
- Billy mentions that intent matters more as her intent was not to hurt anyone. However, at the end, she still
has to take responsibility for what she’s done.
- Jeffrey thinks that she’s not a bad or good person. She made the decision to run the red light with the chance
of running over someone and should be help accountable for it.
Ms. Fusaro - she hits a car and the person is fine but does she deserve the medical attention?
- Alicia suggests that she does deserve it because there was never an intent to hit the car but running the
lights is still a bad choice but it doesn’t make you a bad person who doesn’t deserve medical attention.
- Yaying agrees with Alicia, stating that she deserves it because it’s a question over a life and death and
everyone deserves a chance at life even if you’ve made a bad decision.
- Georgiy offers the idea that she deserves the medical attention so she has a chance at court and can get
judged for her actions appropriately.
- Shannon compares the situation to a surgeon needing to operate on a murderer to save his life.
She points out how it’s not up to the doctor or murderer.
- Andrew adds onto what Georgiy said, mentioning that everyone deserves medical attention because
regardless of the intent, they should be able to live to get judged for their actions.
Ms. Fusaro brings up the situation where you give medical attention to a murderer and they go on to murder
more people.
Violence... it gets pretty ugly out there
“Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women,
perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed
against the cold and dotted in dog collars and yoked each to each” (92)
A view of an apocalyptic future, but how is it compared to now?
We are first asked to search up the definitions of “catamites” and “yoked.”
- Will states that the Boy tries to help whoever he sees and the man is usually against this.
- Cornelia agrees with Will and adds that the Man doesn’t understand or value morality in a sense due to
the setting of survival. Helping others may be a risk to their survival, a risk they can’t afford.
- Steven argues that we as humans don’t have the obligation to help others and we help ourselves for
preservation. Not all humans are required to act passionate and you shouldn’t be killing someone at a whim
but you shouldn’t be helping someone just because it’s morally correct.
- Katherine agrees with Steven to an extent and adds that you can’t judge what the characters do with our sense
of morality. They are going through a completely different situation of chaos so our law-based view is too
different.
- Billy agrees with Katherine that in the world of The Road, their sense of morality is entirely based on their
need to survive without knowing what to expect. We live lives of luxury in comparison so it’s an unfair judgment.
- Alan says that the morality of the boy is the New Testament. The Man is the Old Testament, being more rash.
- Steven, in response to Katherine, argues that people should make their own judgements with how they perceive
the world. The boy chose to help others and he is in the right to do so.
- Shannon brings up the question that is you not doing anything wrong? If you’re walking on the streets and you
see someone in the road that is clearly hurt and you walk away, are you right? You had the option to help them but you didn’t.
If they die later on, it means you let them die by not helping them.
- Andrew disagrees with Steven, thinks it is a way of just backing out of helping people, doing only what’s best
for yourself. By not helping, you don’t have to put in the effort required if you were to help them.
- Katherine reminds us how morality is very opinion oriented and may be different so people view right and
wrong differently and how a lot of depends on the environment.
Student Reflection:
Today’s discussion highlights the philosophical dilemma of morality and what is deemed right or wrong.
This is important to talk about since, as humans, we are always striving to be better, make better decisions, and judge others fairly.
Starting off, we had a discussion revolving around a personal moral dilemma: sacrifice one important person in your life to save another.
After that, we start talking about the compassion in the more abstract setting of The Road. In this, we discuss at
length of the Boy’s compassion which brings up the Boy’s humanity in comparison to other characters.
We go back to reality when Ms. Fusaro brings up the prompt of her making a bad decision and how that
balances on a moral scale. In this conversation, we analyze what makes someone a good person and someone
a bad person. We also see how morality is an ambiguous term that depends on the intention and environment.
Towards the end of the class, we discussed the violence present in The Road and how this future compares to
our own. It is brought up how we cannot make such comparisons between our judgment on morality to their
judgement as they live in such a different world. In their world, they must act and decide what's best for their
survival. In contrast to our law-based society, we can’t make such a comparison due to the extreme differences
present. Overall, the question of morality and whether or not an action is just is to be determined by the situation
at hand. Not all circumstances demand the same level of judgement. This is forces us students to realize and
understand the choices we make, even questioning why and whether or not it’s acceptable. We spent the last
few minutes of class working on the book cover project in our groups.
