BA#1 McCarthy's The Road

I think that the biggest secret that is being kept from someone would be the secret that the father is keeping from his son, because the son asks his father at one point what the world was like before and the father doesnt want to tell him. I think that the father doesnt want to tell him because the world before the disaster was so much easier and hopeful that he doesnt want his son to be able to compare the world before to the world he knows now. There are several instances in the book where the boy asks questions that would normally in a conversation lead to a story from the past being told or comments about the past but in these situations the father always cuts his son off and ends the conversation. He wants to protect his son from knowledge basically because in the situation that they are in all they have to hold on to is hope and knowing what life could have been like and knowing what they have and how vastly those two lives are would ruin any hope that they do have. On Pg. 27 where the father and son are visiting the father childhood house the son says "We should go, Papa. Can we go?" instead of inquiring about his fathers childhood he is frightened which is odd behavior for a child. His father follows by saying "It's all right. We shouldn't have come."- This is strange because in normal conversation we would expect a father to tell his child a story of his childhood or recall a memory he had to comfort him, but he doesn't.
This secret that his father keeps from him is similar to the secret that the author chooses to keep from us as readers. This book is strange in that many things are left unknow, but that itself keep us reading because we have a hope that at some point our questions will be answered. The same goes for the child and his father, within their journey south and their unanswered questions and thoughts lies a hope. The fact that there are so many questions for both the readers and the characters keeps both us reading and them surviving.
I believe that this secret is imperative to the story because as I said the secrets and unanswered questions are what inspire the father and child to keep going in hopes that maybe there is something better out there to be found. Maybe not all is lost for them. Even though I truely believe that deep in the fathers heart he knows that there is really no hope that they will survive but that is really all he has to give to his son. He has nothing material to give him and he really can't even give him protection from against natural elements. He can just inspire him to keep going and protect him from the knowledge of how great his life could have been if this disaster had never happened. I almost think that it would be better to never know what it could have been like than to know what you had and lost and then to see what you have and be dissapointed.