Remember/Forget

At the end of last class we were asked to perform a close reading on a section of text that we chose. There is a short section at the beginning of the novel where the boy and the man discuss things that are remembered and things that are forgotten. The boy begins with "you forget some things, don't you?" which tells the reader that he has been thinking about the past, perhaps the families past experiences or journeys. (12) Maybe he has forgotten some things about the world that he used to know, and is trying to remember them. The man's response is "yes. You forget what you want to remember and remember what you want to forget." (12) This appears to be a little more than one would expect a father would tell to his young son, so you can conclude that he's got something bigger and deeper on his mind. Of course, any reader would know from experience that his statement is very true. He could have been trying to remember the good times before the catastrophe yet the only things coming to his mind were the horrors that they had seen in their travels.
These observations relate to the allegory because McCarthy could be making the point that if we allow our planet to fall into such a state as in the novel, we will forget all of the joyful things about the living world that we want to remember and our minds will be consumed by the death and dread of the dying world.