I. I feel that one of the biggest secrets in McCarthy’s “The Road” is what happens to the little boy after he joins the man and his family, after the boy's father passes. McCarthy leaves the reader with “In the deep glens where they lived, all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” (Page 287).
II. In McCarthy’s “The Road,” the author ends the novel abruptly, leaving out certain significant details, such as in part I. Alice Munro, author of “Open Secrets” seems to do the same. One secret that remains in my mind is whether Jim Frarey was really trying to impersonate Jack Agnew when he ran into Louisa. "How is Grace? How is your daughter? Lillian?" (Page 46) Louisa asked Jim, who she thought to be Jack. He answered all of the questions almost implying that he was impersonating Jack. Though I wonder if, coincidentally, Jim Frarey had a similar life to Jack. The author never informs the reader what happened with Jim and Lousia never really knows as well.
III. I feel as though the secret discussed in part I is very significant to understanding the narrative because the author (the narrator) wanted to keep the reader wondering what would come next, throughout the entire text. It is only appropriate to end the novel in such a state. The reader is meant to question whether the boy survived or not, and to develop his or her own conclusions.
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I totally agree with Kate's explination of the secret kept from the reader in McCarthy's The Road. I think that the way McCarthy ended the novel was really good because it lets the reader make their own conclusions on what happens with the boy and this new family, as Kate said. All throughout the book, us as readers are in the same state as the characters in the book because we know about as much as they do. We have to keep guessing at what we think will happen next and are soon told what does actually happen, but at the end we are not told what happens and are forced to come up with our own conclusions. We can choose to either hope for the best and believe that this family was good and are going to take care of the little boy or we can think that maybe they aren't so good and that they may use the little boy as food.
I agree with Kate that the end of The Road and of the short story Carried Away in Open Secrets both leave the reader wondering what happened. The feel of leaving the reader wondering makes the story interesting. It brings up discussion of what could of happened which shows how the readers were interested in the story itself. The reader can only hope that the boy is with good people and that the father's body will not end up eaten. Also in carried away we can hope that Jim was only playing a harmless joke and not secretly in love with Louisa. If he was in love with her he may have thought that by acting like her old lover he would get her.
I agree with Kate that one of the biggest secrets in McCarthy's "The Road" is wondering what happened to the little boy after joining a new family. It left the reader wondering what would eventually happen to the little boy and if he would be safe with the "good guys." Throughout the book, us as readers are put into the story as the characters not knowing the events to come. We are given some clues and try to guess what will happen, but still are unsure of how everything will turn out. Between the pages of 282 and 286 is a conversation between the man and the boy. We can only hope that the man is being honest with the boy by telling him he is a "good guy" and is not going to harm the boy in any way.
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