It is practically impossible to discuss any American Novel without looking at the issue of identity, for me at least. So when the traveller “pulled down the cotton mask from his face” I could barely contain my pencil from scribbling all over the page endless notes about masks and anonymity. Of course I had to restrain myself as the mask is a very logical addition to clothing if the air is poisoned.
The boy also has a mask although he pulls it off in his sleep. The father willingly removes his own. Both of these acts, followed by nothing horrific, suggests that the air is not as polluted as one might think. The masks may be a by-product of paranoia about the world. It may also be away to hide their faces from the people they pass by on the road so that they are not recognised and forced to socialise with or help people from the past.
The names of the father and the son are omitted from the novel. This has no immediate effect except to make it difficult to discuss the novel without sounding vague. The indentities of the characters are not obscured through lack of naming however, their character comes through very strongly through their actions and dialogue. They could easily be generalised to any human person through lack of name; this is likely the effect that McCarthy was going for.
The father considers his son to be an alien: “a being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect” (p. 163) which raises the question that without a cultural history would humans still be the same creature? The son still retains much of his morality and compassion that is indigenous to humans (perhaps more so than his father manages to retain) yet there is nothing to apply this to as most others of their kind have perished or become corrupted.
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