This is What We
Did in Our Class
Ely & Elija
Sarah Brady
In her portfolio reflection, Sarah
Brady discusses this screencast on
The Road.
Transcript
[00:00]
[Typing on Screen: And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul
of the child came to him again, and he revived.]
[00:20]
Ely is the first person with whom the Man and the boy have sustained
contact. They come across him on the road and describe him as an
"old man, small and thin, and filthy by even their standards."
He gives the fake name Ely as his own and the biblical nature of his
conversations with the man prompts the reader to ask if Ely might be
mirrored after a classical religious figure.
[00:42]
Since he talks so much about God and about prophets, and his name is
similar, I drew similarities between Ely and the prophet Elijah in The
Bible.
Elijah is traditionally thought of as the harbinger of the
Messiah. Often described as the prophet of doom, he foretells
destruction on earth unless the hearts of fathers are turned to their
children and the hearts of children to their fathers, as written in
Malachi in The Bible.
[01:10]
It seems like the two have a lot in common. After all, Cormac
McCarthy's The Road is all
about the relationship the father has with
his son. And the biblical quote is all about how Elijah wants to
bring these fathers and sons together before the apocalypse, or even to
prevent the apocalypse from occurring.
This begs the question: what does it mean when the father and the son
run into Elijah on the road, after the apocalypse, starved and
filthy? What does it mean when the prophet figure in the novel
has turned against God?
[01:38]
When the man brings up the idea of God to Ely, Ely tells us things
like, "there is no God," "where men can't live gods fare no
better," and "you'll see--it's better to be alone."
This definitely doesn't fit with the traditional idea of a prophet.
After all, Ely is completely denouncing God. If I had to take a
stab as to what McCarthy is trying to alude, I would focus on the
quote,
"where men can't live gods fare no better." It seems to me as if
McCarthy is challenging the traditional idea of God; rather than God
creating men, he hints that maybe men create God, in more of a concept
than a figure.
[02:25]
If we go back to a major theme in the novel, morality, and think of God
as a moral code, rather than the figure, this makes sense, with a
God-like quality, the moral code that humans carry, which could be
thought of as the theme of the fire that is continually extended
throughout the novel. This fire has been destroyed for the most
part in most humans and this is one possible reason that Ely claims
that there is no God.
[02:54]
Of course it's impossible to determine whether McCarthy really meant
for Ely and Elijah to be direct parallels, but the similarities allow
for an interesting close reading.
I hope you enjoyed.