C. The Struggles of the Father
According to McKechnie 1410 struggle is “a task or goal requiring many efforts to accomplish or achieve”. People struggle because they have wants or motivations that
direct them to do it. It refers to what Huffman et al 410 says that our goals in life provide the source of our motivation. In The Road, the father has a strong motivation to get a better
life for his son, his huge love. This love directs him to conduct his struggles in accordance with his capacity.
Moreover, when people conduct their struggles they easily get stressed. According to Weiner 64 the appropriate strategy to cope their problem after being attacked by stress
is applying adjustment. At this point, the father in The Road also tries to get used to the situation around him. It is obvious that after his wife dies and the world around him is too
terrible to face, he has to get used to it and take good strategies in order to survive. According to Huffman et al 453, there are three forms or strategies of coping
problems. There are emotional-cognitive strategies, defense mechanisms, and problem- focused strategies. These three strategies are applied in different situation the individual at
the moment. In this case, the father in The Road in his struggles also applies some strategies suited with his condition at the moment.
After all of the explanation above, here is the discussion of the struggles of the father to survive and to get a better life for his son including his strategies to overcome the
obstacles hindered.
1. Forgetting his Past
It is described in The Road that the father has a wife and the fact that she commits suicide because of her overwhelming fear of the existence of cannibals is too painful for
him. It is very clear that the man loves his wife so much. During his journey to south with
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his son, he cannot forget the memories of her that usually appear in his dreams. These dreams torture his life.
In dreams his pale dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress
of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell. Her smile, her downturned eyes. In the morning it was snowing. Beads of small gray ice
strung along the light-wires overhead. He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor
and of death 17. He always brings her picture with him. Every time he misses her wife he can look it. As
time goes by, he realizes that he has to learn to forget her. In a wrenching, understated scene, he takes out her picture from his pocket. Then, after looking at it a last time, he
places it face upside on the road and walks on. He’d carried his billfold about till it wore a cornershaped hole in his trousers. Then
one day he sat by the road side and took it out and went through the contents. Some money, credit cards. His driver’s license. A picture of his wife. He spread
everything out on the blacktop. Like gaming cards. He pitched the sweatblackened piece of leather into the woods and sat holding the photograph. Then he laid it
down in the road also and then he stood and then went on 52-53. However, he still cannot get rid of his memories of her from his mind. His guilty
feeling of failure to save her life keeps haunting him. He thought about the picture in the road and he thought that he should have tried to
keep her in their lives in some way but he didnt know how. He woke coughing and walked out so as not to wake the child. Following a stone wall in the dark, wrapped
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in his blanket kneeling in the ashes like a penitent. He coughed till he could taste the blood and he said her name aloud 56.
At this point, the man has not yet fully forgotten his wife. He just represses the memories of her. According to Freud quoted by Pettijohn 293 repression is an unconscious activity
done by conveniently by a person in order to repress or forget painful memories and unacceptable motives. Repression also works only for a short run.
However, it cannot be denied that forgetting individual’s painful memories needs a long process. It takes a lot of time and energy. After all that happens during his efforts to
survive, the father realizes that he needs to focus on facing the reality. He begins to let his memories of his wife go. He accepts that he has ever had good times with his wife and
every time he remembers those memories he will be sad because those memories will be contaminated with his own thoughts of leaving his wife die alone. He considers that the
dreams he has just only about his longing for his wife and he does not need to think those dreams deeply.
Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the
lawn toward house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As
in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not 139.
In short, the father has applied the emotion-focused form of coping to solve his problem. He can change his view of a stressful situation by accepting the situation and controlling
the symptoms of stress.
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2. Finding Food and Shelter
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