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Playlist The Road: Shmoopversations 11 videos
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The Road Part 7: Oasis 10664 Views
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Description:
The protagonists of The Road find a bunker full of water, food, electricity and a bed. If we found that bunker, we’d never leave. Do you think Pizza Hut delivers to bunkers? We’ll find out, for...sciencey reasons.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:05
[ scream ]
- 00:06
The Road
- 00:07
Oasis
- 00:08
a la Shmoop
Full Transcript
- 00:10
[ dog barks ]
- 00:12
Talk us through structurally what the bunker implies.
- 00:17
The bunker actually is a bright spot in the book.
- 00:20
And what's happening is they're kind of
- 00:23
walking along the road, they see a house,
- 00:25
they're walking through an apple orchard,
- 00:26
and then they find this hole in the ground.
- 00:28
It's kind of like the hatch in Lost where you're like, "What's inside?"
- 00:31
And they go in and it truly is an oasis.
- 00:34
It is. It has food, like canned goods like crazy.
- 00:38
It has water, electricity, a bed
- 00:41
for the boy to sleep in.
- 00:43
Clearly someone had the foresight
- 00:45
to create a safety bunker. And someone was like,
- 00:48
"Oh, if the world ends, this is where I'm gonna live."
- 00:51
Well, first of all, they can't stay,
- 00:52
because they know that someone will come along the road and find them.
- 00:54
They're kind of like a sitting duck.
- 00:56
But what's creepy about it is that these people --
- 00:59
Someone had had the forethought to create this bunker and
- 01:02
fill it with food and water and everything.
- 01:04
Those people are clearly dead.
- 01:06
They might be the people who they found earlier
- 01:08
being held for food.
- 01:10
And what happens is that the boy says,
- 01:13
"Do you think they're dead, Dad?" And the dad says,
- 01:16
"Yeah, I think so." And the boy says,
- 01:18
"Maybe we should thank them
- 01:20
for leaving us this food."
- 01:21
And there's just this moment where the boy basically
- 01:24
prays to these people who have
- 01:26
probably been cannibalized
- 01:28
to thank them for the food that they're being given.
- 01:31
And this is one of those moments where
- 01:32
we get the, "Is there a God? Is there not?"
- 01:35
This boy is praying to
- 01:38
cannibalized humans and thanking them for the food, instead of
- 01:41
God, who would not have done this to them.
- 01:46
[ pen writing ]
- 01:48
What is the bunker?
- 01:49
What does it say about its original owners?
- 01:53
What does the boy do when they find the bunker?
- 02:00
Archie... Archie Bunker, anyone?
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