The Road: The Making Of Decisions

We have to face decisions all the time. Normally taking a decision isn't a life changing event but there are cases where a single decision can affect the whole course of your life. When I am faced with an important decision I tend to think thoroughly of all the outcomes and balance it out to see with which one I will get the most benefit from. We constantly by making decisions we shape the road of our life but in the book The Road it is the environment and the pressure that affects the decisions. Decisions have to be taken measuring all the positive outcomes and negative outcomes but there are cases when the decision has to be taken in less time and the analysis step is skipped. The father made a bad decision and the narrator describes this by saying: "He walked back and sat beside the boy. It was desperation that had led him to such carelessness and he knew that he could not do that again. No matter what." (pg.117) The decision the father had to make in this case had to be done and fast because they couldn't waste any time analyzing the outcomes. The need of food was the engine that pushed the father into making a desperate decision that almost cost his life. If I were the father I probably would have risked my life for finding food because my son was very hungry and he needed that energy to survive. If he wouldn't have gone into the house in his mind there would always be the doubt if whether or not there was food inside. In the situation of the book I think that both decisions would have been negative because if they went in they risked capture but if they didn't go in they risked dying from hunger. If the father had analyzed these outcomes he would probably chose to save their lives and not enter but the instinct and the hunger drove him into a desperate decision.

There are also other factors that affect the person's decision taking ability. When you have somebody you love near you, you might want what is best for them. The father knowing that the best thing for his son was to get food he went inside. The boy just before his father entered the house said: "I'm not hungry, Papa. I'm not,"(pg.108) when he really was starving. In this moment the father knew that the kid was saying a lie to prevent that his father risked his life for food. I think that that lie motivated his father more because he loved his kid so much that he didn't mind risking his life to make him happy. Also I saw this part as a foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen. The repetition of the kid trying to make his dad back off the idea of entering made me predict that something bad had to happen. It was almost as if the kid jinxed the going into the house and his worst fears happened. Sometimes that happens for example when you play tennis and there is a very important point you have to win. If fear starts taking over you and you think that maybe you will hit the ball out, it will most likely happen because you are focusing your mind on the negative and therefore making the mistake.