An Insignificant Cart 

When someone generally thinks of a cart, they tend to just think about the physical description of a cart: four wheels, metal, maybe some plastic, quite possibly an area to set a child into. In a post-apocalyptic world such as the world in The Road by Cormac McCarthy, it can become so much more than that. It was a home and an unflinching friend on top of being what it was initially: A mobile storage container. This essay is an in-depth exploration as to what the cart itself represented, the personification of the cart, and even the emotional responses gathered from the characters themselves, all while tying back into the idea that the cart could arguably be one of the most influential ‘characters’ of the book.

The cart was initially introduced as a seemingly inconspicuous grocery cart with no real description given besides that. When it was first introduced it seemed so minute, so insignificant because even this page in the story had already built up the story up with such epic grandiose. It could be argued though, that without this cart, the father and boy might not have survived very long. In a way, it was the glue that bound them to survival. Without the cart they would not have had a method of carrying the larger amounts of supplies that they had throughout the story. Quite a few times the cart seemed to come to their rescue with promises of supplies and potentially shelter. If things would have been dire enough, the man could have probably even tipped the cart over and covered it with a tarp and they would have had a makeshift shelter for at least the boy to get by in. The cart itself seemed to almost represent their very floor of survival.

The author alluded to the importance of the cart, even though it could not talk, when he wrote: “Clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror that he used to watch the road behind them” (McCarthy, 6). The story didn't explicitly state that the cart had any other specific modifications done to it to make it more appealing to anyone else save for the supplies themselves that were burdened upon it. The second cart got stolen once but it didn't seem to complain, it was just content doing what it did best, move objects from one spot to another. Luckily each time they found a cart it was a four-wheeled cart and not a three-wheeled one (like a wheelbarrow), because the sense of stability offered by a four-wheeled cart is much better and wouldn't fall over if stopped when they had to pull the gun on the cart thief later in the story. Each time they stopped, the cart would wait there like a very well trained dog, sitting with it’s tail wagging constantly just wanting nothing more than attention.

The boy seemed to feel a sense of abandonment (more so than the father) when he and his father had to leave the cart behind and “took a last look through the basket but that was it. Let’s go, he said. The boy took one last look back at the cart and then followed him out to the road” (McCarthy, 100). In a way the cart could - at this point - be compared to a used up prostitute being left in an alley way with nothing but her panties around her ankles. It was a sad state of affairs when the cart had to be abandoned. It could be argued that in a way the father and son found this cart on the road in the same way that a person might find a drifter on the side of a long dusty desert road. They both picked it up, rode along with them, then proceeded to turn on the cart and dump it when it had used up all it’s usefulness. To add even further insult to the original cart, they find one later in the story. “There was a market at the end of the street and in one of the aisles piled with empty boxes there were three metal grocery carts. He looked them over and pulled one of them free and squatted and turned the wheels and then stood and pushed it up the aisle and back again.”(McCarthy, 150) This could be argued as the treatment of man vs. man. The personified cart is a reflection of the selfishness of mankind’s nature. They will literally use something until it is completely used up and then toss it aside without so much as a reflective thought before moving on.

Throughout this essay there was an exploration into the ‘character’ of the cart, treatment of that character throughout, and the responses that the other characters show to this cart. All-in-all Cormac’s story in The Road is a very bleak outlook on a hypothetical near future, but somehow through man’s perseverance alone, it is actually more of a story of survival and struggle. The cart in the story is not explicitly given a minor character role, but throughout the entire journey it is always there, unflinching in the face of danger. For god’s sake  if someone were to be trapped in this hypothetical future completely alone without so much as a backpack or even a pair of pants with a bunch of pockets, at the very least hope for a cart without a squeaky wheel.

20/40 Planed Shapes

Title:  20/40 Planed Shapes

Medium: Shaped Paper

Notes:  The overall craftsmanship began moderately well, but I have since discovered that working larger tends to make things a bit clearer. I began with a much simpler design, and then realized that there weren't enough shapes to make up the overall design. I then began to place more objects in a circular pattern to mimic the exterior shape of the icosahedrons and then expanding that form at the bottom of the piece. I then took that a step further by opening the bottom of the shape to include smaller cube shapes in the interior. Since a triangular shape is the most stable shape, I decided that this would help to create a good sense of balance throughout. The shape breakup had to happen with the cubes being echoed on the outside as well.
I wish I had made the external shape at the top more load bearing because it would have helped to create a more solid viewpoint from the bottom. Also I would have liked much better craftsmanship overall, but as I stated initially, working smaller tends to be a detriment. So for next time, bigger IS better.

Dynamic Wire Sculpture

Title:  Dynamic Wire Sculpture

Medium: Shaped Wood, Wire

Notes:  For the majority of the gesture drawings, I had a tendency to draw prone animals (let’s face it, most of the animals in the zoo have become slightly apathetic). So I decided it would be ideal to find the largest animal I could find and draw it in the prone position as many times as I could before it stood up. Which led to my gesture wire frame as the bear.
My wire sculpting techniques seem to err on the slightly more gesture side instead of directly figurative. I tried to think about each of the sculpts as though I was going to 3D model the wire frame, but the output did not look as interesting as I would have liked. I tried to my best to loosen up the wire.
I could literally draw poses for days. I went to a website (www.characterdesigns.com) and attempted to gesture draw a ton of action poses. The pose that I chose was like a pre-leap pose because it gives an implied motion rather than an “in-motion” which I think might have been a bit more interesting perhaps.
For each base I tried to give a bit more dynamics to the piece by sort of tying the base to the piece. For example, with the bear piece I tried to give a sort of shale or rock texture. And for the leaping piece, I harkened back to the childish game of “don’t step on the crack or you’ll break your mother’s back” that I used to play as a kid.