The Winder Wasn't Turning

In The Road by McCarthy, there is a passage that stuck out to me, it was the scene when the little boy had a particular nightmare, the nightmare with the little wind-up penguin that came around the corner in a house, but it hadn't been turned. This scene displayed an enormous amount of dismay through the text. The boy had woken up scared from in because "the winder wasn't turning" yet it kept on coming towards him. This could possibly mean that even though the man and the boy hadn't asked for all this world to come about and the boy didn't asked to be born in such a world, that it happened anyway. A sense of hopelessness and inevitability came across in this passage that brought a wave of emotion pouring out. Also, as the father tries to comfort his son, he says "sometimes dreams can be scary". Which is referring to his own misfortune with experiencing nightmares just like his son, but his are a little more frightening as we found out right off the bat with the first page of the book. The father dreams of monsters in a cave, while the son dreams of wind-up toys that work without being wound up. This contrast, I think shows the audience that even though they both have nightmares they are portrayed in a different light with each. While the Father's dreams are masked with horror and disparity, the boy's are a little more innocent, even though still scary, with "possessed toys". But also, the father has good dreams which I think he is even more afraid of, because he knows that he can't stay there and that it's not real. The boy doesn't have these sort of dreams because he was born in darkness and if he does it's probably only because his dad tells him stories of the "old days".

The Windup Girl

Imagine being in a world where the energy has collapsed, environmental disasters occur regularly, genetic-engineering ruins the world's crops and trigger waves of plagues, and where American genetic engineering cartels control the worlds supply of plague-resistant GM crops. Seems like a crappy world right? This is the earth portrayed in The Windup Girl by Paolo Baclgalupi.

The setting of this book takes place in Bangkok, Thailand following characters trying to cope with the world that they have been abandoned in. Anderson Lake is an economic hitman, and Emiko is a Japanese designed windup girl (which is basically a humanoid used as a slave...reminds me a bit of a Japanese manga, Chobits) It seems like an interesting concept where most of their problems have been caused by global warming and biotechnology among other issues. I can't help but wonder whether this was after the end or heading up to the end or there is even an "end". All that I can gather about this world, without spoiling the plot for myself, is that it seems that technology was the starting of the end.