It even hid the sun with a ton of ashes, so it was dark literally and figuratively. There are also some points in the book which have a slightly lighter tone, such as when the two find the bunker with food, clothes, and everything they needed. They stop worrying so much and enjoy the time they spend together. They felt so calm and peaceful there they admitted, “I wish we could live here”. This could represent that they still somehow managed to find good things despite the dreadful situation they found themselves in. To think that even they could manage to find hope gives the reader more faith and confidence that things will eventually turn out okay. The author uses a variety of different literary and rhetorical devices. One interesting thing …show more content…
They aren’t who they once were. They are new people, and might not know who they are. The author also uses repetition to create an emphasis of their words. The boy often asks his father if they are the good guys because they’re “carrying the fire”. As the man lay dying, his son cried and wanted to go with him, but the man told him, “You have to carry the fire”. The fire could symbolize many things, such as the pureness of the child, his innocence, his determination to stay alive. With symbols, repetition, and a couple of other literary and rhetorical devices, the author can find many ways to add more meaning to the text. The author of this book, Cormac McCarthy was in El Paso, Texas with his son, John Francis McCarthy, to whom he dedicated this book. It was there where he was inspired to write this novel because he was wondering how the city would look like if it had suffered a great …show more content…
This shows that the author could have been the man speaking about his real son. It shows that he would sacrifice himself to make sure his son is safe and unharmed. It proves how much Cormac McCarthy loves his son. It could also represent how much they depended on each other, that they were “each the other’s world”. It could reveal that Cormac McCarthy could never imagine having to live without his son, that he would rather die. It could represent that the author considered his son sent straight from God because “if he is not the word of God God never spoke”. This novel could be considered a declaration of love for his son to tell him that “you have my heart. You always did. You’re the best guy”. The novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy contains many messages to influence the modern reader. It reinforces how powerful a parent’s love can be, how they sacrifice whatever they can to help their children, and how they only wish the best for them. It makes one acknowledge that no one ever knows when they will die, so one must enjoy their life and spend time with the ones they love. The man said “Every day is a lie…but you are
Readers develop a compassionate emotion toward the characters, although the characters are detached and impersonal, due to the tone of The Road. The characters are unidentified, generalizing the experience and making it relatable – meaning similar instances can happen to anyone, not just the characters in the novel. McCarthy combined the brutality of the post-apocalyptic world with tender love between father and son through tone.
In the book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer wrote about Christopher McCandless, a nature lover in search for independence, in a mysterious and hopeful experience. Even though Krakauer tells us McCandless was going to die from the beginning, he still gave him a chance for survival. As a reader I wanted McCandless to survive. In Into the Wild, Krakauer gave McCandless a unique perspective. He was a smart and unique person that wanted to be completely free from society. Krakauer included comments from people that said McCandless was crazy, and his death was his own mistake. However, Krakauer is able to make him seem like a brave person. The connections between other hikers and himself helped in the explanation of McCandless’s rational actions. Krakauer is able to make McCandless look like a normal person, but unique from this generation. In order for Krakauer to make Christopher McCandless not look like a crazy person, but a special person, I will analyze the persuading style that Krakauer used in Into the Wild that made us believe McCandless was a regular young adult.
When the man and boy meet people on the road, the boy has sympathy for them, but his father is more concerned with keeping them both alive. The boy is able to get his father to show kindness to the strangers (McCarthy), however reluctantly the kindness is given. The boy’s main concern is to be a good guy. Being the good guy is one of the major reasons the boy has for continuing down the road with his father. He does not see there is much of a point to life if he is not helping other people. The boy wants to be sure he and his father help people and continue to carry the fire. The boy is the man’s strength and therefore courage, but the man does not know how the boy worries about him how the boy’s will to live depends so much on his
McCarthy portrays the man as one sacrificing and doing anything humanly possible for the one he loves which is the boy. The type of love that is visible in this novel isn’t found in usual novels. Instead of portraying just a father and son relationship, it also presents a representative of a self-sacrifice and companionship. Even though, both the father and the son care dearly for the survival of one another, in the first quarter of the novel, the term of euthanasia is suddenly taken into consideration. The father had thoughts of killing his own son, because he said that the truth was that the boy was keeping him alive, “They slept huddled together in the rank quilts in the dark and the cold. He held the boy close to him. So thin. My heart, he said. My heart. But he knew that if he were a good father still it might well be as she had said. That the boy was all that stood between him and death” (8). McCarthy creates through diction how important the boy is to the man for the man feels as if the boy is the only reason he alive. . In this novel McCarthy presents through imagery ...
The father often uses the phrase “carrying the fire,” to suggest the knowledge the son must inherit from his father in order to one day continue the father's legacy. The father tries to educate his son in goodness, survival, and decency even though all such humanity has been extinguished. His efforts to preserve civilized manners reflect his nurturing and give purpose to his existence. Before the father dies he tells his son that all this fire—warmth, instinct for good, and knowledge—lives inside him: “You have to carry the fire. I don't know how to. Yes, you do. Is the fire real? The fire? Yes, it is. Where is it? I don't know where it is. Yes, you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it” (McCarthy 278-279). The fire has multiple symbolic meanings for the man and the boy. For the man the fire represents the love he has for his son because his son is his reason for continuing. It is also the man’s moral code, his way to refrain from turning evil and committing murder or cannibalism. For the boy the fire symbolizes the kindness he carries even when he has been exposed to evil. Since the boy was born after the catastrophic event, he embodies a sense of purity, an untainted fire within him. Consequently, the son is more naïve and trusting of others than his father. McCarthy's “carrying the fire” functions as a metaphor of knowledge and hope for humanity, the natural instinct to keep going and hope for something better along the
Metaphorically speaking, McCarthy sets a realistic comparison to humanity’s physical journey through life. Obviously, the world doesn’t end on a daily basis. Its extremity is only meant to make the readers aware, not to compare the setting to everyday lives. McCarthy accomplishes this through both descriptive and figurative language throughout the novel. Most notably, the post-apocalyptic setting has brought up discussion. From the very first pages, readers are exposed to the desolate and bleak landscape McCarthy creates. Conditions so harsh, layers of ash conceal the past world and force the father and son to wear face masks for protection. Ash so thick, in fact, that the sun is obscured from sight and the oceans are no longer blue. Life and all vegetation are also slain from the extreme cold, leaving only rotting corpses scattered along the roadside. That being said, the father and son are among the few specks of life remaining, everything else lifeless and gray. Such extreme conditions may seem unthinkable to many. Humanity doesn’t want to talk about death or even the evil within us. Although, that’s exactly what McCarthy had evoked in his reader's minds. He understands the idea that human life can’t flourish if humans themselves can’t coalesce. In the novel, when times got tough, human instinct was in full tilt. Violence, selfishness, and even cannibalistic “bad guys” had
Pollan’s article provides a solid base to the conversation, defining what to do in order to eat healthy. Holding this concept of eating healthy, Joe Pinsker in “Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Foods” enters into the conversation and questions the connection of difference in families’ income and how healthy children eat (129-132). He argues that how much families earn largely affect how healthy children eat — income is one of the most important factors preventing people from eating healthy (129-132). In his article, Pinsker utilizes a study done by Caitlin Daniel to illustrate that level of income does affect children’s diet (130). In Daniel’s research, among 75 Boston-area parents, those rich families value children’s healthy diet more than food wasted when children refused to accept those healthier but
...he thought it was beauty or about goodness.” Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all.” (McCarthy 129,130). “The man” still shows acts of kindness towards strangers here and there in hopes that the boy will not follow in his footsteps and give up fate as well; he wants “the boy,” as McCarthy states it, to continue “to carry the fire.”
The mission of many colleges is to educate students and advance the frontier of human knowledge hence preparing them to take on the real world. In broadening their perspectives of the world, students are bound to be exposed to the offense which is highly unrealistic and utterly incompatible with higher education principles and goals. With generation changing, individuals are becoming cautious regarding what they do or say or even let their children go out and do. Colleges and universities have established detailed and thorough speech codes which outline what the students ought to say or not say. In implementing those speech codes, they have designated free speech zones on the remote sections of the college or universities
Looking back at my rhetorical analysis in writing 150, to sum it up, it was horrendous. It became exceedingly obvious that I had skipped the prewriting step. Forgoing this step caused choppy sentences, multiple grammatical errors, and horrendous flow. The rough draft ended up looking like a collection of jumbled up words. The first attempted felt so bad, I started over entirely. After the review in class, I used the examples to focus my ideas and build off what other people had done. For example, the review helped me to clarify my knowledge and use of Kairos. Once done, it was peer reviewed by my group again. All the other group members commented that I had good ideas, but bad flow and grammatical errors. After revising their respective points and
After the man and the boy find the cannibal house, the boy questions, “We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”. The boy is then reminded they are “the good guys” and are “carrying the fire”. The fire represents the the metaphorical “flame” inside both characters to survive. The flame ignites their desire to live and persevere through hardships together, as “the good guys”. The man soon becomes sick, and in his last moments he talks to the boy about the little boy they found on the road earlier. The boy wonders if the little boy is lost and “who will find him if he’s lost?”, while the man restores hope by saying that the “goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again”. However, the man is not talking about the little boy, but about his own child instead. As the man speaks of goodness finding the little boy even in the darkest of times, he hopes the boy will reflect his message upon himself after the man perishes. The man’s life finally comes to an end, while the boy is lost and without hope, until he found a man that “was dressed in a gray and yellow ski
The man wishes for a renewed world mainly for his son. Early in the novel, McCarthy informs the readers that the current country is in ruins with “everything covered with ash and dust” and that there is “no sign of life” in existence (12). Therefore, in a time where ‘the world grew darker daily,” it is only natural for the father to
The structure and language used is essential in depicting the effect that the need for survival has had upon both The Man and The Boy in The Road. The novel begins in media res, meaning in the middle of things. Because the plot isn’t typically panned out, the reader is left feeling similar to the characters: weary, wondering where the end is, and what is going to happen. McCarthy ensures the language is minimalistic throughout, illustrating the bleak nature of the post-apocalyptic setting and showing the detachment that the characters have from any sort of civilisation. Vivid imagery is important in The Road, to construct a portrait in the reader's mind that is filled with hopelessness, convincing us to accept that daily survival is the only practical option. He employs effective use of indirect discourse marker, so we feel as if we are in the man’s thought. The reader is provided with such intense descriptions of the bleak landscape to offer a feeling of truly seeing the need for survival both The Man and The Boy have. The reader feels no sense of closu...
With the son’s fear amongst the possibility of death being near McCarthy focuses deeply in the father’s frustration as well. “If only my heart were stone” are words McCarthy uses this as a way illustrate the emotional worries the characters had. ( McCarthy pg.11). Overall, the journey of isolation affected the boy just as the man both outward and innerly. The boys’ journey through the road made him weak and without a chance of any hope. McCarthy states, “Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all” (McCarthy pg. 28). The years of journey had got the best of both, where they no longer had much expectation for
Given the barbaric post-apocalyptic setting, a heartwarming bond between a father and son is a story the reader would least expect. The isolation in the barren dystopia makes the bond between the man and the son even more genuine and rare. McCarthy uses these characters to complete the novel as a whole. He uses them to develop the novel and reveal major themes. As these two journey to the south there are many obstacles but they remain devoted to each other and they work together to carry the fire. In the midst of strife these two rely on each other to stay alive and along their journey they learn lessons of love, sacrifice, and morality.