Togetherness is an illusion created by the loneliness of man. The manifestation of a being who can never truly be a part of something greater. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a man and a boy exist in a world not designed to inhabit human beings. On this scorched Earth, for the father and son, it is and will only ever be them; however, “them” is not is not as healthy as they believe. The man and the boy’s faulty father-son relationship reveals McCarthy’s negative attitude towards human nature and dependency.
The world they live in demonstrates the worst parts of humanity, forcing their relationship to be that of two survivors, not of a family. In times of distress and danger, it is not uncommon for the relationships between people to change,
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All around them there exists vast, whole, nothingness. All around them their hopes and wishes are blown away with the ash in the wind. This devastating imagery and scene would be enough to change any person’s kind and loving relationship to one of survival and instinct. This world, the ash, the fallen; every aspect has shaped their relationship into what it is. McCarthy adds to this distressing imagery with staccato syntax, simply describing the scene as, “barren, silent, godless” (4). The man and boy can never have a typical father son relationship, not here, not on the Earth in which they reside. There is no doubt that the man loves his son; however, he does not love his son like a normal father. The man loves his son like he is …show more content…
Due to the unfavorable conditions, the man and the boy do not have the capacity to love in a healthy way. They are “each the other’s world entire” (5), depending on the other solely and wholly, with no need for anything else. The man even goes as far as to compare his son to God; “He only knew the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God does not exist” (4). The diction riddled with desperation adds to the plain syntax. For, it is a simple truth, but only to the man and boy. In this post-apocalyptic society, there is no room for error: survival should be the single-most important thing on people 's minds, not a God that may or may not exist. This unhealthy worship is telling of McCarthy 's complicated yet overall negative view of humanity. While it is not wrong to depend on one another, a vital line is crossed when they believe they are all the other has. It brings on moments such as when the boy questions his father about death. He asks, “What would you do if I died?”(9). To which the father responds, “If you died I would want to die too”(9). McCarthy’s seemingly affectionate yet harrowing tone is evident in the promise of death the father and son make. The man and the boy are one of the only examples of the good that remain in this desolate world. To have those who are good make such a haunting promise is proof, not
He has endured and overcame many fears and struggles, but during this section, we truly acquire an insight of what the little boy is actually like – his thoughts, his opinions, his personality. Contrary to his surroundings, the little boy is vibrant and almost the only lively thing around. I love him! He is awfully appalled by the “bad guys” and shockingly sympathetic toward dead people. For example, when the father raided a house and found food, the little boy suggested that they should thank them because even though they’re dead or gone, without them, the little boy and father would starve. My heart goes out to him because he is enduring things little boys should never go through, even if this novel is just a fictional
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’s novel is not about a boy trying to find his place in society, but about a boy trying to find himself and who he really is apart from society. John Grady begins the story with no answers, and at the end he still doesn’t have a clue. There is no resolution for him; there are only more questions, conflicts, and misunderstandings. I think that McCarthy’s point is that to live romantically is to live without cause, without real hope, and ultimately without love. Despite the author’s obvious compassion for John Grady and his idealism, he shows us through romantically descriptive writing that a romantic lifestyle cannot work in this world. The book ends with John Grady riding out into the sunset, having learned nothing, with no place to go. Until the character learns how to compromise with society and give up his romanticism, his life will have no purpose.
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 ...
Losing a phone compared to being raped, starved, killed, and eaten in pieces makes everyday life seem not so excruciating. Cormac McCarthy was born July 20, 1933 and is one of the most influencing writers of this era. McCarthy was once so poor he could not even afford toothpaste. Of course this was before he became famous. His lifestyle was hotel to hotel. One time he got thrown out of a $40 dollar a month hotel and even became homeless. This is a man who from experience knows what should be appreciated. McCarthy published a novel that would give readers just that message called The Road. Placed in a world of poverty the story is about a man and his son. They travel to a warmer place in hopes of finding something more than the scattered decomposing bodies and ashes. The father and son face hunger, death, and distrust on their long journey. 15 year old Lawrence King was shot for being gay. Known as a common hate crime, the murderer obviously thought he was more superior to keep his life and to take someone’s life. Believing ideas in a possible accepting world with no conditions is dangerous thought to that person’s immunity to the facts of reality.
In Cormac McCarthy’s Sci-Fi novel, “The Road”, two mysterious people, a father and his curious son, contact survival of the fittest during tragic apocalyptic times. With a shopping cart of food and supplies, they excavate into the remains of tattered houses, torn buildings and other sheltering places, while averting from troublesome communes. In the duration of the novel, they’re plagued with sickness that temporarily unable them to proceed onward. Due to the inopportune events occurring before the apocalypse, the wife of the son and father committed suicide due to these anonymous survivors lurking the remains of earth. The last people on earth could be the ‘bad guys’ as the young boy describes them. In page 47, the wife reacted to this, stating, “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won't face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I can't.”
In the post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a man and his son travel south through the ruins and ash of their demolished home. Crippled by fear, starvation, and loneliness, the man and his son struggle to maintain physical, mental, and emotion health. Throughout the novel, the characters remain unnamed, with little description of their physical appearance. The man shares all of his beliefs, memories, qualms, and feelings through his thoughts and conversations with the boy. The man has many compelling convictions referencing The Holy Bible and his unwavering belief in God. However, these accounts often contradict each other. Throughout the novel, the existence of God is indefinite. The ambiguity of the novel relates to the ambiguity of God’s existence; the characters are left in the dark about what is to come throughout their journey, just as they are left to wonder whether God’s light is illuminated or diminished among the wreckage of their forgotten world.
McCarthy’s use of biblical allusions help to create a setting in which all the characters have more complex parts to play than what it seems like at first glance. The allusions also create the tone, which is somber, and almost dream like. The protagonist had his “palms up” while sleeping, which could mean that he fell asleep as he was praying, or in other words pleading. Yet when he woke up “it was still dark”, this creates a hopeless ton because even after all of the begging, the world he woke up to was a dark one. When the wolf dies, the protagonist imagines her “running in the mountains” with different
...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.”
In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, the two main characters struggle to keep moving forward. Their motivation to push onward is found in the bottom levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; which are physiological, safety, and emotional. Each of the levels are equally important in order for the man to reach self-actualization. In order to reach the top level, however, the man must fulfill the bottom levels first.
McCarthy is trying to show that during desperate times there is a sudden loss in humanity due to the uneasiness and the drastic measures one will take in order to survive. A person will do anything it takes to survive in desperate and desolate worlds. McCarthy is proving this with his diction and choice of imagery. A man and a boy set out to survive in a tragic and dangerous world, where the main food source is depleting and all resources are deteriorating. A novel about what is left of a man’s family and how they struggle to survive. Humanity is tested and shows just how extreme ones actions can be. The want for life is tested, one could question whether or not survival will be possible for the man and the
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in the post-apocalyptic world that the man and the boy live in, dreams begin to take on the form of a new “reality.” As the novel progresses, the man’s dreams, initially memories remnant of his pre-apocalypse life, become “brighter” as the boy’s dreams become darker and nightmarish. Through the use of color and distinct language, McCarthy emphasizes the contrast between reality and dreams. The man’s reliance on bad dreams to keep him tied to the harsh reality alludes to the hopelessness of the situation; he can never truly escape. McCarthy suggests that those who strive for a life that no longer exists are deluded with false hope. Having dreams is a natural human tendency, but in a world that has become so inhumane, the man can’t even afford to retain this element of being human. The loss of the past is a concept that the characters living in this ashen world struggle with, and McCarthy presents memory as a weakness to be exploited.
People always like to refer to themselves as “independent”. Independence may seem like a great ideal in modern society, but in a post-apocalyptic world, a sense of dependence is unavoidable. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs help us to understand what people depend on. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, survival of the boy and the man is due to their dependence on their human nature and ability to support one another.
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...
At first the relationship between a father and his son can be perceived as a simple companionship. However, this bond can potentially evolve into more of a dynamic fitting relationship. In The Road The Man and his son have to depend on one another because they each hold a piece of each other. The Man holds his sons sense of adulthood while the son posses his father’s innocence. This reliance between the father and son create a relationship where they need each other in order to stay alive. “The boy was all that stood between him and death.” (McCarthy 29) It is evident that without a reason to live, in this case his son, The Man has no motivation to continue living his life. It essentially proves how the boy needs his father to love and protect him, while the father needs the boy to fuel ...