The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy outlines the struggles and horrifying events that transpire as main characters, the man and the boy, go on a journey traveling the road, simply trying to survive the post-apocalyptic world they were forced into. The man and the boy encounter terrifying and life-altering events throughout the depressing novel but always veer back onto the road to continue their path and try to continue their lives. As the novel continues the love and care the man has for the boy is evident, which can be seen when the boy is born and the cries of his mother “meant nothing” (59) to the man; his only worry being his boy. McCarthy illustrates the abiding theme of love and care through tactical and precise accounts of …show more content…
diction, imagery, and symbolism that can be found embedded into the man and boy’s life and their dismal and dangerous journey on the road. As the novel begins, it’s extremely prevalent that the man has a strong love for the boy and cares for him like all fathers should, despite the harsh conditions and strains that both are under.
The man prioritizes the boy over anything else, and as he “[finds] a last half packet of cocoa he fix[es] it for the boy” (34), it is apparent that the man is absolutely desperate for the boy to feel some normalities in his horror-filled life. McCarthy presents the cocoa to the man and boy to symbolize that in all the horrendous encounters they have on the road, they are allowed to have some experiences that are completely normal in a pre apocalyptic world. As the two are walking down the cracked and faded road, they come to a town and find a torn apart grocery store. The man spots an old soda machine, gets a can of Coca-Cola and immediately gives it to the boy. As the man gives it to him the boy insists that his papa “...have some. I want you to drink it,” (23). The offering that the boy refuses from the man, but instead gives it right back to him symbolizes the innocence and pureness that the boy represents throughout the entire novel. McCarthy places dashes of symbolism in the novel to draw the reader to make connections of the boy's angelic ways in an otherwise “barren, silent, [and] godless” (4) …show more content…
place. McCarthy utilizes standout diction in limited portions to accentuate the importance of words and phrases that the man uses to show his love for the boy.
As the man and the boy encounter a cellar filled with food and supplies, the boy is “swaddled in the new blankets,” (148). The unusual account of diction is used to compare the boy to baby Jesus, the only person to ever be described as ‘swaddled’. The man openly expresses the everlasting love and care he has for the boy as he “…sat watching him until the boy became embarrassed,” (252). McCarthy's use of the word ‘embarrassed’ immensely stands out among other words in the scene to allude to a non-apocalyptic world where fathers embarrassing their children is an ordinary occurrence. The minimal amounts of diction dispersed throughout the novel are used to grasp the reader's attention and draw it straight to the standout
diction. The man is extremely protective of the boy, and as many religious allusions suggest, the boy is the lifeline for not only the man but also the entire world of the dying population, if the boy is not “the word of God God never spoke,” (5). Through realistic and chilling imagery, McCarthy creates a petrifying scenario that captivates his readers. As the life of the boy is threatened by a “bad guy” who quickly “dove and grabbed the boy...with [a] knife at his throat”, the man responds at the same level of speed as he shoots the “bad guy” in the head, “blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead” (66). The level of protection and commitment that is expressed with the alarming imagery the man has to the boy even in a time of misery and desolation proves that he loves his son more than even himself and is willing to do hurt anyone who jeopardizes his son. As McCarthy writes his post-apocalyptic novel, he uses specific counts of diction, distressing imagery, and meticulous symbolism to get across the theme of the powerful love and care that the man willingly pours out onto the boy. Even as the man takes final breaths, he insists that the boy “[has] to carry the fire” and continue on the defeated road without him. As the woman's suicide was “her final gift” (58) to the man and boy, likewise the death of the man along with his words of encouragement and decision to save the boy was his final gift to his beloved son. As he embeds layers of sparse diction, eerie imagery, and hidden symbolism, McCarthy maps out a key that readers can follow and understand precise details of his novel, The Road.
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.
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
All through the times of the intense expectation, overwhelming sadness, and inspiring hope in this novel comes a feeling of relief in knowing that this family will make it through the wearisome times with triumph in their faces. The relationships that the mother shares with her children and parents are what save her from despair and ruin, and these relationships are the key to any and all families emerging from the depths of darkness into the fresh air of hope and happiness.
Although finding food was a struggle for them, the man always put the boy’s health before his. The man made sure the boys thirst and hunger was always gone and that he had food to eat and drinks to drink. “He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let's just sit here.” (Page 27). In this quote, the man gave the boy the last of the soda but the boy got upset that the man didn’t take any, so the man took a sip and proceeded to give it to the boy. This is important because the father knows that he’s thirsty and could kill for a drink, but he knows that this is the first and last soda the boy would ever get. “He'd found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim.” (Page 18). This quote shows us too that the man always made sure that the boy got the better part of the deal. The boy got to drink cocoa but the man just drank hot water. The father does this because he got to live through his childhood without this apocalyptic world but the boy only lived a few years that he really doesn’t remember. These quotes show paternal love because they explain how the father always puts the son before him. Through all of the actions the father takes, it shows us how much he really cares about the son, and that his son is his only hope and his fire for
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
The Road, a post-apocalyptic, survival skills fiction book written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006 is part of the Oprah Winfrey book club. During an interview with Oprah, McCarthy answered questions about The Road that he had never been asked before because pervious to the interview he had never been interviewed. Oprah asked what inspired the heart breaking book; it turns out that McCarthy wrote the book after taking a vacation with his son John. While on the vacation he imagined the world fifty years later and seen fire in the distant hills. After the book was finished, McCarthy dedicated it to his son, John. Throughout the book McCarthy included things that he knows he and his son would do and conversations that he thinks they may have had. (Cormac). Some question if the book is worth reading for college course writing classes because of the amount of common writing “rule breaks”. After reading and doing assignments to go along with The Road, I strongly believe that the novel should be required for more college courses such as Writing and Rhetoric II. McCarthy wrote the book in a way to force readers to get out of their comfort zones; the book has a great storyline; so doing the assignments are fairly easy, and embedded in the book are several brilliant survival tactics.
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.
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...
(Gilbert pg. 44) The first level are the physiological needs such as food and water. This is one of the man and the boy’s most consistent conflicts. In The Road, basic resources are extremely hard to come by, as seen when the man said, “We have to find something to eat. We have no choice.” (McCarthy pg. 220) To stay alive, a huge emphasis is placed on their dependence in finding those basic needs. Nearly all of the decisions the man and the boy made were related to finding food or conserving food for basic survival.
In the 21st century production industries all over the world are vigorously booming out more waste than our planet can recycle back into the earth. The consequences of these actions are making areas inhabitable, drastically raising the levels of pollution, and massive deforestation. The most current and threatening issue is our elevated consumption of limited fuels; it outputs heightened amounts of gases into the atmosphere damaging the ozone and heating the planet to an unsafe standard. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy seems to envisage an unfamiliar world foreseen in mankind’s future. In this eerie tale it can be assured that the author creates an obscene future to portray a specific perspective of how survival might be when the damage cannot be undone to our environment. By
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
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, follows the journey of a father and a son who are faced with the struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The two main characters are faced with endeavors that test a core characteristic of their beings: their responsibilities to themselves and to the world around them. This responsibility drives every action between the characters of the novel and manifests in many different ways. Responsibility is shown through three key interactions: the man to the boy, the boy to the man, and the boy to the rest of the world. It is this responsibility that separates McCarthy’s book from those of the same genre.
A master of abstract, violent stories filled with biblical alliterations, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and son traversing a barren wasteland of post-apocalyptic America on an idealistic journey on the titular road of the book. Brimming with symbolism and the ancient struggle of good vs. evil, McCarthy’s forte, he questions what would happen if a worldwide catastrophe were to occur. Father and son travel facing the evils that have perpetrated this now “godless” land. McCarthy focused on the human emotions of fear and hope as well as the dynamics of the father son relationship. But what makes his novel special is how he uses biblical allusions to deepen his novel. Turning the boy into a symbol of Christ McCarthy created an almost parable like story filled with abstract yet apparent symbolism and allusions to stories and characters from the Bible.
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 ...
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.