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The road cormac mccarthy essay
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Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptical novel The Road tells the fascinating story of a father and son’s journey for survival. Throughout The Road, McCarthy explores many different themes and issues which help to portray the father and son’s journey. Among these themes included are; ‘good versus evil’, ‘paternal love’, ‘death’ and ‘survival’. The Road is one of McCarthy’s most personal and heart breaking novels with trust playing a significant part as the father and son battle for survival. From the beginning of the novel were are aware of the post-apocalyptical world in which the protagonists travel through, however McCarthy does not give us details of the event which destroyed almost all of life on earth. Two important issues in The Road is …show more content…
the father and son’s journey through the post-apocalyptical world and as the journey progresses, the boy’s loss of innocence and his developing maturity.
Early into The Road the boy asks the man “what would you do if I died?” (McCarthy 9), we are immediately aware of the boy questioning his own mortality but as the journey progresses we can see his transformation from innocence to maturity and this plays a significant role in Cormac McCarthy’s novel.
Innocence has played a substantial role in literature with the coming of age theme proving popular in many aspects. The loss of innocence in children and teens is usually seen as a change in their perception of the idyllic world they saw, to becoming aware of the harsh reality of what lay ahead of them. This aspect or theme is an extremely popular technique used by writers and Cormac McCarthy personifies loss of innocence in the boy, the central figure of The Road. Following this unspecified catastrophe which killed almost all civilisation, the boy quickly realises the extent of the danger left on earth and must face the tough reality if he wishes to survive. The boy’s
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innocence can be seen throughout the novel and like any child, at times he needs reassurance from his father. “What was it, Papa? It was an earthquake. It’s gone now. We’re all right. Shh.” (McCarthy 28). Like any child who experiences the effects of an earthquake, the boy is terrified and this highlights his innocence. A common aspect of innocence in children is naivety, or lack of understanding, and this is also a significant element of the boy. The boy’s naivety is witnessed throughout the novel and examples include when they meet Ely on the road; “Maybe we could give him something to eat” (McCarthy 173). In his childlike nature the boy offers Ely food which is scarce, not realising the extent of danger handing out the very little food they have is. Ron Charles believes that it is “the boy's nature, his impulse to help, his anxiety about stealing others' food is, of course, naive. But even when fighting for their lives, his father knows that it's a naiveté inspired by the boy's goodness that makes their fight worthwhile”. This naivety and innocence is a key element of the boys personality, however, the further they travel on the road, the more mature the boy must become in order to survive. The main setting for McCarthy’s novel is the roads which the main protagonists travel on. The significance of the roads travelled have both a literal and metaphorical meaning as it leads the man and the boy to a warmer climate, while also being a symbol of their battle for survival. America is built on the ethos that freedom and success can be achieved, known as the American Dream. Roads and highways are often symbols of this dream where those travelling are on a journey of self-discovery and opportunity. McCarthy, fully aware of this ethos in the American psyche, challenges the dream and turns it into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The only visions and opportunity for the man and the boy is their battle for survival. “Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you’re happy again, then you’ll have given up. Do you understand? And you can’t give up, I won’t let you” (McCarthy 215). This shows the fathers love and devotion towards his son, however, it also portrays the bleak world in which they live in and the little opportunity ahead of them. It is on this journey that the boy must face the harsh reality and forget about the dreams of a prosperous world that once existed and become a more mature person in order to survive. It is evident from the beginning and throughout The Road that life on earth is limited and those still alive are struggling.
Kevin Kearney writes “there are far fewer children, the token representatives of futurity, on the road than there are marauders. Worse yet, most young life is either used as food or seen as a potential meal”. This sums up life on the road for the protagonists and their struggles. Throughout the novel the boy believes his father’s stories about his previous life and this is a driving force for their survival. However as the journey progresses, the boy begins to question these stories and poignantly states “I always believe you… Yes I do. I have to (McCarthy 157). Like any child, the boy believes almost everything his peers tell him and as he grows older he realises that these are sometimes fabricated stories. This highlights the boy’s transition from innocence to maturity as the journey on the road
progresses.
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 Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the boy and his father carry the fire within themselves. This image of fire is the true nature of their courage to continue on the road to the unknown.
The conflict through the duration of The Road has been survival. The man has always known he was going to die, but the man never gave up because he had to keep his son alive. In this final section of the novel, the man finally accepts that he is going to die. After being shot with an arrow the man’s health rapidly deteriorates even more than it has. The father and son switch rolls in this final section of the book. The boy starts caring for his father as he approaches death. Now the boy’s main concern is his father’s health. This transaction of responsibility shows that the boy has grown and become more mature. McCarthy’s use of foreshadowing the man’s death built up throughout the book, and it made the audience believe that the man would finally die of his mysterious sickness.
Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is set sometime in the future after a global disaster in which tells a story of a nameless boy and father who both travel along a highway that stretches to the East coast. This post-apocalyptic novel shows the exposes of terrifying events such as cannibalism, starvation, and not surviving portraying the powerful act of the man protecting his son from all the events in which depicts Cormac McCarthy’s powerful theme of one person sacrificing or doing anything humanly possible for the one they love which generates the power of love.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a father and son who are surrounded by an apocalyptic world where they are trying to survive. Many of McCarthy’s books are about negative or violent times like Blood Meridian and All The Pretty Horses. McCarthy enjoys writing about the terror in the real world. When writing literature, he avoids using commas and quotation marks.. Many works of literature have a plethora of themes throughout them, in The Road, the theme that sticks out the most is paternal love. The boy is the only thing that stands between the man and death. Aside from that, the father doesn’t kill anyone for food, he only takes the life of people who threaten the boy. Lastly, the man allows the boy have the last of their supplies, food,
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, The Road describes a father and son’s fight for their lives as they journey the road south for the winter. An unknown catastrophe has plagued the world, leaving hell on Earth for all who inhabit it. Rotting corpses, abandoned homes, and devastated landscapes are an everyday sight. Worst of all, human beings have reverted back to barbarism, leaving humanity and any sense of morals behind. Critics argue that The Road has “no plotline or story arc of character development” (165). Although even though The Road explains nothing, it actually explains everything. In fact, the novel consists of deeper meanings intended for readers to uncover themselves. In particular, the road itself is a major symbolic aspect of the
Imagine a devastating event that does not just change the world but alters all aspects of life to the point of being unrecognizable. How does one keep hope alive in a world where everything is either dying or has turned evil? In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, this is the daily struggle that confronts the man and boy. This remarkable story is about a father and son's attempts to survive in a barren landscape, faced with the constant threat of starvation, murder, exposure, and illness; they must continually decipher between good and evil, preserve the goodness of civilization, and find a purpose to continue their journey, especially when the existence of God is questionable. McCarthy's thematic purpose is to show that the qualities that mankind
... to read, there are front of your seat moments, sad, and happy moments that the related topic books don’t have. The DK Handbook doesn’t have a storyline and is nothing but information. Fewer students should complain about reading a novel when the alternative is reading a book full of nothing but information. The Road is worth reading in more than just college classes, maybe high school classes should read it; even more novel reading fans should pick up The Road and try to set it down after fifty pages because it isn’t easy!
While reading the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy the overall aspect is pessimistic. It is about violence, hardship, death, fear, and the loss of hope. Throughout the book, the two main characters, the man, and boy face up against some of the toughest survival and life lessons. Together they face the woman’s suicide, starvation, the idea of rape, sickness, survival of the apocalypse, and in a sense being hunted like prey by cannibals who also managed to survive the terrifying possibilities that cause Earth to go to chaos. Within the novel, there are hundreds of examples to provide evidence of the pessimistic nature of the novel. Cormac McCarthy who is the author continuously writes in his novel about some of the deepest and darkest situations
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...
In the Novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, survival becomes the biggest quest to life. The novel is set to be as a scene of isolation and banishment from people and places. The author uses the hidden woods as a set of isolation for the characters, in which creates the suspense of traveling to an unspecified destination near the shore. Cormac McCarthy creates a novel on the depth of an imaginative journey, which leads to a road of intensity and despair. The journey to move forward in an apocalyptic world transforms both of the main characters father and son tremendously as time progress. In particular, the boys’ isolation takes him from hope to torment, making him become fearful and imaginative. The images indicate that McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel relies on images, particular verbal choices, and truthful evidence to how isolation affected the son emotionally and physically.
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.
“What are our long term goals? he said. what? Our long term goals...What was the answer? I don't know” (pg 160). After continuously reading the same recurring events in the book, walking on the road and scavenging food, this quote really stood out to me because not only is this something I can relate to but it's one of the few moments that the man and the boy communicates in the novel. The lack of dialogue and the book written from the third person doesn't give much information from the character's perspective. However, even so, McCarthy was able to master this distinctive form of writing and still convey the character’s motives and whatnot throughout the text. Anyways, the man seemed perplexed that the boy was even aware of the concept of
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.