In Alice LaPlante article, The Making of a Story, she discusses what characters may be able to go mentally and emotionally through throughout the span of a story. The decisions that a character takes give the reader more information about not only the character’s true intensions but also the author. When LaPlante writes, “how a character behaves, both alone and in response to actions from other characters, is a critical aspect of characterization” (LaPlante, 425) she does not consider that fact that the author of a story may be including a deeper meaning behind a character actions. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men, the author creates his characters in order to show a new perspective regarding good versus evil. The story revolves …show more content…
In Benjamin Mangrum’s article about the deeper meaning behind the novel, No Country for Old Men, he says, “Chigurh’s [actions] reveals both his skepticism regarding the notion of individual uniqueness and his relativization of personal violation” (Mangrum, 118). Cormac McCarthy uses this idea as the basis of his story and he creates certain characters that revolve around this belief. The author supports the idea that not everyone in this world is actually unique, and that life will still continue even if something bad happens to these people, and he believes that there are other factors that determine a character’s fate. McCarthy uses these principles to create a character that views life consisting of choices and regards every life as unimportant when compared to a larger scale. Chigurh speaks the about the same principal that the author believes in when he says, “every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice [...] a person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning” (McCarthy, 157). Chigurh holds the same beliefs as McCarthy regarding a person’s life choices and how those choices can affect the future. The author supports Chigurh’s beliefs that a person is not that unique or special and that life will continue even if that person is not alive anymore. For example, Llewelyn Moss is considered to be the protagonist in this story, but the author decides to kill this character off not even halfway through the novel. To the reader, Moss’ death would be really important because the story cannot continue without the main protagonist. However, McCarthy proves that life will continue no matter what happens, and that the story won’t end just because of the death of one
The concept of what is "individuality" and what is not has plagued and delighted man since the dawn of time. “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy adds 302 more pages to the pile of all the works that have been on the quest to define individualism. In this novel, McCarthy takes us through four faces of the key character’s life, John Grady, to portray the idea of illusory individualism. He contends that John Grady is simply a product of a society in contrast to his (Grady) notion of free will. Simply put: Grady has no alternatives but an obligation to conform to society. McCarthy uses him to create the platform in which to comment on oppression of individuality, expectation of conformity to the values of the society and the fact that the concept of individualism is a myth.
When John Grady tells his friend, Rawlins, about his first meeting with Alejandra, the author uses Rawlins to point out some important traits in John Grady: his stubbornness, his disregard for the conflicts that his actions might cause, and his need to be “in love,” even if his feelings aren’t reciprocated.... ... middle of paper ... ... Even after John Grady has been jailed, wounded and betrayed, he cannot give up his romanticism. 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.
political ideology held by many of the characters. These same characters tend to exhibit traits that
Societies standards are what everyone wants to fit into it is the norms that are used as a guide to living life. The grandmother and the misfit in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” follow the way of social values, thoughts, and way society sees one another closely in 1953. Both the grandmother and the misfit are different in many ways, but have one common value of society’s views are important to them. The way society views and judges people causes both the misfit and the grandmother to act differently but subtly makes them more alike than either of them could tell. The shared value of society’s point of view on a human being can explain both characters views, behaviors, and actions because of how heavily it weighed on the grandma and
There are many devices within the craft of writing that writers use to help them convey their messages. Among these include what characters they use and how they act, what setting they put their characters in, what types of symbols are use, and many others. They can go even farther into each section with how much information they give us, or how much they make us fill in with our own interpretation or imagination. The writer's choice of characters is a main part of the story, for it is these people that "tell" the story and which we relate it to. The characters' descriptions and their actions are what we picture in our minds. Although they need the other devices to complete the story, the authors use of characters can be what makes or breaks the story. There are many different types of characters that writers can use to help them distribute their message. Robert Frost uses nature as a character in his poem "Once By The Pacific," while Shirley Jackson uses the members of a small town to tell her story in The Lottery. While each is different, they both serve their intended purpose - to tell us a story.
The world created is a place no man would ever want to live, much less enjoy. There is evil, and scary things lurking throughout, which majority people do not want to read about under normal circumstances for the fact that it is not socially acceptable to commit most of those acts. Cormac McCarthy creates a world crowded with hopelessness and fear in every direction. Where there is nothing to make the days better, no cows, now birds, no plants and also little to no good people left in the world. It is filled prominently with horrors of murders, rapes, sicknesses, death, ash from fires, and
...l human character. Writers of American literature have many different opinions on the society. In order for readers to understand an author’s view on the society, they must look at many different aspects including the writer’s life and the time period in which the work was written. Though writers have different theories about the society, they express their philosophies into their work. The town who seem horribly uncivilized, where a son stones his mother, yet they can easily be compared to today's society.
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.
There is particular consideration given to the political climate in this story. It is incorporated with social and ethnic concerns that are prevalent. The story also addresses prejudice and the theme of ethnic stereotyping through his character development. O'Connor does not present a work that is riddled with Irish slurs or ethnic approximations. Instead, he attempts to provide an account that is both informative and accurate.
...s important both symbolically and literally within the novel. Since manhood and masculine features are so heavily valued within this society, the challenge of one’s personality or actions can completely change them and push them to drastic measures.
McCarthy’s novel clarifies the affects isolation made for the traveler’s in the story. In particular to the son, isolation affected him in a more discrete way than the father. Everything he sees and experiences goes into great affect in what makes
In the story Dubliners by James Joyce, he writes about a few different themes, some of these being autonomy, responsibility, light, and dark. The most important of the themes though must be the individual character in the story against the community and the way they see it. I have chosen to take a closer look at “Araby,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” because the great display of these themes I feel is fascinating. Many things affect the way the individual characters see the community, for example their family, friends, fellow citizens, or even new places. In Dubliners, the way the characters see the community affects them and other people around them.
The first page of the book the road written by Cormac McCarthy used many narrative techniques. McCarthy wrote the novel in 3 rd person making it less bias, but more mysterious as nothing is revealed in the description of the 2 characters mentioned. The sentence structure is long and describing the location with no dialogue shown. The location was described, but no specifics, no names of the location all that was known is it is in the woods. Two characters are introduced, but not described one presumably a male adult and another a child. This technique McCarthy uses keeps the audience in extreme suspense as no information has been revealed and encourages the reader to keep reading if they want to know more.
Portraying the characters rejection to conformity, American literature illustrates the distinctive following of one's own standards. From what has been analyzed previously, the authors are trying to display a message of change through the characters words and actions. Many times it is apparent that the characters are in there times of most comfort when they are acting in such that makes them their own being, stepping aside from the standards of the rest of society. Writers try to express the importance of stepping outside of that comfort zone in order to grow and develop as a human being. How will one ever know who they are if they conform to be what everyone is told to be? The biggest advocate of rejecting the norms of America is Chris McCandless.
...en though there was a period when Christy came out of his world of imagination, he run back to it because of his fear of the harsh world. Without his imaginary tale, his heroic title doesn’t exit and his legacy will be scripted on the memory of County Mayo as a deceiver. Christy stated “What’ll Pegeen say when she hears that story? What’ll she be saying to me now?” Synge uses this consistent questioning to assure the readers of the range of fear Christy is faced with; his fear that the whole world and even Pegeen is against him and see him as a hypocrite.