Cormac Mccarthy's The Road: An Analysis

Stephen Siperstein describes Cormac McCarthy’s novel in his essay “Climate Change Fiction: Radical Hope from an Emerging Genre.” He says that her book The Road “perpetuates a particularly pernicious set of assumptions about the relationship between masculine individualism and survival and also makes invisible the racist and sexist dimensions of environmental risk.” Climate change fiction novels should not set certain roles to certain characters based on the color of ones’ race or sex. As they focus on issues such as social class, minorities, and gender roles, Climate change fiction should clearly state the issues in the environment of the novel. Siperstein states that climate change fiction has “opened a space in mainstream media or discussions about how the power of culture, role of environmental humanities, and the necessity for focused climate change education.

Ship Breaker, written by Paolo Bacigalupi, is a climate fiction novel that features intertwined relationships of poor and rich characters, comparing the morals, and characteristics of each. This novel does agree with Sipersteins view on climate fiction novels. This novel does not only feature male leads. The protagonist of Ship Breaker is Nailer, a young boy who must work a dangerous job in order to live day to day. Nailer is a male character who makes a number of important and dangerous decisions, and is featured throughout the entire novel. Though he is a very vital character in the novel, there are also two young girls who are also mentioned numerous times throughout, and are important to the story as well. The issue of women being inferior to men is does not appear often through the novel, whether it be bad or good, skills are considered more important

Their desperation and attempts to keep themselves and each other safe are very