Examples Of Safety And Terror In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

1335 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cormac McCarthy on the road

The world has died, and society has gone with it. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a father and his son are some of the only survivors left after a deadly cataclysm has struck the Earth. Most are dead. The only survivors have lost all of their moral and societal beliefs. It is kill or be killed now. Cannibals and murderers are abundant, but the father does not want his son to only experience this world. Born after the world’s end, the son has never seen the beauty of life. All he has known is death. The father tries to have a “normal” life with his son, whatever normal is in this new world. Cormac McCarthy is able to use varying structures to beautifully portray this element of Safety vs Terror, through his lack of names, sentence fragments,
Everything has died, and all that remains is brutality and savagery. People, once neighbors and friends, now turning on each other in the name of survival. It is disturbing and horrific most of the time. Despite this, there is a light in the dark. Two survivors wandering the road, a father and a son. They are some of the last “good guys” on the planet. They are able to survive, despite the horrendous conditions presented to them. They are constantly running from terror, with little safety to hide. They, however, make their own safety. Cormac McCarthy is able to masterfully use things that most writers try their best to avoid. McCarthy writes without using names. This creates a sense of safety between father and son, as they do not need each other 's names. It is just them. McCarthy writes using incorrect grammar. This shows the father and son are alike real people. They are not perfect, cookie cutter characters. They could be anyone the reader knows. They both love each other and feel safe enough with one another. McCarthy writes using short, to the point sentences. This conveys that the son is smart enough to understand what is happening without long descriptions. Despite this knowledge, the father is constantly calming down the kid, furthering their love for one another. McCarthy is a master of writing, and The Road is sure to go down in history as a magnificent piece of

Show More
Related

  • Biblical Allusions In The Crossing By Mccarthy

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Comparing Steinbeck's Standard In The Grapes Of Wrath And The Road

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    He always wants to help someone else in need before himself, whereas the father is only concerned about their own personal wellbeings. He “is the one” who worries about their ethical choices and wants to help a stranger in any way he can (259). McCarthy proves the importance of the boy’s spirit of love for other people when his dad dies and he must take the leap of faith to continue along the road with a new family. Despite all the corrupted people they encountered beforehand, the boy meets someone who is “carrying the fire” (129). This mantra by the father and son, symbolizes hope and humanity. The qualities Steinbeck labels for a writer to create in his writings can be summed up in “carrying the fire” since the two never did give up. It is the greatness of the heart and spirit Steinbeck notes that is “inside [them]. [And] [i]t [is] always there” (279). It is noteworthy that even in the midst of death and ashes, the two are able to hold onto their relationship and sanity. The “good guys” can continue to carry meaning and structure in their lives, even in a time where society turned into a battle to survive on the remnants of

    Read More

  • The Road Rhetorical Analysis

    2437 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Courage For His Father In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    809 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Man And Death In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

    1340 Words  | 3 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Morbid Diction In The Road

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparison of The Lord of the Flies and The Man and The Boy In the Road

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Role Of God In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    1582 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

    858 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the beginning of the novel, McCarthy introduces us to the Kid, who is pale and thin, and his parents. “His folks are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster”, which is a fancy word for teacher (McCarthy 3). His “mother, dead these fourteen years, did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off” (McCarthy 3). The Kid can neither read nor write and he already has the taste for violence.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Isolation In The Road

    2281 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Responsibility In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Good Guy Rules In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    1460 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...s son live by seven rules that make them the good guys. They do what they have to do to survive, without compromising their morals. They are the epitome of a light shining in the darkness. The conflict of the father and son’s polar opposite personalities is exemplified when looking at how they feel about the rules. The child has ease with following every rule but number six, whereas the father has trouble with every rule but number six. This shows that maybe the characters complete each other. This also shows that maybe the son is better cut out for living in this kind of world than his father is. That fact shows that the father taught the child correctly.

    Read More

  • The Road

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    This book was very interesting and pleasurable to read, I found myself intimately connecting with the characters. In some ways I found myself walking in “the man’s” shoes, not caring about humanity, and only protecting the one most precious to him (me). In some instances I also sided with “the boy” clinging to the hopes of a brighter world where there is still some purity in civilization. This novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a true masterpiece and I recommend it to anyone looking for a phenomenal read.

    Read More

  • Father and Son in The Road and The Pursuit of Happyness

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

More about Examples Of Safety And Terror In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

Open Document