Cormac McCarthy manifests his novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic world on the east coast of the once famous America. The novel tells the simple tale of a man and a boy who must journey forward to find a way to survive in the wastelands. However, when analyzed with the techniques shown in Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, The Road’s complex structure in unveiled. The once simple journey transforms into a quest filled with exploitive vampires and meaningful conversations with food. The novel explores the depths of heart and strengthens the end with the parallel of the return of Jesus Christ. The concepts complete the novel as a whole and brings an interesting …show more content…
However, when a writer implements people consuming food, they are trying to show the character’s thoughts and feelings as well as how well they get along. The man and the boy are show to have a loving relationship as they share possibly the last can of Coca Cola in this world. “What is it, Papa? It’s a treat for you...You have some, Papa. I want you to drink it. You have some (McCarthy 23).” In his life, the boy has never had anything so exotic and bubbly, yet he still shares this drink with his father who had already consumed a cola before. The boy shares it with his father with the understanding that he may never drink anything like it again. This act demonstrates the depth of the bond between the man and the boy. The bond is also shown when the man tries to secretly sneak the boy all the hot cocoa, but the boy catches on. “You promised not to do that, the boy said. What? You know what, Papa. He poured the hot water back into the pan and took the boy’s cup and poured some of the cocoa into his own and then handed it back. I have to watch you all the time, the boy said (McCarthy 34).” The man has a generous heart and wants to give all the luxuries to the boy. However, it is show that the man is not the only one looking out for someone because the boy is looking out for him as well. Throughout the journey the man and boy never had a peaceful interaction …show more content…
Christ is implemented in myriad texts as a source of light in a fallen world and to justify the plot that good shall ultimately triumph evil. Authors create a parallel between the character and Christ in hopes to deepen the sacrifices by emulating Christ 's actions and wisdom. The man represents Christ in many ways such as being in continuous agony. He is always coughing his lungs raw and taking care of the boy over himself. The man is wise and spouts many wise aphorisms such as “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget (McCarthy 12).” McCarthy 's world is a disgusting dump with burnt corpses and it’s hard to forget what you have seen there. The man and the boy use a humble mode of transportation all the way up to the coast. Their mode of travel was on foot with a cart which parallels Christ traveling on foot with a pack donkey. Jesus Christ also calls himself the good shepherd, and his followers are his sheep. He does not drive his followers but leads them. The sheep depend on their shepherd for guidance just as the boy depends on his father for survival. The boy will always follow the man as the boy says, “I believe you. I always believe you. I have to (McCarthy 185).” The boy believes that the man will guide him and not abandon him just like how the sheep trust in their shepherd. The most
In “The Crossing” McCarthy uses biblical allusions, symbolism, and tonal shifts in order to describe the experience of the protagonist.
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author makes various references to the Bible and to religion. Those references also can be compared on how they have changed the way of humans in real life. Along with how the boy maintains his innocence throughout this whole book even when he witnessed events that could’ve changed him. The man tried to the best of his abilities to preserve the innocence of the boy. Through all of the obstacles that they both faced, the man managed to keep the boy safe and even in his last moments he was sure that he taught his boy how to tell when people were good.
In two differing stories of departure, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Steinbeck’s standard for a writer is met by the raw human emotions exhibited in the main characters’ success and defeat.
Published three years after his death in 1961, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast illuminates the author’s time spent as an expatriate in 1920s Paris. Though the chronicle was written in a time of great turmoil for Hemingway, (divorces, poor health, paranoia, and alcoholism plagued him for many years), he reflects on the time spent there with respect and fondness. Though the life of a expatriate author in Roaring Twenties Paris seems like a dream to many, Hemingway reveals that not all times were good, in fact, there were times he and his first wife, Hadley, could not afford three meals a day. Despite his hunger, Hemingway manages to use it as a driving force in his creative venture. Through alluring descriptions of fine foods, Hemingway uses this as a distraction
The author skillfully uses literary techniques to convey his purpose of giving life to a man on an extraordinary path that led to his eventual demise and truthfully telling the somber story of Christopher McCandless. Krakauer enhances the story by using irony to establish Chris’s unique personality. The author also uses Characterization the give details about Chris’s lifestyle and his choices that affect his journey. Another literary element Krakauer uses is theme. The many themes in the story attract a diverse audience. Krakauer’s telling is world famous for being the truest, and most heart-felt account of Christopher McCandless’s life. The use of literary techniques including irony, characterization and theme help convey the authors purpose and enhance Into The Wild.
Nearly everyone is familiar with the character of Christ. While understandings of Christ as a figure of faith may vary, he is universally recognized as a historical figure. The world knows that Christ was called “Son of God,” he called people to love, and he died a painful death on the cross. He has become such an important figure that images of him show up frequently in literature. Thomas Foster, author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, outlines a wide range of characteristics common in Christ-like figures. In his list of descriptors, Foster suggests characters might be Christ figures if they have wounds reminiscent of the crucifixion, suffer in agony, or are self-sacrificing—and this is only the beginning of his list (126). Readers repeatedly identify Christ figures in literature, both because of the well-known characteristics Foster describes in his chapter on Christ figures and because readers find them through their own understandings. In Yu Hua’s
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
The most important part in writing a novel is to enable the audience to understand what is being communicated. Krakauer did so by clearly communicating his message to his audience. He wanted to share the story of McCandless, a young man who dreamt of conquering the wilderness alone. This conquest ultimately ended in failure and cast a feeling of sorrow upon his family and friends. With the exception of a slight difficulty to understand the story during certain chapters, Krakauer’s novel was full of thrill of emotion and life-lessons.
The story, The Road, begins with an unnamed man and boy in the woods. The story is set in a “post-apocalyptic world,” with the date, time and location unknown. “McCarthy himself imagines the disaster to be a meteor strike, although he claims that "his money is on humans destroying each other before an environmental catastrophe sets in (Cooper);” others say they see the setting as a post nuclear war setting. Throughout the reading, the reader can assume that the story takes place in the United States because the man mentions following the “state roads.” We first see the man and boy in the woods, it is morning time and the man has just risen from his sleep. He checks on the boy and then walks to the road to get his bearings. He thinks it is October but is unsure because he has not kept a calendar in a long time, indicating that the area has been desolate for an extended amount of time. They plan to move South, hoping that the climate will provide for less harsh winters. When he goes back to camp, the boy wakes up and they have breakfast. After they eat, they pack up all their belongings and head along the road. They push a cart with supplies and carry a knapsack with their essential belongings, should they need to abandon the cart and run for safety. They come across an abandoned gas station where the man finds old bottles of oil they can burn in their lamp and a phone where he tries to dial the number to his father’s house but there is no phone service any more. They continue their walk after gathering all they could from the station. They crest a hill and see all the ashen houses and billboards in the city below. They make camp for the night under a rock cliff after it starts to rain. The next morning they walk through the city...
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...
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.
I have conflicting thought regarding Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. My initial thoughts of the novel were that it was solely built on the complete devastation of two characters lives and the surrounding landscape and their constant search for survival. However after giving it further insight I discovered the underlying messages of the importance of good and bad people in my life, the beauty of the little things in life and constant greed showed by desperate individuals. I believe the novels successes comes from the messages of the significant value of human life and the importance of memories in our lives.
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.