The final element McCarthy provides to prove his theme is the wife who loses the battle for survival and takes her own life. Opposite of the man, the wife is symbolic of the loss of hope. She is the character who changes the most due to the horrific apocalypse. She exemplifies the portion of society who could not adjust to the new catastrophic world and chose to give up. Before her passing, she exclaims to the man, “My only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart”(). Unlike the man and the boy, the wife hopes for death instead of a rebirth of society. The wife views the world in a pessimistic way and chooses not to view the outcome of living through the horrendous apocalypse. Before the wife left her family he exclaims,
And in the interview, when the host Winfrey asks a question about “where did this apocalyptic dream come from?” And McCarthy responded to her by mentioning his son John, and McCarthy says about one night, he checked in a hotel with his son John, and John fell to sleep. He felt this town is nothing moving, but he could hear the trains going through. And he came up an image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years, then he thought a lot about his son John, and 4 years later, he finished the novel “The Road.” In the late of the interview, McCarthy said: My son practically convert to this book and without him, this book would not come
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
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. John Grady begins the story with no answers, and at the end he still doesn’t have a clue. There is no resolution for him; there are only more questions, conflicts, and misunderstandings. I think that McCarthy’s point is that to live romantically is to live without cause, without real hope, and ultimately without love. Despite the author’s obvious compassion for John Grady and his idealism, he shows us through romantically descriptive writing that a romantic lifestyle cannot work in this world. The book ends with John Grady riding out into the sunset, having learned nothing, with no place to go. Until the character learns how to compromise with society and give up his romanticism, his life will have no purpose.
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
First, the author uses Figurative language to develop the theme by the mother uses a metaphor to describe her life and how difficult it was. It says, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters. And boards were torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.“This shows the author use Figurative language to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because life is going to throw obstacles at you and you have to try to avoid them. This shows the theme because instead of going back down the staircase where there are no problems you have to push through to get over the problem. Second, the author uses Symbol to develop the theme by using the staircase that represents life and life is hard and there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us It says, “ I’ve been a-climbing’ on, And reachin’ landings, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. “This shows the author used Symbol to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because the mother kept going non-stop. This is important to notice because there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us. To, sum up, the author of “Mother to Son” revealed the theme through Figurative language and
The wife lived in denial, trying to live the life of a perfect person unaffected by what had happened to her son Buck. A certain image had to be upheld and everything else was secondary. Even the love for her husband was not as perfect as it was shown..She tries to keep these feelings and memories of her lost son buried deep inside her. She finds it very difficult to show any emotion concerning the fact that one of her sons is never coming back. She tried to portray an image of things being just perfect. Her portrayal includes not wanting to discuss anything that may upset her, she is always walking away from the conversation. It seems as though she does it in every scene. The scene that caught my attention the most was at the end, when she walked away from Calvin after he said he wasn’t sure if he still loved her. That is a pretty powerful statement, and you would think she would want to know why. I’m sure she did, she just didn’t know how to discuss it. So par for the course, she walked away, with something else she will have to tuck away for the rest of her life.
The irony at the end of this story is very interesting. O’ Connor forces the reader to wonder which characters are “Good Men”, perhaps by the end of the story she is trying to convey two points: first, that a discerning “Good Man” can be very difficult, second that a manipulative, self centered, and hollow character: The Grandmother is a devastating way to be, both for a person individually and for everyone else around them. The reader is at least left wondering if some or all of the clues to irony I provided apply in some way to the outcome of this story.
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...
...was a desperate act of a lonely, insane woman who could not bear to loose him. The structure of this story, however, is such that the important details are delivered in almost random order, without a clear road map that connects events. The ending comes as a morbid shock, until a second reading of the story reveals the carefully hidden details that foreshadow the logical conclusion.
...pair, and victory is only an illusion of philosophers and fools.” (Faulkner. 48) Perhaps Mr. Compson knew that this too was a battle that they could not win but perhaps prolong. With Mr. Compson dead, Mrs. Compson is left as the symbol of the Compson house, which in fact ends up being sadly accurate. The house, the family name, and the values she and her husband tried to instill into their children are all crumbling beneath themselves. “Faulkner’s title echoes the most famous protest against a life without a climax. But Macbeth, by finding his resolving action, diverts his drama from the idiotic tomorrows signifying nothing.” (Warwick Wadlington. 4) Just like Macbeth from which the title originates, the family will turn to nothing and continue to live on no longer without so much as a whimper; taking with it the ideals, values, customs, and culture of the old South.
With the son’s fear amongst the possibility of death being near McCarthy focuses deeply in the father’s frustration as well. “If only my heart were stone” are words McCarthy uses this as a way illustrate the emotional worries the characters had. ( McCarthy pg.11). Overall, the journey of isolation affected the boy just as the man both outward and innerly. The boys’ journey through the road made him weak and without a chance of any hope. McCarthy states, “Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all” (McCarthy pg. 28). The years of journey had got the best of both, where they no longer had much expectation for
Helen takes a turn for the better by the end of this story. She ends up finding the man that she deserves, she
The "first wives" decide to take action against their ex-husbands and seek revenge for both material and egotistical reasons. The women had been friends through college, and continue to be a source of constant support for one another even now. Upon learning that a close friend from college had committed suicide because of her first husband, they decide to stop feeling sorry for themselves and do something about what's been going on.
In the end, both characters experienced freedom in exchange for hefty sacrifices. The woman goes insane. She has delusions of freeing a woman from the ugly wallpaper, but in the end, it was she that wanted freedom. In the ending scene, she exclaims to her husband, "I've got out at last" (Lynch para. 263). He faints in response, ironically taking on a feminine quality that he had previously undermined. Finally, Gilman depicts the woman “creeping” over her husband to illustrate a victory over a long-time oppressor, which emphasizes the power within women to stand against the dictatorial actions of men (Lynch 263-264; “Analysis: What’s up with the ending” para. 3).
One theme in this story is forbidden freedom. The freedom represents Louise’s independence that she receives from hearing about the death of her husband. Louise is only able to dream of that independence for a little time since in the end her husband turned out to be alive. Another theme is the oppression of her marriage. Even though Louise describes her husband as loving and caring she still feels joy after hearing he is dead. The motif of this story is weeping which is something Louise either does or thinks about doing throughout the story. She even imagines herself weeping over Mr. Mallard’s dead body. The only time she is not weeping is when she is thinking of her new found freedom. An important and most used symbol throughout the story would be the open window. After hearing about her husband’s death she goes upstairs where she barricades herself in her room starring out the window. Louise gazes through this open window during most of the story. While looking out the open window she dreams of her endless freedom and the opportunities it