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 Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author makes various references to the Bible and to religion. Those references also can be compared to how they have changed
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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. It can be said that religion is one of the most controversial topics in our time.
Everyone has their own different opinion of how they want to interpret religion, but there are always some common things that can be picked out from any religion and that is the image of a prophet or a Messianic figure. That can be seen in McCarthy’s book that the boy is seen in the image of a Messiah, because he has been kept pure throughout all of the havoc that has happened. There was an instance when the father was looking at the boy and he thought: “Then he just sat there holding his binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: if he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). What can be taken from that part is that it is uncertain if the boy believes in God, but it is certain without a doubt that the man does. He believes that the boy could be a symbol of holiness. Shelly Rambo asks the question of, “how are we to interpret this language within the context of a world that bas collapsed? The context is critical here. How do we read images such as the breath of God and the Messianic references to the boy after the end of the world?” (Rambo 104). Like stated before, everyone will have their own interpretation of what is said in this book. Some will interpret it with a deep spiritual meaning and some may not have a literal interpretation to it. But it can be seen that the boy might have the same type of …show more content…
meaning when he is described as holding the fire. Throughout McCarthy’s novel a “fire” has been mentioned. The man has used the meaning of fire in order to keep the boy moving forward and to keep him motivated: “We’re going to be okay, arent we papa? Yes. We Are. And nothing bad is going to happen to us. That’s right. Because we’re carrying the fire. Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire” (MaCarthy 83). The fire could also be a symbol for light which means faith and hope, but fire is also used to describe the end times in biblical references. Because throughout this book the environment is that of what is described in the Bible. Although that is another viewpoint, the author may have been leaning more towards making the boy the symbol for light, because he is the one that always gives hope to the father that the son is the one that can make a difference in a world that is filled with such evil. That the boy is the ray of sunshine that can be seen in between all of the surrounding darkness. “the word "light" appears in the narrator's voice as the translation of the word "fire" that the father has been using.” (Schaub 162). With the boy being the light, it means that he has no sin, that he is pure and that no matter what he sees, he will always stay pure. He preferred to help people and to be kind, but his father was more concerned with survival and that they stayed safe: “The father has come to recognize that the boy has values that transcend mere survival, and that they are fundamental to the boy's character. Values no amount of experience will extinguish.” (Schuab 162). While the boy is the symbol of innocence McCarthy also talks about death, and how death itself is performing a deconstruction for the beliefs of religions.
“it’s snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single grey flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of Christendom” (McCarthy 16). By that quote, it can be interpreted that Christianity has expired as if it were that small snowflake that melted. Squire comments about religion being a snowflake when she states: “The snowflake, as it melts, performs a deconstructive dissolution of our very sense of being, yet it also leaves us, as the boy is left, standing on as ‘witness’ to its demise” (Squire 222). During this post-apocalyptic time, it is difficult for someone to stay true to their religion. It is more about survival and how one will protect themselves and their loved ones, and from then on the commandments will be broken and man will find themselves in a situation that they will not be able to get out of. But there is always that small light that gives people hope that things will be okay. In this book the boy is thought to be “the one” who will live on. Because he is the only one who survives out of his family, as well as what the boy has encountered when he sees death. “Of the three, it is the boy who provides the reader with the most intense, but also the frailest, form of ‘living’ in the face of death’s imminence. Acutely vulnerable, he is painfully
undernourished and constantly afraid. His hopes for long-term survival are uncertain, while his prospects of experiencing ‘a life worth living’ are contained within his person, having no substance in a world returned to him only as ‘death’” (Squire 223). Even though it is the boy who ends up living, it can be seen that he is the ray of sunshine that is needed in those dark times. In the final pages of the book the author mentions a stream filled with water. Water is a sign of life, but spiritually water means a cleanser of sins. The boy is the symbol for innocence upon a world filled with evil and torment along with the water that provides as a cleanser. When talking about the biblical references, the boy can be seen as being Jesus and the water is Holy Water. All the hope doesn’t matter in the end, because everything will not be as it was before. It will be of no significance in the end because many things will not be right anymore. The world is filled with puzzles and mazes that are meant to change us, but what the author might be trying to say is that we as people must always find hope in the darkest situations. Even if it affects us greatly, we must find the positive things in all of the negativity that surrounds us. “On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again.” (McCarthy 287).
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
Throughout centuries, humans have expressed different perspectives toward a single idea. The subject of religion invites challenging discussions from skeptical minds because religion is diversely interpreted based on personal faith. The authoress sets her novel in a fictional town, Cold Sassy, where religion plays a predominant role in people’s lives. Through Will Tweedy’s narration she explores the religious opinions of the town’s most prominent citizen Rucker Blakeslee, Will’s grandpa. Although Blakeslee spent his whole life in a religiously conservative town, he has a radical approach toward religious concepts such as predestination, suicide, funerals, faith, and God’s will, thus forcing him to challenge the traditional views of organized religion.
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
Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional novel “Cat’s Cradle”, indirectly explores issues that parallels into topics such as religion, scientific/technological advancements, political power and much more. Vonnegut’s novel is narrated by a character named Jonah (John). He, Jonah, sets out to write an anthropological book based off of what key people were doing on the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Throughout Vonnegut’s novel it can clearly represents how a writer can become a very destructive person to society. As for this novel, it shows through the uses of parallels that a writer can become a very destructive person to society, these parallels are reflects to real world issues throughout his novel to show this claim, that a writer too can be a destructive person to society.
Throughout the novel the feelings the man has for his son are sacred; the man makes great sacrifices for his son to continue to live and have a future in a world that has been devastated and stripped of all humanity. The boy is the only source of light for
Religion is a pervasive theme in most of the literary works of the late Georgia writer Flannery O'Connor. Four of her short stories in particular deal with the relationship between Christianity and society in the Southern Bible Belt: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "The River," "Good Country People," and "Revelation." Louis D. Rubin, Jr. believes that the mixture of "the primitive fundamentalism of her region, [and] the Roman Catholicism of her faith . . ." makes her religious fiction both well-refined and entertaining (70-71). O'Connor's stories give a grotesque and often stark vision of the clash between traditional Southern Christian values and the ever-changing social scene of the twentieth century. Three of the main religious ingredients that lend to this effect are the presence of divine meanings, revelations of God, and the struggle between the powers of Satan and God.
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
In Cormac McCarthy’s Sci-Fi novel, “The Road”, two mysterious people, a father and his curious son, contact survival of the fittest during tragic apocalyptic times. With a shopping cart of food and supplies, they excavate into the remains of tattered houses, torn buildings and other sheltering places, while averting from troublesome communes. In the duration of the novel, they’re plagued with sickness that temporarily unable them to proceed onward. Due to the inopportune events occurring before the apocalypse, the wife of the son and father committed suicide due to these anonymous survivors lurking the remains of earth. The last people on earth could be the ‘bad guys’ as the young boy describes them. In page 47, the wife reacted to this, stating, “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won't face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I can't.”
In everyday society, we are faced with diverse issues that force us to make a decision. Whether or not our decisions are right or wrong. In the movie “Dead Man Walking”, directed by Tim Robbins, he exemplifies the following actions throughout the film. Faith and doubt is a recurring theme in the course of the film. Where we see Christians, in essence, questioning their faith. We also notice a contradiction between the Christian bible and the Hebrew bible or as most people have come to know it as the Old and the New Testament. Conflicting themes have been argued about the Old and New Testament throughout the centuries. Also, humility is a key aspect to the film. The director discreetly implies it at the end of the film so we can make a connection with the main characters. In Tim Robbins “Dead Man Walking” he entails religious ideals to allow the viewer to recognize both sides of evil.
he Road, written by Cormac McCarthy was inspired by a trip he took with his young son to El Paso Texas. He was imaging what the town would look like 100 years into the future and he though of “fires on the hill” and then thought about his son's safety. McCarthy admitted to having conversations with his brother about different scenarios for the apocalypse. For example, cannibalism, “when everything is gone, the only thing left to eat is each other.” He made some notes about this vision of his, but didn't act on it until a few years later in 2006, while in Ireland. He started and finished the novel and dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.
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.
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.
Religion in James Joyce's Dubliners Religion was an integral part of Ireland during the modernist period, tightly woven into the social fabric of its citizens. The Catholic Church was a longstanding tradition of Ireland. In the modernist spirit of breaking away from forces that inhibited growth, the church stood as one of the principal barriers. This is because the Catholic faith acted as the governing force of its people, as portrayed in James Joyce’s Dubliners. In a period when Ireland was trying to legitimize their political system, religious affiliations further disillusioned the political process. The governing body of a people needs to provide a behavioral framework, through its constitution, and a legal process to make delegations on issues of equity and fairness. When religion dominates the government that is in tact, it subjects its citizens to their religious doctrines. In terms of Catholicism in Ireland, this meant that social progress and cultural revolutions were in terms of what the church would allow. The modernist realized that this is what paralyzed the Irish society of the times. In the stories of Dubliners the legal system is replaced by the institute of religion, and it is the presence and social context of the Catholic Church which prevents the Irish community from advancement. ...
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 ...
The white institution of Christianity has been forced upon Tom since childhood to make him believe in the Puritanical tenet that individual suffering in life, guarantees a good tidings in death. Tom has been taught to read the Bible and believes that God will be with him everywhere he goes, even after he has been sold and separated from Aunt Chloe and the rest of his family. “I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it;--and thar’s one thing I can thank him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe; ---what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me,--I know he will,” (Stowe 81)...