Losing Humanity As The World Ends
According to the critics of Rotten Tomato (2009), “The (movie) Road's commitment to Cormac McCarthy's dark vision may prove too unyielding for some”. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and portrays how humans have taken a horrific turn by losing morals and traditional values. A world of destruction sometimes leads individuals to (essentially) lose their humanity.
Throughout the course of the book, there haven’t been many encounters with others. When there are, they often compare the father and son with others. The passage on page 90 demonstrates the loss of humanity of the people traveling down the road. The scary encounter of these people
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is foreshadowed when Papa says, “Keep your face down. Don’t look” (90).
This foreshadowing brings emphasis on these people walking down the road, informs that readers this scene is something that will make the boy look away. The word choices of (the words) “tramping” and “clanking” gives the travelers non-human like features. This reinforces the foreshadowing, when the father told the boy to look away, the father didn’t want the boy to witness these almost inhumane travelers. Also, McCarthy repeats “tramping” twice. This repetition reminds the readers these travelers are not “human”, that they are not “carrying the fire” or not people with pure intentions. The simile comparing the travelers marching to “wind-up toys” (90) again, gives a non-human trait to these people that they are almost “programmed” and are marching without thinking. Finally, McCarthy describes the catamite, or a boy kept for homosexual practices. He writes, “a supplementary consort of catamites ill clothed against the cold and fitted in dog collars and yoked to each other” (90). The words “ill clothed” describes the inhumane and embarrassing conditions of the slaves by suggesting they weren’t dressed in much clothing. Also, the word choice in “dog collars” and “yoked” portray the way these travelers are treating …show more content…
these slaves, as if they are animals. The mood of this passage is grim and scary, as the words “terrified”, “shuddering”, “spears”, “chains”, and “blades” are used. These words don’t contain positive connotations. The specified descriptions of the weapons create a grim and dark mood, supported by the words “terrified” and “shuddering” to create a fearful tension. This passage literary devices uncovers certain people treating others inhumanely in a devastated world. McCarthy shows another example of people losing their humanity in the passage about the cannibalism in the “once grand house”.
The words “cold” and “damp” create a dark mood. This mood prepares the readers for the next scene by creating an eerie setting. This passage has a lot of imagery; for example, when McCarthy says, “a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt” (110). This imagery clearly depicts the cannibalism that the owners of the house are doing. Cannibalism is frowned upon and considered an act of evil, meaning these people have lost their morals to eat other humans. Additionally, the repetition of imagery, specifically smells, emphasizes the smell of the burnt flesh and the non sanitary conditions. This again, helps the readers imagine what the scene smells like. Finally, an indication of pureness vanishing from this horrendous scene is when McCarthy says, “then flicked the lighter and swung the flame out over the darkness like an offering” (110). Swinging the flame like an offering is a symbol of hope. The father and the son frequently talk of “carrying the fire” which signifies having hope for the world and humanity as well as having pureness, not doing horrible things, such as killing a dog. Later when they leave the basement, the father “dropped the lighter” (110). This motif suggests that the fire is gone, thus the hope for humanity in the world is gone. This passage is a point in the book which shows people have lost
their humanity and morals. In a world of devastation, some people will change by losing their humanity and morals in a global crisis. How long do you think it takes for people to finally give in to the harsh realities of a destroyed world? Molding into a given environment happens very frequently in our society, schools, and social circle. The struggle the father and his son have in this book accurately shows two people trying to hold onto their good will.
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.
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
Cormac McCarthy is an American best known for his many different novels. He was born in Providence , Rhode Island as Charles McCarthy Jr, but later in his life he decided to change his name to Cormac, which was after an Irish King, which also meant “son of Charles”(“Cormac McCarthy”, Biography.com). His parents had 6 children and he was the youngest of them all. In 1937, McCarthy’s father, Charles Joseph McCarthy was offered a job for the Tennessee Valley Authority to be a lawyer, which was the reason the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee (“Biography”, Cormacmccarthy.com). Cormac McCarthy went to Catholic High School in Knoxville because his family raised him as Roman Catholic. After he graduated from high school, he went to college at the University of Tennessee where he majored in liberal arts from 1951 to 1952. He then left the university and joined the U.S. Air Force where he served two of his four years in Alaska as a radio show host(“Biography”, Cormacmccarthy.com).
The imagery in this passage helps turn the tone of the poem from victimization to anger. In addition to fire images, the overall language is completely stripped down to bare ugliness. In previous lines, the sordidness has been intermixed with cheerful euphemisms: the agonizing work is an "exquisite dance" (24); the trembling hands are "white gulls" (22); the cough is "gay" (25). But in these later lines, all aesthetically pleasing terms vanish, leaving "sweet and …blood" (85), "naked… [and]…bony children" (89), and a "skeleton body" (95).
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,
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.
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...
The description of the smell in the meat house was a horrible experience to the reader who actually did not witness the insident"it is an elemental odor, raw and crude, it is rich, almost sensual and strong.
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.
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
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.
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 ...
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in the post-apocalyptic world that the man and the boy live in, dreams begin to take on the form of a new “reality.” As the novel progresses, the man’s dreams, initially memories remnant of his pre-apocalypse life, become “brighter” as the boy’s dreams become darker and nightmarish. Through the use of color and distinct language, McCarthy emphasizes the contrast between reality and dreams. The man’s reliance on bad dreams to keep him tied to the harsh reality alludes to the hopelessness of the situation; he can never truly escape. McCarthy suggests that those who strive for a life that no longer exists are deluded with false hope. Having dreams is a natural human tendency, but in a world that has become so inhumane, the man can’t even afford to retain this element of being human. The loss of the past is a concept that the characters living in this ashen world struggle with, and McCarthy presents memory as a weakness to be exploited.