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Literary analysis essay of the road by cormac mccarthy
Literary analysis essay of the road by cormac mccarthy
The road cormac mccarthy literary analysis
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For years, post-modern writers have foreshadowed what the end of the world would look like through dramatic representations in literary works. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx & Crake, are no exception to this. Delving into the complexities that underlie man’s existence on Earth, these authors use their novels as vehicles to depict a post-apocalyptic world, in which all that once was is reduced to an inconceivable wasteland, both figuratively and literally.
From the beginning, McCarthy establishes a stage for his readers with a beautifully worded yet painstakingly morose description of the wasteland in which his characters occupy: “Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before (McCarthy 3). Throughout the novel, the author makes a number of similar statements as he continuously conjures images of this “desolate country” in a markedly horrendous way. Through vivid imagery and a blend of short, choppy sentences to show the disconnectedness of the world, McCarthy successfully paints a picture of a bleak land, one that appears, at most times, to be completely uninhabited: “The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash” (McCarthy 177). McCarthy also pays particular attention to the smallest, minute details that enable readers to visualize the new world. When describing the road, for example, the author seeks not to reveal the crevices of a heavily traveled path of asphalt, but instead to depict the electrical appliances scattered about the side of the road; the apple orchards in ruin, dark and deformed. These are the images of the world, or at least of what remains of the world, that stick ...
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...as been done is not an advancement of society, but instead a desecration. Upon realizing this, he takes what appears to be his only way out: death.
Once all has been said and done, one is able to come to one final conclusion about post-apocalyptic literature in the 21st century. No matter what it includes, or lacks, the predominance of the wasteland mentality is simply unavoidable in post-apocalyptic literature. The subject matter offers too rich of substance for it to be neglected, and for that reason writers like McCarthy and Atwood play it up in their respective novels. Given the chance to create scenic images and that one might never be afforded the opportunity to, these authors use their novels as a medium for foreshadowing a world that could be if humans continue at the rate they are going. Now, the only question is if their predictions will ever come true.
In stories such as “The Cloak of Anarchy”, and “Footfall”(with Jerry Pournelle), he adeptly uses his writing skill and imagination to allow you to see into another place; he also shows no trepidation in including societal situations and political opinions which are even more thought provoking. The story begins with a description of the setting, which is a futuristic California . To be precise the San Diego, and Los Angeles areas. Long known for its expansive freeways, and exorbitant smog and pollution. The area is transformed to lush greenery: “Square in the middle of ...
Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a tragic piece about a woman fleeing with her child, the husband ditched in isolation. The mood of the poem is dark and lonesome, by imagining the painting the writer was describing I felt grim because of what the family went through. As reported in the text, ”Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.” This demonstrates the understanding of why they deserted the farmhouse. The author also composes, “And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.” This proves that the residence was unaccompanied. When placing the final touches, the reader begins feeling dark and lonesome, asking about the families disappearance.
The tone is set in this chapter as Krakauer uses words to create an atmosphere of worry, fear, and happiness in McCandless’s mind. “The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing”(4). McCandless is on the path of death, which creates worry and fear for the young boy. “He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited,” (6). Alex is very excited and care free, which Krakauer used to his advantage in making the tone of Alex’s mind happy. The author creates tones to make the reader feel the moment as if the readers were sitting there themselves. Krakauer uses dialogue and setting to create the mixed tones of this chapter. As one can see from the quotes and scenery the author uses tones that are blunt and are to the point to make the reader feel as though the emotions are their own. Krakauer uses plenty of figurative language in this chapter. He uses figurative language to support his ideas,to express the surroundings, and tone around the character. To start the chapter he uses a simile describing the landscape of the area, “…sprawls across the flats like a rumpled blanket on an unmade bed,” (9). This statement is used to make reader sense the area and set the mood for the chapter. The use of figurative language in this chapter is to make a visual representation in the readers mind. “It’s satellites surrender to the low Kantishna plain” (9).
cold, harsh, wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house. More rundown than any of our classmates’ houses. In winter my mother’s riotous flowers would be absent, and the shack stood revealed for what it was. A gray, decaying...
Imagine a world where everything is black and covered in layers of ash, where dead bodies are scattered throughout the streets and food is scarce. When earth, once green and alive, turns dark and deadly. A story about a man, his son and their will to survive. Within the novel Cormac McCarthy shows how people turn to animalistic and hasty characteristics during a post-apocalyptic time. Their need to survive tops all other circumstances, no matter the consequences. The hardships they face will forever be imprinted in their mind. In the novel, The Road, author Cormac McCarthy utilizes morbid diction and visual imagery to portray a desperate tone when discussing the loss of humanity, proving that desperate times can lead a person to act in careless ways.
Novelist Cormac McCarthy believes his dark books reflect the harsh events of human nature. McCarthy had a vision of life that was plain and simple in his mind making it harder for some readers to accept. In an interview Oprah asks McCarthy where the apocalyptic dream came from and he replied “I went and stood at a window, and I could hear the trains coming through, a very lonesome sound. I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and I thought a lot about my little boy” (New York Times
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America. However, although the owners of industry found themselves better off wages didn’t rise equally, causing the gap between the rich and poor to grow markedly. Parkinson argues that the settings “represent [these] alternative worlds of success and failure in a modern capitalist society”. The valley of ashes symbolises this failure and moral decay, acting as a foil to the affluent “world of success”, East Egg, and highlighting that the lower classes must suffer to support its existence. This setting is introduced in Chapter 2 and is described as where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”. The personification of the environment creates the sense that these failures are rooted in the land, suggesting that poverty is an inescapable part of American society. This is emphasised through the use of tripling which creates a sense of endlessness. By describing the men who live there as “crumbling through the pow...
It could be said that tragedies serve as Humanity’s catalysts of thought. When we line up literary eras with wars, the shifts in eras are always marked by some war- especially in America. The Romantic period was broken by the dawn of the civil war, and took a little magic from the world of writing. Writing shifted to realism, which was the polar opposite of romantic thought. When the First World War broke out, the modernist movement overshadowed realism. Similarly, the Second World War produced postmodernism. Should there be another horrible tragedy, the view will shift similarly. Whatever the implications may be, tragedies seem to change how us humans think and act. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, he tells the story of a group of schoolboys
In There Will Come Soft Rains, Bradbury discusses about an exceptionally high technology, virtual house that maintains to perform its each day routine even though its occupants are dead and gone. The account clearly tells of the technological revolution, as well as the atomic warfare, and its outcome on society. The irony of this story bases on the fact that the human beings have been victims of destruction rather than beneficiaries of their own technological inventions. The atomic bombings that occurred in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan are some of the recent memories in 1951. Many readers and critics consider Bradbury’s images of the desolate planet to be haunting and cautionary. The story mentions that machinery has prevailed over humans and in one way or another, it provides an overview that the humankind might have fallen under the authoritative nuclear bomb (Hedin 53). The story proves that Bradbury was a man that was well ahead of...
Apocalyptic literature gives people some type of hope in a time of crises. A crises could be defined as a time when people think the world is ending, a war going on, maybe even a natural disaster like a flood that wipes out everything. The 17th century was a time where apocalyptic literature helped people feel more at ease when a crisis was occurring. Many people in that time period were on the line of poor and with no power, which made it even more important to have some type of hope.
Margaret Mitchell’s epic tale is impossible to dissolve down to a “brief” description. Her story is the War and Peace of Southern Literature. It is a tale of extremes and contrasts, telling the tragic story of peaceful affluence destroyed by the ravages of war and the destitution and desolation of its aftermath. It is a love story that examines the motivations of the heart contrasted against the will to survive. It is a story of the destruction of an aristocratic society and its disintegration from nobility, honor and hope to humility, disgrace and despair. It is a historical novel and graphic retelling of the Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South as well as a journal of the human side of those events as it recounts the characters struggles to adapt as their lives and their world crumbles. Gone with the Wind is a literary classic that gives the reader a compelling history wrapped in a thrilling romance. Mitchell recreates an idyllic Antebellum Society complete with simpering Southern Belles and Noble Gentlemen, grand plantations and vast fields of cotton, privileged white land-owners contrasted against the poverty of captive black slaves. She details a horrific reenactment of the bloody clash between the Southern Rebels and the Northern Yankees, then like the Phoenix, she raises the South from its own ashes to a new, but very different way of life. Somehow in this rich and vibrant historical tale she manages to bring her equally rich and vibrant character’s lives along the same metaphorical path of affluence, destruction and survival in a mesmerizing account that is the stuff of legend.
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.
This short story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. It is unclear to the readers how the world got to be this way. This story takes place four years after all this chaos began. The narrator does an excellent job setting the scene throughout the story using lots of details. It is revealed throughout the story that it takes place during
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.