Theme Of Survival

Matt B

In the novel The Road and the film The Revenant the theme of survival is shown by The Man, The Boy and Hugh Glass scavenging food and using things such as a horse carcass, blankets and fire to prevent hyperthermia. Survival is the state or fact of continuing to live or exist. This essay will argue how The Revenant and The Road both compare to the theme survival. Also in the films 28 days later and The Pianist also follow the theme survival and I will compare examples to show this theme.

In the novel The Road we can see that there is a theme of survival. The man is walking around an old orchard and stumbles across a dried apple slightly buried in the ground. An excerpt from the novel sais ‘dry and almost tasteless. But an apple. He ate it entire

Another excerpt from the book to show this is ‘ The snow fell nor did it cease to fall. He woke all night and got up and coaxed the fire to life again. He’d unfolded the tarp and propped one end of it up’. From this we understand that fire and heat is key to surviving during the nights of this cold barren world. Also The Man is focused on keeping his son warm to by him waking up all night to make sure the fire doesn’t go out. In the film The Revenant there is also a theme of survival. In this scene Hugh Glass uses a horse carcass to sleep inside of overnight to stay warm and to prevent hyperthermia considering it’s a very cold snowy place he is in. As the scene unrolls we see a close up of his face inside the horse carcass breathing out condensation. From this we see that it is very cold and essential that he uses the horse carcass for heat to survive. It also shows that Hugh Glass is smart and thinks fast as he just fell off a cliff with the horse and because the horse died he uses it to survive. In another scene we see a mid shot of Hugh Glass catching a fish in a fish trap that he made out of rocks. He then grabs it out of the water and eats