Archetypal Criticism In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

1249 Words3 Pages

The Road: An Archetypal Criticism A master of abstract, violent stories filled with biblical alliterations, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and son traversing a barren wasteland of post-apocalyptic America on an idealistic journey on the titular road of the book. Brimming with symbolism and the ancient struggle of good vs. evil, McCarthy’s forte, he questions what would happen if a worldwide catastrophe were to occur. Father and son travel facing the evils that have perpetrated this now “godless” land. McCarthy focused on the human emotions of fear and hope as well as the dynamics of the father son relationship. But what makes his novel special is how he uses biblical allusions to deepen his novel. Turning the boy into a symbol of Christ McCarthy created an almost parable like story filled with abstract yet apparent symbolism and allusions to stories and characters from the Bible. A lifeless, ash-coated America is the setting, the book, is placed in. The two antagonists are faced with brutal weather, cannibals, starvation and the threat of isolation if one were to die. Groups of people are stowed away in hidden places as …show more content…

The end of the novel leaves you questioning the future of his world and him, but it is also full of hope because there is a savior amidst them. You can only expect that once he reaches manhood he will embody a modern Jesus transcending into holiness and save all that still carry the fire. Bringing a meaning to this dark destroyed world the boy gives a reason to live to those in that apocalyptic land. Without his parallel with Christ the boy would be just another nameless face in a sea of tragic pointless lives. Thankfully for those in the story the boy was not a mere man but something more, like Jesus meek yet incredibly powerful in their own ways, give a point and meaning where one lacked before the Christ-like figures

Show More
Related

  • Mccarthy: Use Of Analogies And Metaphors

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analogies and metaphors are used to compare things in order to help simplify a claim or make it more memorable. McCarthy uses a metaphor when stating, “Ours could have been the honor of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining, living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself” (para 7). He discusses what the United States could have been at war’s end if this country was not “losing on every front.” In this metaphor he compares the U.S. to a beacon pointing out the horrifying results of Communism as it sits around the World that is Crumbling from World War II. By comparing the country to a beacon in “a desert of destruction,” McCarthy compares the United States to humanity’s last hope at civilization. By using

    Read More

  • Dialectical Analysis Of 'The Road Lit Circle'

    795 Words  | 2 Pages

    Albert Hernandez Ms. Bolin CSU Expos Read/Write 1: Period 5 20 September 2016 The Road Lit Circle #2 Discussion Questions: On pages 84 to 86, why did the man decide to ignore the boy that the little boy saw? How does the man’s decision affect the story and the characters? What is the purpose of the red scarfs in the group of armed men?

    Read More

  • Courage For His Father In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    809 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Setting of Blood Meridian

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cormac McCarthy's setting in Blood Meridian is a landscape of endless and diverse beauty. McCarthy highlights the surprising beauty of combinations of scrubby plants, jagged rock, and the fused auburn and crimson colors of the fiery wasteland that frame this nightmarish novel. Various descriptions, from the desolate to the scenic, feature McCarthy's highly wrought, lyrical prose. Such descriptions of the divine landscape seem to serve a dual function. While being an isolated highlight to this gruesome novel, McCarthy's beautiful setting also serves as an intricate device in defining the novel's themes and creating the reality in which it is set.

    Read More

  • The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Dark Books and Human Nature in The Road by Cormac McCarthy Writings

    1078 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Biblical Allusions In The Crossing By Mccarthy

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy - Individualism vs. Society

    1676 Words  | 4 Pages

    The concept of what is "individuality" and what is not has plagued and delighted man since the dawn of time. “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy adds 302 more pages to the pile of all the works that have been on the quest to define individualism. In this novel, McCarthy takes us through four faces of the key character’s life, John Grady, to portray the idea of illusory individualism. He contends that John Grady is simply a product of a society in contrast to his (Grady) notion of free will. Simply put: Grady has no alternatives but an obligation to conform to society. McCarthy uses him to create the platform in which to comment on oppression of individuality, expectation of conformity to the values of the society and the fact that the concept of individualism is a myth.

    Read More

  • Responsibility In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    Altogether, this is a book to be read thoughtfully and more than once. It is about an unusually sensitive and intelligent boy; but, then, are not all boys unusual and worthy of understanding? If they are bewildered at the complexity of modern life, unsure of themselves, shocked by the spectacle of perversity and evil around them - are not adults equally shocked by the knowledge that even children cannot escape this contact and awareness? & nbsp;

    Read More

  • The Role Of Human Nature In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    1488 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparison of The Lord of the Flies and The Man and The Boy In the Road

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Theme Of Isolation In The Road

    2281 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the Novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, survival becomes the biggest quest to life. The novel is set to be as a scene of isolation and banishment from people and places. The author uses the hidden woods as a set of isolation for the characters, in which creates the suspense of traveling to an unspecified destination near the shore. Cormac McCarthy creates a novel on the depth of an imaginative journey, which leads to a road of intensity and despair. The journey to move forward in an apocalyptic world transforms both of the main characters father and son tremendously as time progress. In particular, the boys’ isolation takes him from hope to torment, making him become fearful and imaginative. The images indicate that McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel relies on images, particular verbal choices, and truthful evidence to how isolation affected the son emotionally and physically.

    Read More

  • Metaphors in The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    Decisions separate one’s life from another. Robert Frost proves this to be true in his poem “The Road Not Taken.” The metaphorical twist Frost uses in his words and sentence structure emphasizes the importance of different decisions and how those choices will impact the rest of one’s life.

    Read More

More about Archetypal Criticism In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

Open Document