The conflict through the duration of The Road has been survival. The man has always known he was going to die, but the man never gave up because he had to keep his son alive. In this final section of the novel, the man finally accepts that he is going to die. After being shot with an arrow the man’s health rapidly deteriorates even more than it has. The father and son switch rolls in this final section of the book. The boy starts caring for his father as he approaches death. Now the boy’s main concern is his father’s health. This transaction of responsibility shows that the boy has grown and become more mature. McCarthy’s use of foreshadowing the man’s death built up throughout the book, and it made the audience believe that the man would finally die of his mysterious sickness. …show more content…
The man died primarily because of being shot in the leg with an arrow, but he also died because of his underlying sickness. The author has a very interesting look on death. Death has been looming above this plot like fog on a river. In the beginning of the novel death was seen as an escape from the toxic world. I found the man’s death to rather anticlimactic. McCarthy could have ended the book with more purpose, but instead the young boy is just passed on to another group of travelers. Even though the boy does grow he does not show much independence. Over the course of the novel the boy has shown sympathy towards almost every other traveler they came across. The boy never truly understands that they cannot afford to help the more unfortunate people because the cost is their own lives. I think McCarthy’s goal was to show how the trip to the coast and his relationship with his father helped the boy grow, but the boy didn’t show much
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.
...in other parts of the novel, for example when he shot the man who threatened the boy’s life, those actions were always for the purpose of survival and to protect himself and his son. The pressure of living in a post-apocalyptic setting causes the man to always be in a highly strained emotional state and this is one of the main reasons why he reacted to the thief in such an outrageous manner. This suggests that the man is a product of his environment and so his behaviour is determined by external conditions, implying that the man lacks agency and autonomy to some extent. McCarthy’s representation of the man’s character in this extract encourages the reader to think about whether moral rules, which were established in a normal civilisation, can still exist in a world where all civilisation is destroyed and if they can how will people ensure that they are carried out.
In The Road McCarthy establishes a post-apocalyptic world in which the majority of population are cannibals. It is established that the public (majority) is hazardous to the two protagonist of the novel. The father and son are forced to kill or be killed. By thrusting the father and son into a world with their actions are predicated by the actions of the public, McCarthy is attempting to illustrate the significant influence one’s environment has on an individual. When the father and son are together in seclusion McCarthy showcases maturity in each of the characters. The conversations they have become more philosophical.
McCarthy established his work to demonstrate the facts of immorality, fear, and the end of American standards in the aftermath of a terrible truth. In the novel, the shortage of resources has driven many survivors to murder, robbery, and even cannibalism. The principle of the narrative is the result of the shocking event that life is considered to nothing more than survival. Therefore, people in the region became very frustrated and are so agreeable under certain situation to hand over the most important concept in their life, which is their humanity and lose everything in order to survive. But, in every time and in every place in the world, we can find individuals who can continue to live stronger and are able to hold onto their morals in life. The father and the boy fight to keep what humanity they have left to be the good guys after they have realized that keeping humanity while surviving is important in someone’s life, While it is easier to turn to evil and become a bad
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate on the mind on the present moment. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a man and his son, who remain unnamed throughout the novel, are on a journey heading south after an unnamed catastrophe has struck the world. The conditions they face are unforgiving: rotting corpses, fires, abandoned towns and houses. The man and his son are among the few living creatures remaining on Earth who have not been driven to murder, rape, and cannibalism. Unfortunately, the father’s health worsens as they travel, and by the time they reach the ocean, he passes away. The boy remains by his side for days until the boy meets a kind family who invites him to join them. The boy must say goodbye to his father,
In turn, The Road generates many themes throughout the book, but the most prominent is the unbreakable bond between a father and ...
...son dies, it really does not mean anything to the doctors, except a free bed. This scene plus the others which take place in the hospital show change in the way that men pull together when someone is in need. The hospital scenes also show that men are so accustomed to death, they know when someone is going to die, and can tell the degree of an injury when it happens.
The book, Into The Wild, has a very intriguing storyline. The protagonist, Christopher Johnson McCandless, also known as Alexander Supertramp, faced internal and external conflicts throughout his journey. One example of an internal conflict that he faced through was his complications with his family. He discovered that his father, Walt McCandless, had been living two completely different lives for several years. Christopher was born to his mother, Billie, while Walt was currently married to his first wife, Marcie. Two years after his birth, Walt became a father to another child, which belonged to Marcie. I believe that Chris was filled with anger and felt betrayed, but kept it to himself. An example of an external conflict that he encountered was the nature. He was filled with confidence that he could survive in the wilderness. Even though many individuals warned him and attempted to scare him off, he declined all of their suggestions and continued his plans. Chris attempted to strive through the wild and harsh climates, but failed to do so. People had different theories about his death.
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
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.
As Mccarthy once said “The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero. (Mary McCarthy)” In this quote, McCarthy means the main characters in the story are suspenseful to draw the reader to be anxious. Above all, the author incorporates the use of literary terms in his or her’s story to create the feeling of suspense. To be specific, in the story “The Hitchhiker” by Lucille Fletcher, the author includes the elements foreshadowing and supernatural to leave the reader anticipated and anxious what is going on in the story. Also, in “The Monkey's Paw” by W.W Jacobs, the author develops suspense by adding literary devices such as situational irony and cliffhanger
Through the use of recurring ideas of death, hope and reality, McCarthy conveys that there is no escape; either from the universal destruction caused by the apocalypse or the emotionally destructive effects of dreams. In The Road, dreams reveal the human nature of the characters. McCarthy illustrates the gradual dehumanization of people when life completely changes; he argues that all the terrible things that people could do have already been done, underlining the frailty of our existence. McCarthy ultimately shows us how reliant we are on the past and that we must let go of the past to make way for the future.
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...
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 is Soyinka’s writing on the nation’s wall. He draws a society that is on the road to death and dissolution, a society for which there seems no hope. Perhaps, like Professor, who speaks of death as the moment of our rehabilitation, this society will have to die before it learns the truth. (Roscoe, p. 281). The Road is Soyinka’s most mature work. He displays in this play his usual ability to create living characters, which unlike the rest are more diverse and more deeply explored. In this play songs present life’s progress towards death that reduces everything into nothing. It is a skillfully handled play with fine use of songs. The very first song reveals the quest of man for the essence of death, which alone will explain the meaning of life. It also brings out the truth that loss of belief and conviction has produced a society in a state of transition.