he Road, written by Cormac McCarthy was inspired by a trip he took with his young son to El Paso Texas. He was imaging what the town would look like 100 years into the future and he though of “fires on the hill” and then thought about his son's safety. McCarthy admitted to having conversations with his brother about different scenarios for the apocalypse. For example, cannibalism, “when everything is gone, the only thing left to eat is each other.” He made some notes about this vision of his, but didn't act on it until a few years later in 2006, while in Ireland. He started and finished the novel and dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.
In addition to this history behind the novel, The Road has received a plethora of reviews and honors since it's debut. In a New York Book Review article, an author, Michael Chabon discussed the novel's relation to well-known genres. Chabon insists that The Road is not science fiction, he says, “ultimately it is as a lyrical epic of horror that The Road is best understood.” Another honor The Road received was being apart of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. During his interview he announced that his son, John Francis, was co-author of the novel. Also, during the interview he revealed that some of the conversations he and his son shared in the novel were real conversations they had shared in real life. In 2006, McCarthy was given the Jame Tait Black Memorial Prize in fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Later, in 2007, The Road was awarded the Pulitzer prize for fiction and soon after the novel was adapted into a film.
In turn, The Road generates many themes throughout the book, but the most prominent is the unbreakable bond between a father and ...
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...is glimpse of happiness in the book is beautiful because McCarthy wants to show that brief moment of love between father and son. They then head farther south through a coastal city, when more bad luck strikes. Someone shoots an arrow from a window and hits The Man in the leg. This causes The Man to become very sick which causes them to camp in the woods for a couple nights. As they getting ready for bed, the boy asks his father what color the sea is, The Man responds by saying, “ it used to be blue.” The boy then drifts off into a dead sleep dreaming about the ocean. The ocean is this scenario is a symbol of humanity that still shows in the boy. It gives one hope that in times like this someone can still think of happy things.
Works Cited
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-road/book-summary
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-road/book-summary
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.
The ending of the Blood Meridian is both abstruse and compelling. The setting when the kid first walks into town (pp.324) seems almost too familiar. This town could be any number of different towns located throughout the Midwest, but it seems strangely related to the town of Nacogdoches. The Kid, once thought to be on some sort of migratory movement to the West, has now completed a full circle and has returned to the place of his birth. Birth not in the physical sense of being delivered from his mother’s womb, but rather the Kid experienced a rebirth in the form of one of the judge’s “great clay voodoo dolls (pp.13).';
All through the times of the intense expectation, overwhelming sadness, and inspiring hope in this novel comes a feeling of relief in knowing that this family will make it through the wearisome times with triumph in their faces. The relationships that the mother shares with her children and parents are what save her from despair and ruin, and these relationships are the key to any and all families emerging from the depths of darkness into the fresh air of hope and happiness.
Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is set sometime in the future after a global disaster in which tells a story of a nameless boy and father who both travel along a highway that stretches to the East coast. This post-apocalyptic novel shows the exposes of terrifying events such as cannibalism, starvation, and not surviving portraying the powerful act of the man protecting his son from all the events in which depicts Cormac McCarthy’s powerful theme of one person sacrificing or doing anything humanly possible for the one they love which generates the power of love.
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,
This story contains an almost equal balance of good and evil, though it also raises questions of what is truly good. It blurs the line between good and selfish or thoughtless. Characters’ actions sometimes appear impure, but in the long run, are good.
It is often said that a dog is a man’s best friend. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Crossing, a deep affection and fondness are established between man and animal. In a particular excerpt from the novel, Cormac illustrates the protagonist’s sorrow that was prompted from the wolf’s tragic death. As blood stiffens his trousers, the main character seeks to overcome the cold weather and fatigue with hopes of finding the perfect burial site for the wolf. McCarthy uses detailed descriptions and terminology in his novel, The Crossing, to convey the impact of the wolf’s death on the protagonist, a sad experience incorporated with religious allusions and made unique by the main character’s point of view.
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author makes various references to the Bible and to religion. Those references also can be compared on how they have changed the way of humans in real life. Along with how the boy maintains his innocence throughout this whole book even when he witnessed events that could’ve changed him. The man tried to the best of his abilities to preserve the innocence of the boy. Through all of the obstacles that they both faced, the man managed to keep the boy safe and even in his last moments he was sure that he taught his boy how to tell when people were good.
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.
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.
In McCarthy’s novel The Road, one of the main issues deals with cannibalism and the moral/ethic issues of survival. Though McCarthy depicts cannibalism negatively in this post-apocalyptic world, it is apparent that cannibalism is necessary for humans to survive when there is no real food to eat. Whether they know what’s actually good vs what is actually bad, they still have a reason to try and stay alive even though things are absolutely terrible around them. Staying alive, to carry the fire for the good of humanity. In a world where everything is just coming to an end, people resort to eating each other in order to stay alive. Where there are bad and good people, but what does it actually mean to be bad? Eating human beings or not helping those people in need of help?
Balance is a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. Without balance, there would be an overload of one element and a lack of another. There would be no sense of harmony or feelings of wholenesses. In his novel The Road, author Cormac McCarthy displays a great deal of balance. His oeuvre involves both a positive and uplifting view of humanity, and one of darkness and pessimism. Sometimes McCarthy writes about one of the main characters in the novel, a young boy, and how much tenderness and compassion he posses inside him. Other times McCarthy mentions the people that have turned to cannibalism in order to survive and the horrendous acts of cruelty that they have performed to other human beings. In addition,
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...
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.
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 ...