In the 21st century production industries all over the world are vigorously booming out more waste than our planet can recycle back into the earth. The consequences of these actions are making areas inhabitable, drastically raising the levels of pollution, and massive deforestation. The most current and threatening issue is our elevated consumption of limited fuels; it outputs heightened amounts of gases into the atmosphere damaging the ozone and heating the planet to an unsafe standard. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy seems to envisage an unfamiliar world foreseen in mankind’s future. In this eerie tale it can be assured that the author creates an obscene future to portray a specific perspective of how survival might be when the damage cannot be undone to our environment. By The focus from the perspective of a man trying to survive allows us to see what he is experiencing. McCarthy describes a dark sky with no sight of animal or plant life and a continuous fall of ashes as though everything that once burned is still falling covering the grounds with layers of ash. “Cars in the street caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust”(McCarthy 10). His repetition of the ash creates an eerie feeling and moreover, it seems to indirectly show that the damage caused by man’s ferocious destruction has a long-term aftermath on the planet that seizes to sustain any life. In this atrocious world there is no clean water to drink causing the survivors to become severely dehydrated. The damage done to the planet continues to burden those who survived in various ways; because of the continuously falling ash the water on earth is described as “black” and unsuitable for drinking
The book is often cited as an environmental classic - of which there can be little doubt - but it is also said by some to have largely triggered the modern environmental movement. Its warning about the dangers of
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 Cormac McCarthy’s Sci-Fi novel, “The Road”, two mysterious people, a father and his curious son, contact survival of the fittest during tragic apocalyptic times. With a shopping cart of food and supplies, they excavate into the remains of tattered houses, torn buildings and other sheltering places, while averting from troublesome communes. In the duration of the novel, they’re plagued with sickness that temporarily unable them to proceed onward. Due to the inopportune events occurring before the apocalypse, the wife of the son and father committed suicide due to these anonymous survivors lurking the remains of earth. The last people on earth could be the ‘bad guys’ as the young boy describes them. In page 47, the wife reacted to this, stating, “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won't face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I can't.”
“What are our long term goals? he said. what? Our long term goals...What was the answer? I don't know” (pg 160). After continuously reading the same recurring events in the book, walking on the road and scavenging food, this quote really stood out to me because not only is this something I can relate to but it's one of the few moments that the man and the boy communicates in the novel. The lack of dialogue and the book written from the third person doesn't give much information from the character's perspective. However, even so, McCarthy was able to master this distinctive form of writing and still convey the character’s motives and whatnot throughout the text. Anyways, the man seemed perplexed that the boy was even aware of the concept of
Climate change, otherwise known as global warming, has grown more apparent in recent years, with increased natural disasters, significantly warmer temperatures and unreasonably long seasons. Global warming is one of the main concerns that scientists have been researching for the past century. Scientific evidence shows that global warming is caused by human behaviors. Due to the amount of human-induced carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have been released into the air, the earth is becoming a highly poisonous place to live on. Earth’s climate has been constantly changing ever since the Industrial Revolution, when innovations began and factories were built, which emitted mass air pollution. As more technological advances continued the years after, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air also increased. According to the UPI Space Daily News, “Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main cause of global warming - increased by 45% between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010” (Writers 1). The 1900s through the 2000s is the time period in which humans caused the most air pollution by creating vehicles and other industrial machinery. In the contemporary time period, human activities that contribute to climate change consist of hydraulic fracturing, rice cultivation, the increase of fossil fuel burning, and the rise of deforestation.
Similarly, ashes take the form “of ash-grey men, who moved dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air”. (21) The stiff, weak movements show its inhabitants to be barely alive. These men have the same lack of life and vitality as their surroundings do. This is seen in the inhabitants of the valley. George Wilson, who...
The narrator looks down one road until he cannot see beyond the bend in the road as it goes into the woods.
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.
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.
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...
Ever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, fossil fuels have been used constantly, slowly changing the planet’s atmosphere. According to Mann, “the preindustrial level of CO2 was 280 parts per million (ppm)” (N. pag). He predicts that at current rates, we will reach 560 ppm by the end of the 21st century. To make matters worse, Mann states that 450 ppm is dangerous as it will cause an increase in Earth’s average temperature by 2 Celsius. He recommends taking measures to keep CO2 at less than 405 ppm (N. pag). Mann takes note that in 2013, the value managed to reach 400 ppm (N. pag). It is needless to say that the point of no return is right around the corner. Unfortunately, the affects of pollution are already felt around the world. Pollution can cause many health issues and damage several organs in the body. When people think ...
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
“The Road Not Taken” is a part of a series of poems written by Robert Frost. In the poem, the speaker is walking on foot and comes to a fork in the road where he has to choose between two paths that are right for him to take. As he is trying to figure out what route to take, he wishes he could take both routes. The path he chooses is supposed to be less worn out, but in actuality both roads are worn out equally. The phrase, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," talks about the choices we make in life and then how those choices one makes may have a difference in the long run. Even though the speaker in the poem wants to take the other road like people do today, it is hard to come from a decision someone has already made his or her mind up about. Taking the route a person has already chosen makes it easier and more exciting to take the road a person has chose. The speaker states that in the near future when he is older he will talk about how the road he chose changed his life in some way. Robert Frost uses roads and nature as a symbolic feature of figurative language to help readers visualize things in the poem.
In his poem "The Road Not Taken" Frost's theme is about how the choices one makes affect life. When we come to a fork in the road, a decision needs to be made. Both paths are different and choosing the right one – if there is a right one – will depend on where we have been. Each choice that we make plays out differently in our lives. We can look back and wonder what would have happened if we choose differently. But that is outweighed in what we would have missed. Each choice affects who we are, where we are going, and moreover our lives.
The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost is a poem about decisions and how they can impact someone’s life. However, many other literary devices are used in the poem in order to make the theme more obvious to its readers. This poem is often confused as focusing on how the narrator takes the road less traveled, when it is actually meant to focus on the choice that the narrator denies, or the road not taken. Frost mentions the doubt and worry that comes along with decision-making, but how perseverance can make it worthwhile. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost introduces a theme of making life decisions, while using symbolism and tone as tools to show his readers that the right choice is not always the easy one.