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Research Proposal on The Balance between Anxiety and Hope during post-apocalypse Introduction Post-apocalyptic times are characterized by tremendous devastation. The atmosphere is often depicted as grim. It is after an apocalypse when all signs of life are extinct. People and animals starve, and predatory groups of savages wander around. In The Road, McCarthy sets such an intolerable atmosphere. However, such tragedies are not punishing to all people. Thesis Statement Anxiety and hope come in equal measure during post-apocalypse times. Question But what form does the world take regarding hope and anxiety after an apocalypse? Background and Preliminary Research This paper will prove that hope is also present and tends to balance with
Marked by two world wars and the anxiety that accompanies humanity's knowledge of the ability to destroy itself, the Twentieth Century has produced literature that attempts to depict the plight of the modern man living in a modern waste land. If this sounds dismal and bleak, it is. And that is precisely why the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. shines through our post-modern age. The devastating bombing of Dresden, Germany at the close of World War II is the subject of Vonnegut's most highly acclaimed work, Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. Vonnegut's experience as an American POW in Dresden fuels the narrative that unconventionally defines his generation through the life and death of Billy Pilgrim. The survival of Billy Pilgrim at Dresden and his re-entry to the shell-shocked world reveal a modern day journey of the anti-hero. Vonnegut's unusual style and black satire provide a refreshing backdrop for a vehement anti-war theme and enhance his adept ability to depict the face of humanity complete with all of its beauty and blemishes. Likewise, Vonnegut adds his own philosophy concerning time, our place in it, and connection (or disconnection) to it and one other. Perhaps the most crucial step in understanding this intriguing work is to start with its title, which holds the key to Vonnegut's most prevailing theme.
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.
1. the idea of civilization coming the full circle and coming back to the origins/savagery. So, here post apocalyptic narrative is the history backwards/upside-down
Kurt Vonnegut, a modern American writer, composed stories about fictional situations that occurred in futuristic versions of today’s world. His stories included violence, both upon oneself and one another, and characters who sought out revenge. In “2BR02B” and “Harrison Bergeron”, Vonnegut conveys physical violence most likely experienced while a prisoner of World War 2, as a way to show how war brings pain and destruction.
Eric Burdon once said, “Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other”. Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, illustrates a recurring motif of Good vs. Evil in a charred post-apocalyptic universe. This new world that is scorched of life contains the father and son duo who go one each day with Good and Evil lurking behind. The father and son, for most of the novel, are the good side of the spectrum but even the good in people parts away when the stress of living one more day is constantly knocking on the front door. McCarthy’s larger purpose in writing The Road is to show how Good and Evil coincide with each other while facing identical circumstances.
In this novel the presentation of the father is portrayed as a father protecting his son’s innocence. It’s almost as if the man is placed on this planet for one major purpose to protect and keep his son alive. The burnt man passage gives the reader an insight into a world that has absence of culture and civilization in the post-apocalyptic world that both the boy and man inhabit, the role of the boy and the father are further established for the reader and many of the techniques that become typical of McCarthy’s style in the novel. Structurally the burned man scene is one of the horrific episodes that occur in the novel and it is the first to take place, foreshadowing, future horrific episodes that will take place later on in the novel. This essay will be exploring these ideas in more depth looking closely at how the father and boy are portrayed in this part of the extract.
The Road starts with a man and his son trekking through a post-apocalyptic landscape after an unexplained event has transpired. The endgame according to the father is to head southeast toward the coast. His belief is that the two will be safe there. The father-son duo encounters many instances of hardship including: cannibalistic looters, a seemingly harmless house holding human livestock, and the more prevalent threat of hypothermia and starvation. When they finally get to the coast, it is not what they expected, but they stay for a few days. Finally, the man and his son get to a pine forest. Suffering from a worsening respiratory infection, the man decides he can
Cormac McCarthy creates a society where only the most savage of humans can thrive. This pushes humans to lose their sense of humanity and use any means necessary for survival. The boy in “The Road” goes against his society and never loses his sense of humanity.
In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and the boy live in a post-apocalyptic world in which fire has destroyed much of the landscape leaving forests and cities in ash and ruins. They spend a majority of their days trekking a southbound road, and throughout their journey on the road, they are unremittingly challenged by their environment. The threat of cannibals capturing them, the possibility of hypothermia, and imminent starvation are constant terrors. Each trial they face is met with the man’s constant attempts to encourage the boy. Due to the troubles they face and the security they lack, it is difficult for the man to keep the faith to continue on their journey. Because of the many mentions in the novel, the man and boy’s recognition of an omniscient being is proof they rely on a god to be their motivation and the man’s hope for the future is fueled by a higher power acting as their guiding light.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy embeds issues throughout the novel such as the will to survive, the power of love, and the ability to trust in vital situations. In the novel, McCarthy illustrates a person has no physical or mental boundaries when protecting the one they love. The power of love and the extent to which one will do for love is prominent in creating the relationship between the father and the son. When entering certain conditions, the son had to be able to trust the father to do what was morally right. The strenuous situations McCarthy creates within the novel deepens my belief that the will to survive, love, and trust can and will overcome the struggles of life. The father is motivated by his need to protect his son from the dangers
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.
In the work The Road by Cormac McCarthy a father and son struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with evil surrounding them. They always refer to themselves as, “The good guys,” (McCarthy 66) and try to not become evil. They see things like cannibalism as evil, and would rather go hungry than succumb to this evil. The father constantly tries to keep the child’s eyes away from the gruesome scenes that characterize this environment.
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...
“Slaughterhouse-Five” is an anti-war novel. It describes a flesh-and-blood world. Main character is Billy Pilgrim, he is a time traveler in this book, his first name Billy is from the greatest novelist in the USA in 19 century’s novel “Billy Budd” ; and his last name is from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan. Differently, the main character in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” ’s traveling has meaning and discovering, Billy Pilgrim’s traveling just has violence and escape. In the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut ’s main character, Billy Pilgrim is sane and his time travel is half in his mind half is real. He is looked so innocent and weakness, there is a sentence which is spoken by Billy Pilgrim “So it goes.” (2) This quotation shows that a poignant sense of helplessness.
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