The Road’ is a post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son’s journey through a scorched horror-scape blasted by an unspecified catastrophe that left ash dispensing from the sky, no visible sun and only a few of civilisation - most have turned into cannibals . Nineteen Minutes’ is similar to ‘The Road’, as there are survivors, but after a specified cataclysm, a high-school massacre, in which Peter, a bully victim, carried out in nineteen minutes, killing ten and wounding nineteen – the guileless and his tormentors. Consequently, beautiful passages may seem to be dependent on violence and depravity as it’s the aftermath of a terrible event they overcame, their light at the end of the tunnel “maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is meant to look like” – Nineteen Minutes.
For example, when the man had woken up to everything being alight it was like “the lost sun were returning at last”, thus bringing a sudden surge of colour that made the “snow orange and quivering”, bringing life into the dead world. The sheer liveliness of it “flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights” moved something in him that had long been forgotten, prompting him to “make a list”, “recite a litany” and “remember” it. This is a distant step from instances in the novel where he withheld good memories as he believed “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril”, same with good memories, otherwise “all else was the call of languor and of death”, as it would lure him into a false sense of security.
However, McCarthy’s use of the word “litany” connotes prayers; hence his recollections become sacred. This implies that the beauty depends on the violence and depravity as something a...
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...immune because of where you live or who you are. It’s easier that way, isn’t it?” Picoult knows how to include the readers in her work; she uses the justice system to help them understand the tragedy as the myriads of point of views and flashbacks mirror the evidence gathered for and against Peter “Ms. Picoult has a way of finding reassurance even in a standoff that would have stumped King Solomon. Her proficiently constructed books are not about chaos, or even loose ends”- Janet Maslin, NY-Times. Her words are beautiful, honest and sometimes that honesty could cut like a knife “sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you”. Accordingly, the violent imagery prompts the readers to open their eyes, reach out to others, value loved ones and life as a whole as “only if you’d felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty”.
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.
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.
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.
...acters, an unidentified apocalypse, and specks of detail, allowing readers to imagine a desolated setting on a blank canvas. Its two main characters, who symbolize the last strength for the human race, are forced onto a road that stretches to the coastal shores. The absent presence of everyday humans, plants, and wildlife generally fits the science fiction genre. Conversations between both father and son are limited to plain words that the child may only comprehend to. As a result, all responses produce disheartening lines of gloom and obscurity, though the child remains innocent during the days of darkness. He is also an icon of hope that the father holds onto, endlessly tending to the child’s living. Overall, this novel presents the terrible apocalypse in the modern times of before, to the aftermath between two characters who will soon meet their fate.
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,
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.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory is a novel written with symbolism, imagery, and metaphoric language. He writes his novel in a detail orientated structure with each chapter separated into sections. This shows us that Nabokov is a detail orientated person and wants his reader to understand his thought process throughout the novel. An example of Nabokov using such imagery and symbolism is when he writes about his bedtime ritual.
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...
“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.
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.
...of the North and The Road. Today climate change is a growing problem and as a society, we have yet to open our eyes to the damage we our doing to the environment. Both Daughters of the North and The Road show possible outcomes of what can happen if we avoid the truth and proceed to live our lives in such a self destructive manner. Food shortages are prevalent in many parts of the world, but have yet to heavily impact the United States, by lacking an understanding of the malnutrition others go through, we are unable to contemplate what a large issue world hunger is. The Road shows a extremely drastic example of world hunger, one where cannibalism and killing are common tactics to receive food. Though they seem impossible, distopias such as those in Daughters of the North and The Road are very possible, it is just up to humanity to prevent them from becoming reality.
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
Throughout all of her moralising (a word which I use divorced from its modern negative associations) Byatt writes extremely expressively, bridging the gap between flat text on a page and vivid mental imagery; her short stories are compelling in a way that makes the reader curious, engaging our interest in what is to come. This is the essence of the storyteller's art. Even were it not to be her message, one could not come away from this collection of Byatt's work without the feeling that here, within these words, stories and constructs of art that there was an internal logic which offered a positive alternative to the negativity which seems to be a feature of this dispossessed age; a sense of purpose and innate meaning that channels and releases us, "as though the [emotion] was still and eternal in the painting and the [soul] was released into time." (p230) And be touched by it.