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The relevance of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Analysis of the maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Analysis of the maslow’s hierarchy of needs
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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 Road is a phenomenal example of how raw human nature shapes peoples’ decisions. It addresses the behaviors of people neither informed nor controlled by a social order. In the essence of The Road, people’s actions are highly dependent on the person’s basic needs. A lack of basic human needs often results in the more disturbing view of human nature. (Gilbert pg. 43) Betrayal, suicide, and cannibalism are all examples of behaviors that human nature can bring out of people. …show more content…
(Gilbert pg. 44) The first level are the physiological needs such as food and water. This is one of the man and the boy’s most consistent conflicts. In The Road, basic resources are extremely hard to come by, as seen when the man said, “We have to find something to eat. We have no choice.” (McCarthy pg. 220) To stay alive, a huge emphasis is placed on their dependence in finding those basic needs. Nearly all of the decisions the man and the boy made were related to finding food or conserving food for basic survival. The next level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is safety. Safety is a huge concern in modern society, almost every aspect of life is determined by the level of safety. In the post-apocalyptic world of The Road, safety is seen very little. The man and the boy attempt to be as safe as possible, but in a world with no social order it is basically impossible. Though they did experience very few instances of comfort in safety, they were consistently striving to search for
Cormac McCarthy's The Road, is an award-winning novel about an unidentifiable man who is traveling with his son. The protagonists are trapped in a post-apocalyptic world that has been besieged by nothingness and entirely stripped of life, food, and most of all, morality. They travel a treacherous road leading south where they encounter cannibals, burnt bodies, and the ruins of former houses. The world and people around them has turned amoral and unforgiving. For the protagonists, however, morality and goodness still exist. With each day, they are able to maintain faith, hope, and goodness which gives them the motivation to continue their journey. McCarthy's novel shows that even during the worst of times, love and morality will prevail and goodness will be found.
When the man and boy meet people on the road, the boy has sympathy for them, but his father is more concerned with keeping them both alive. The boy is able to get his father to show kindness to the strangers (McCarthy), however reluctantly the kindness is given. The boy’s main concern is to be a good guy. Being the good guy is one of the major reasons the boy has for continuing down the road with his father. He does not see there is much of a point to life if he is not helping other people. The boy wants to be sure he and his father help people and continue to carry the fire. The boy is the man’s strength and therefore courage, but the man does not know how the boy worries about him how the boy’s will to live depends so much on his
Imagine a devastating event that does not just change the world but alters all aspects of life to the point of being unrecognizable. How does one keep hope alive in a world where everything is either dying or has turned evil? In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, this is the daily struggle that confronts the man and boy. This remarkable story is about a father and son's attempts to survive in a barren landscape, faced with the constant threat of starvation, murder, exposure, and illness; they must continually decipher between good and evil, preserve the goodness of civilization, and find a purpose to continue their journey, especially when the existence of God is questionable. McCarthy's thematic purpose is to show that the qualities that mankind
across all of our written history have discovered the importance of knowing human nature. Human nature is responsible for our definitions of abstract concepts that are surprisingly universal across the western world like justice, equity, and law. Human nature must also be carefully studied in an effort to understand, obtain, or maintain power within society. Finally, human nature must also be carefully understood so as to protect it from being manipulated and to understand its place in society.
The man and the boy are always in search of food, and the lack of it in the winter times eventually leads to the man's death, since he sacrifices almost everything he can find for the wellness of his son.
1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a motivational theory in psychology about human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. Maslow expressed that individuals are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs should be prioritized over others. Maslow’s Hierarchy ascends from the bottom to the top as followed: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization. The novel, "Life of Pi" follows a boy (also the narrator) who finds himself stuck on a raft for numerous days without any supplies. In the meantime, he must share his raft with a Bengal Tiger. Fending for himself he seeks out equipment and supplies that fit Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, follows the journey of a father and a son who are faced with the struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The two main characters are faced with endeavors that test a core characteristic of their beings: their responsibilities to themselves and to the world around them. This responsibility drives every action between the characters of the novel and manifests in many different ways. Responsibility is shown through three key interactions: the man to the boy, the boy to the man, and the boy to the rest of the world. It is this responsibility that separates McCarthy’s book from those of the same genre.
In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, the two main characters struggle to keep moving forward. Their motivation to push onward is found in the bottom levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; which are physiological, safety, and emotional. Each of the levels are equally important in order for the man to reach self-actualization. In order to reach the top level, however, the man must fulfill the bottom levels first.
Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” encompasses ideas of the beat generation, takes you along, and allows you to see the people and the situations of America at a time immediately following World War II; how people lived, and how, at least in Sal’s case, people changed. Kerouac exemplifies one’s dissatisfaction with the responsibilities that the society ties an individual down with, opting to always be on the road avoiding commitment, therefore antagonizing themselves from the mainstream views of the post-world war II American society.
The theory which contributes to the theme is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which talks about “a positive environment and positive relationships are an important part of supporting every child or young person’s needs”, Taylor Et al, (2012:p13). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is most often displayed as a pyramid. As people progress up the pyramid, needs become increasingly psychological and social. Maslow talks about children’s safety needs and how they need to feel security. “Maslow placed a real importance on ensuring that children have their basic needs met before they can learn”, Taylor Et al, (2012; p40). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is relevant to safeguarding the health, safety and well-being of children and young people as, safety needs is one of the needs on the pyramid. Children and young people need to achieve safety and well-being in order to be able to move up the pyramid and therefore can learn how to safeguard themselves, “One must satisfy lower level basic needs before progressing on to meet higher level growth needs”, Mcleod, (2013).
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.
Abraham Maslow originally developed his influential hierarchy of needs to understand personal growth and help people attain spiritual “peak experiences.”. The structure of the pyramid is fixed so that we must attain a certain level before we activate a need for the next, higher one. (McLeod, 2016) At the bottom of the pyramid is physiological needs which includes water, sleep, and food. When they are not fulfilled, people become preoccupied with filling those needs above all else. For example, starving people in a war zone can be oblivious to danger when in search of food Next, you have the need for safety which includes shelter, protection, and security. While safety needs are less immediate or demanding than the physiological needs, when one loses one's job, family, home, life savings, health insurance, etc, one is likely to feel terribly insecure and
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 ...
This is a wonderful poem with many different themes and ideas. One of the biggest themes is not being afraid to take a chance. Some of the other themes include, not following the crowd, trying new things, and standing for something. This poem stated that the author "took the one (road) less traveled by, and that has made all the difference" so the author is telling the reader that we too should not be afraid to take another path.