Togetherness is an illusion created by the loneliness of man. The manifestation of a being who can never truly be a part of something greater. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a man and a boy exist in a world not designed to inhabit human beings. On this scorched Earth, for the father and son, it is and will only ever be them; however, “them” is not is not as healthy as they believe. The man and the boy’s faulty father-son relationship reveals McCarthy’s negative attitude towards human nature and dependency.
The world they live in demonstrates the worst parts of humanity, forcing their relationship to be that of two survivors, not of a family. In times of distress and danger, it is not uncommon for the relationships between people to change,
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All around them there exists vast, whole, nothingness. All around them their hopes and wishes are blown away with the ash in the wind. This devastating imagery and scene would be enough to change any person’s kind and loving relationship to one of survival and instinct. This world, the ash, the fallen; every aspect has shaped their relationship into what it is. McCarthy adds to this distressing imagery with staccato syntax, simply describing the scene as, “barren, silent, godless” (4). The man and boy can never have a typical father son relationship, not here, not on the Earth in which they reside. There is no doubt that the man loves his son; however, he does not love his son like a normal father. The man loves his son like he is …show more content…
Due to the unfavorable conditions, the man and the boy do not have the capacity to love in a healthy way. They are “each the other’s world entire” (5), depending on the other solely and wholly, with no need for anything else. The man even goes as far as to compare his son to God; “He only knew the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God does not exist” (4). The diction riddled with desperation adds to the plain syntax. For, it is a simple truth, but only to the man and boy. In this post-apocalyptic society, there is no room for error: survival should be the single-most important thing on people 's minds, not a God that may or may not exist. This unhealthy worship is telling of McCarthy 's complicated yet overall negative view of humanity. While it is not wrong to depend on one another, a vital line is crossed when they believe they are all the other has. It brings on moments such as when the boy questions his father about death. He asks, “What would you do if I died?”(9). To which the father responds, “If you died I would want to die too”(9). McCarthy’s seemingly affectionate yet harrowing tone is evident in the promise of death the father and son make. The man and the boy are one of the only examples of the good that remain in this desolate world. To have those who are good make such a haunting promise is proof, not
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.
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.
McCarthy’s novel is not about a boy trying to find his place in society, but about a boy trying to find himself and who he really is apart from society. John Grady begins the story with no answers, and at the end he still doesn’t have a clue. There is no resolution for him; there are only more questions, conflicts, and misunderstandings. I think that McCarthy’s point is that to live romantically is to live without cause, without real hope, and ultimately without love. Despite the author’s obvious compassion for John Grady and his idealism, he shows us through romantically descriptive writing that a romantic lifestyle cannot work in this world. The book ends with John Grady riding out into the sunset, having learned nothing, with no place to go. Until the character learns how to compromise with society and give up his romanticism, his life will have no purpose.
Cormac McCarthy in The Road portrays the man and the boy as “good guys” throughout the book even with the world collapsing around them by their catchy phrase “carrying the fire”. They remained good guys by feeding off each other’s company which also helped contribute to their strong father-son bond despite all the tragic events along the road.
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,
McCarthy is trying to show that during desperate times there is a sudden loss in humanity due to the uneasiness and the drastic measures one will take in order to survive. A person will do anything it takes to survive in desperate and desolate worlds. McCarthy is proving this with his diction and choice of imagery. A man and a boy set out to survive in a tragic and dangerous world, where the main food source is depleting and all resources are deteriorating. A novel about what is left of a man’s family and how they struggle to survive. Humanity is tested and shows just how extreme ones actions can be. The want for life is tested, one could question whether or not survival will be possible for the man and the
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
According to the critics of Rotten Tomato (2009), “The (movie) Road's commitment to Cormac McCarthy's dark vision may prove too unyielding for some”. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and portrays how humans have taken a horrific turn by losing morals and traditional values. A world of destruction sometimes leads individuals to (essentially) lose their humanity.
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.
This book was very interesting and pleasurable to read, I found myself intimately connecting with the characters. In some ways I found myself walking in “the man’s” shoes, not caring about humanity, and only protecting the one most precious to him (me). In some instances I also sided with “the boy” clinging to the hopes of a brighter world where there is still some purity in civilization. This novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a true masterpiece and I recommend it to anyone looking for a phenomenal read.
Everyone has their own different opinion of how they want to interpret religion, but there are always some common things that can be picked out from any religion and that is the image of a prophet or a Messianic figure. That can be seen in McCarthy’s book that the boy is seen in the image of a Messiah, because he has been kept pure throughout all of the havoc that has happened. There was an instance when the father was looking at the boy and he thought: “Then he just sat there holding his binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: if he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). What can be taken from that part is that it is uncertain if the boy believes in God, but it is certain without a doubt that the man does. He believes that the boy could be a symbol of holiness. Shelly Rambo asks the question of, “how are we to interpret this language within the context of a world that bas collapsed? The context is critical here. How do we read images such as the breath of God and the Messianic references to the boy after the end of the world?” (Rambo 104). Like stated before, everyone will have their own interpretation of what is said in this book. Some will interpret it with a deep spiritual meaning and some may not have a literal interpretation to it. But it can be seen that the boy might have the same type of
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.
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 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...
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 ...