journey on the road

1442 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Connection between education and social class

There were sent to separate schools, and had to use different buses, and shops and the hospitals for blacks and coloured people and the services available were below the standard provided for the minority whites. Marxist theory is also applicable as the bourgeoisie, the white population of South Africa, which was only a minority of the population, dominate and manipulate the proletariats, the black majority of South Africa. Only few of the proletariats, including Nelson Mandela achieve enlightenment and fight for their emancipation, but is crushed by the bourgeoisie. In the case of Mandela, he is imprisoned. Mandela is not deterred by the situations in his life to change his beliefs, just like the Boy in The Road, these two individuals choose to overcome their struggles in an effort to live a better life. As figures of hope, they do not let the world they live in change who they are. They stand by their actions and desire to do what is correct and honourable in society. In McCarthy’s post apocalyptic world, law and order are no longer important. In The Road, law and order are executed by those who hold power, power lies with those who hold weapons or have a means to force people to get what they want. Power in society is displayed through brute force and violence. In the following weeks after the apocalypse, the Man remembers, “People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides. Others would come to help them. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. What had they done? He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment t... ... middle of paper ... ... China is considered the country’s remaining ally. North Korea is used as a reference in regards to the Man and Boy in The Road. In comparison North Korea, and the two characters, choose to keep others at a distance. Psychoanalytic theory is applicable as Marxist theory is applicable as North Korea has been alienated from the world, in Western society, almost no government agrees with the practice of communism. They believe that countries should be democratic, and all citizens should be treated with equality and justice. In North Korea, the bourgeoisie who make up the minority of the population have a greater status in society and live fairly better than their counterparts, the proletariat. The proletariats live mostly in rural communities, they struggle to gain proper resources and supplies. They live in accordance with the rules imposed by the bourgeoisie.

Show More
Related

  • 1984 and North Korea

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    North Korea profoundly corresponds with Oceania by being a highly militarized nation. Although it has been decades since the Korean war, there has been an everlasting tension between North Korea and the nations surrounding it. Every minute of everyday the North Korean army remains armed on its border. Whether it is a South Korean or Chinese citizen trying to cross the border, they will be shot at. This highly militarized state of society was influenced by Kim Il Sung, the tenacious tyrant of North Korea from 1912 to 1994. Kim Il Sung was so paranoid about other nations intervening, that he used the conception of violence and war to prevent outsiders from entering, or even North Koreans from leaving. This strange sense of constant tension between North Korea and other nations reflects an important issue occurring in Oceania. The people of Oceania are to believe that Oceania is constantly at war with one of two nation’s, Eurasia and Eastasia. Big Brother uses the word war in the same calculating way to influence the minds of his people. “The very word ‘war,’ therefore, has become misleading... A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This... is the inner ...

    Read More

  • Examples Of Safety And Terror In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

    1335 Words  | 3 Pages

    Everything has died, and all that remains is brutality and savagery. People, once neighbors and friends, now turning on each other in the name of survival. It is disturbing and horrific most of the time. Despite this, there is a light in the dark. Two survivors wandering the road, a father and a son. They are some of the last “good guys” on the planet. They are able to survive, despite the horrendous conditions presented to them. They are constantly running from terror, with little safety to hide. They, however, make their own safety. Cormac McCarthy is able to masterfully use things that most writers try their best to avoid. McCarthy writes without using names. This creates a sense of safety between father and son, as they do not need each other 's names. It is just them. McCarthy writes using incorrect grammar. This shows the father and son are alike real people. They are not perfect, cookie cutter characters. They could be anyone the reader knows. They both love each other and feel safe enough with one another. McCarthy writes using short, to the point sentences. This conveys that the son is smart enough to understand what is happening without long descriptions. Despite this knowledge, the father is constantly calming down the kid, furthering their love for one another. McCarthy is a master of writing, and The Road is sure to go down in history as a magnificent piece of

    Read More

  • The Road

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road “the man” and “the boy” refer to themselves as “the good guys” compared to “the bad guys”. While reading this book I was lead to believe that “the boy” is truly the only “good guy” left, because “the man” and every other character that I encountered in this book share some of the same qualities as “the bad guys”.

    Read More

  • The Road

    2017 Words  | 5 Pages

    While reading The Road, a novel written by Cormac McCarthy, I was jerked from the warmth, comfort, and safety of my home and thrown into a cold, dark, and desolate world, walking alongside “the man” and “the boy”. McCarthy composes his work so graphically that readers are drawn right into the story. I believe Cormac McCarthy wanted the figures in this book to be universal, so that the reader could imagine him/her self as “the boy” or “the man” at any given moment, and to be able to feel as they do. To do this McCarthy did not designate the characters in his book with names, and because of this, I was able to connect with “the man” and “the boy” on a personal level and envision myself uniting with them in their chilling journey.

    Read More

  • Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Road by Cormac McCarthy describes the journey of a young boy and his father battling to survive in a post-apocalyptic setting as they travel through a world filled with murderers, rapists and cannibals. The Man and the Boy travel through the harsh landscape of the United States where they are confronted with corpses, fires and abandoned town. The Man falls ill at the end of the novel and sadly passes away and leaves the Boy to start a new journey on his own. Fortunately the Boy meets a friendly person who is delighted to welcome him into their family. The social context in the novel depicts that patriarchal roles are still evident in a devastated world along with the importance of a father figure. Social context also reinforces that identity is defined by your core self and value system which positions a reader to look past their material possessions. Human identity is threatened by my understanding of historic context as the text serves as a warning to be friendlier to the planet. Cultural context reaffirms the dangers of being isolated when the government is removed and there are no rules or guidelines. I interpret this novel as a cautionary text as it critiques human society which encourages me to be more conscious of my actions because they may have negative consequences for future generations.

    Read More

  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy

    2356 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the novel, The Road, Cormac McCarthy illustrates the expressions, settings and the actions by various literary devices and the protagonist’s struggle to survive in the civilization full of darkness and inhumanity. The theme between a father and a son is appearing, giving both the characters the role of protagonist. Survival, hope, humanity, the power of the good and bad, the power of religion can be seen throughout the novel in different writing techniques. He symbolizes the end of the civilization or what the world had turned out to be as “The Cannibals”. The novel presents the readers with events that exemplify the events that make unexpected catastrophe so dangerous and violent. The novel reduces all human and natural life to the condition of savagery and temporary survival. McCarthy uses colour imagery to describe how grey, pale and miserable everything was. He uses “carrying the fire “which represents people who have a flame of humanity left alive in their hearts. The metaphor explains the readers about how most of the people were dishearten in the journey of horrid remnants of humanity. In the novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy elaborates not only the settings and the actions but also the love between a father and a son which is present even around the time of ultimate inhumanity and the stubborn desire to struggle to stay alive in the apocalyptic world and manipulate different writing techniques such as literary devices and characterization to explain the negative aspects of humanity.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Isolation In The Road

    2281 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Love And Sacrifice In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Psychological Trauma in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brian Conniff's article, "Psychological Accidents: In Cold Blood and Ritual Sacrifice," explains how Truman Capote's nonfiction novel demonstrates the psychological trauma that the murderers and the townspeople of Holcomb face after the murders of the Clutter family. Conniff begins his article by stating that in the last twenty-five years imprisonment and execution has reached an all-time high level of obsession among the American public. Since this type of violence has been so normalized it is rarely properly understood (1). With this in mind, prison literature has continually suggested that "the most fortified barriers are not the physical walls and fences between the prison, and the outside world; the most fortified barriers are the psychological walls between the preoccupations of everyday life . . .and the conscious realization that punishment is the most self-destructive kind of national addiction" (Conniff 1).

    Read More

  • Comparison of The Lord of the Flies and The Man and The Boy In the Road

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Cultural Differences Between North And South Korea

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Communist North Korea continues to be an underdeveloped country while South Korea continues to prosper in all areas such as technology, and agriculture. These two countries have vast differences with their political and government views. North Korea at one point was influenced by the Soviet Union but no longer. However, North Korea continues to be influenced by and receive aid from China. South Korea continues to be influenced by the United States of America. North Korea is governed and controlled by a dictatorship, which has complete control over media and social

    Read More

  • Neighborhood Violence in The Murder of Thirty of My Neighbors by Jim Myers

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    When attempting to explain the conditions Myers' lives in, straightforward, realistic statements are usually the most effective way to do so. "Near my house in the 1990s we had drive-by killings, run-by killings, sneak-up killings, gunfights and battles, car chases. We had drug killings, vengeance killings, the killing of witnesses to other crimes, accidental killings, and killings that enforce values we can only vaguely fathom" (73). Myers' illustrates the violence he sees on a daily basis, which allows someone like myself, who comes from a small suburban town and is not familiar with killings of any sort, to better understand the nature of the violence he is describing. It is a very bold statement that sets the tone of the essay, for this type of violence is common to Myers and is something he has become accustomed to. For those of us who are lucky enough to live in areas sheltered from violence and death, there is a need for outside sources to make us aware of the condition of the world around us.

    Read More

  • The Clash Of Civilizations And The Clash Of Civilizations

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, more of the countries’ differences lie in the culture and religions that are the main causes of conflict. In terms of culture, North Korea expresses more of a traditional outlook on life and their political culture involves conforming to the Supreme Leader of the DPRK. In South Korea, there is more openness to opinions, as it is a democracy. In everyday life, South Korea resembles an East Asian country that has democratic views just like the United States. People are less isolated and constrained in South Korea opposed to its Northern counterpart. In a BBC research, journalists have witnessed only some of the key differences between the two countries, due to the DPRK’s extreme isolation from the rest of the world. Some of these examples include how students in North Korea did not know who human rights activist Nelson Mandela was. However when asked which world leaders other than the DPRK leader they admired, they replied “Stalin and Mao Zedong!” (BBC). This shows how students in the current day are still isolated and brainwashed to believe that totalitarianism is a system that should be admired. Also, North Korea’s respect for the Great Leader is immense; even though Kim Sung-il died, North Koreans believe that he is

    Read More

  • Nuclear Weapons are a Threat To World Peace

    2373 Words  | 5 Pages

    To understand this situation more fully, one must be given some background, starting in the early 1950s. Due to the harsh differences between the peoples of Korea, and especially due to the onset of Communism, the Korean War erupted and the nation split in half, with the Communist-supported Democratic People’s Republic in the north and those who favored democracy in the Korean Republic of the south (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000). The two separate countries of North Korea and South Korea went their opposite ways, and each has experienced different fortunes in the past half-century. The South Koreans managed to recover from the turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s to become an economic power and a democracy supporter. On the other hand, North Korea can be viewed as a retro country, based first on a Communist ideology, laid down by leader Kim Il Sung and inherited by his son, the current dictator Kim Jong Il, then evolving into a totalitarian state (Pacific Rim: East Asia at the Dawn of a New Century). Today North Korea holds the distinction of being one of the very few remaining countries to be truly cut off from the rest of the world. Author Helie Lee describes this in her novel In the Absence of Sun: “An eerie fear crawled through my flesh as I stood on the Chinese side of the Yalu River, gazing across the murky water into one of the most closed-off and isolated countries in the world.” (1)

    Read More

  • Nelson Mandela's Long Walk To Freedom

    2182 Words  | 5 Pages

    Nelson Mandela in his book, Long Walk to Freedom argues through the first five parts that a black individual must deal, coop, and grow through a society that is hindering their lives' with apartheid and suppression of their rightful land. Rolihlanla Mphakanyiswa or clan name, Madiba was born on July 18, 1918 in a simple village of Mvezo, which was not accustomed to the happenings of South Africa as a whole. His father was an respected man who led a good life, but lost it because of a dispute with the magistrate. While, his mother was a hard-working woman full of daily choirs. His childhood was full of playing games with fellow children and having fun. In school, Mandela was given his English name of Nelson. After his father's death, he moved to love with a regent, who was a well-off individual and owed Nelson's father for a previous favor. The next several years were full of schooling for Nelson. These schools opened Nelson's eyes to many things, which we will discuss later. He and the regent's son, Justice decided to travel to Johannesburg and see what work they could find. They left on their journey without the regent's permission, but eventually escaped his power and settled down in the town. In Johannesburg, Nelson settled down in a law firm as an assistant and went to University of South Africa and Witwatersrand University to further his law education. Witswatersrand University brought many new ideas to Nelson and awakened a spirit inside of him.

    Read More

More about journey on the road

Open Document