Apocalyptic Fears In 'The Road, By Cormac Mccarthy And World War Z'?

The Road, a post apocalyptic novel,written by Cormac McCarthy, tells the story of a father and son traveling along the cold, barren and ash ridden interstate highways of America. Pushing all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart, they struggle to survive. Faced with despair, suicide and cannibalism, the father and son show a deep loving and caring that keeps them going through unimaginable horrors. Through the setting of a post apocalyptic society, McCarthy demonstrates the psychological effects of isolation and the need to survive and how these effects affect the relationships of the last few people on Earth.

A man and his son travelling alone amidst the ruins of a previously prosperous nation; a young man venturing into a treacherous land to tie up the loose ends in his life; a broken ranch hand that suspects he had a conversation with death: in the most desolate and uncertain environments, the surrounding world can lend a bleak and lifeless perspective to one’s struggle to survive. In lands without accompaniment from other humans, the will to live can be as difficult to muster as shelter for the night or the first meal in days. Cormac McCarthy explores the difficulties of survival under the tension of barren landscapes and youthful inexperience and their effects on the loss of innocence. Gained maturity enables humans to persist and stay hopeful, even in the least hopeful situations. These environments and mindsets play an important role in the messages of three novels by Cormac McCarthy: The Road, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain.

Both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Empties by Jess Row are apocalyptic stories that describe the state of human civilization after the annihilation of civil society. Whereas in The Road civil society is destroyed and remains defunct after the apocalypse, The Empties tells of a people who are able to bounce back and reestablish their society. Many people today live their lives aimlessly, squandering their time day by day, partaking in life’s pleasures, and living for their own selfish reasons. McCarthy and Row bring attention to the selfishness and self-absorption that plagues today’s teens by showing two different possible scenarios following an apocalyptic event, resulting from a fundamental difference

The ability to paint beautiful ideas on a canvas of dark events and imagery is an essential skill in the arsenal of an accomplished writer. In his novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy demonstrates his understanding of this skill. A reviewer from the San Francisco Chronicle described The Road saying, “[McCarthy’s] tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy’s stature as a living master. It’s gripping, frightening, and, ultimately, beautiful.” These descriptions of the tale are true throughout the novel, but particularly at the ending of the story. In the final pages of the book, McCarthy continues to engage the reader with gripping and frightening moments, to emphasize the theme of survival, and to reveal beauty and “the miracle of goodness.”

In the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy illustrates the actions, geographical setting, and expressions to shape the psychological traits in the characters struggle to find survival in the gloomy and inhumane civilization. McCarthy uses imagery that would suggest that the world is post-apocalyptic or affected by a catastrophic event that destroyed civilization. In Gridley’s article The Setting of McCarthy’s THE ROAD, he states “On one hand the novel details neither nuclear weapons nor radiation, but the physical landscape, with his thick blanket of ash; the father’s mystery illness; and the changes in the weather patterns of the southern United States all suggest that the world is gripped by something similar to a nuclear winter”(11). In other words, Gridley asserts that McCarthy sets the setting as an open mystery, so that anyone can draw his or her own conclusions. The surrounding of the colorless and desolate society affects the characters behavior positively and negatively. Similarly the surroundings and settings of the society illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.

How is McCarthy able to make the post- apocalyptic world of the road seem so real and utterly terrifying? Which descriptive passages are especially vivid and visceral in their description of this blasted landscape? What so you find to be the most horrifying features of this world and the survivors who inhabit it?

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road portrays a gripping tale of survival of a father and son across a post-apocalyptic world that is devoured by marauders and cannibals who have abandoned all of their beliefs, morals and values and do anything to survive. In contrast, the two protagonists are portrayed as the ‘good guys’ who carry the ‘fire’, and try to survive in the obliterated world. They are challenged to maintain their own beliefs, morals and values as they enter their quest. As a young adolescent who has witnessed the harsh environments of a war torn country such as Afghanistan, and has prior experiences of being a refugee. The novel effectively

We often consider the world to be filled with core truths, such as how people should act or what constitutes a good or bad action. In The Road, McCarthy directly challenges those preconceptions by making us question the actions of the characters and injecting a healthy dose of uncertainty into the heroes’ situation. From the very beginning, the characters and their location remain ambiguous. This is done so that the characters are purposely anonymous, amorphously adopting all people. While on the road, the order of the day is unpredictability; whether they find a horde of road-savages or supplies necessary for his son’s survival is impossible to foretell. While traveling, the boy frequently asks “are we the good guy” and the father always replies with “yes” or “of course,” but as the story progresses this comes into question.

Throughout the novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, McCarthy repetitively uses symbolism to portray several deeper themes throughout the novel. One theme of the symbolism that is mentioned many times in The Road is the fire. A significant occurrence of this is when the man is discussing the fire with the boy. '' 'Is the fire real? I don`t know where it.' 'Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it' "(McCarthy 279).The fire represents the hope for humanity, and the man sees the fire inside the boy. The boy shows compassion for everything, alive or dead. Not only does the fire symbolize the hope for humanity but it represents strength and the will to live. During the novel fires are lit to keep The Man and Boy safe and warm but the fire keeps them alive even in the heart of the storm.

“The Road” depicts a solemn and deteriorating environment that can no longer provide the fundamentals to a society due to the nuclear disaster. The sudden depletion of the resources within their environment made it difficult for the father and the son to find sustenance. They were constantly traveling towards the South looking for safe places to situate themselves because the father knew that they would not be able to survive the nuclear winter. The genre of the novel is post-apocalyptic science fiction because it revolves around a dismantling society. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” depicts how environmental destruction finally gave sense for people to value the world and what it had to offer.

What makes Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road stick out from most dystopian works is that The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they survive the dangers of what once was the United States after an unspecified calamitous event. There is not much left of the world: no food, no animals, and no hope. Many readers will ponder how someone could still be motivated to keep moving forward under such circumstances. If we were living in the same conditions as the man and the boy, this question might seem more imperative. But arguably it is a question that can be applied to today: what, if anything, makes human life valuable or worthwhile? Through the dialogue between the characters, the novel provides two conflicting arguments that serve as potential answers for this question. The first argument is hope, which is associated with the Christian religion, while the other argument is futility, which has a nihilistic outlook of the ravaged world. This paper will examine the Christian imagery and nihilistic arguments contained in the novel and how the moral systems of the two conflict. While at first The Road might present itself as a powerful challenge to both Christian and nihilistic views of the world, in the end, the novel never explicitly reject either worldview.

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a riveting tale of life on the road trying to find salvation from the post- apocalyptic world. Multiple plot twist throughout the story leaves the reader wanting more and searching for answers. A story about an unnamed man and his young son, perfectly show the inconsistencies of our modern day ideologues. The author, Cormac McCarthy perfectly uses archetypical characters. The story uses the Mentor, the innocent, villains, and the idealists archetypes simplistically and intriguingly.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is his post-apocalyptic magnus opus which combines a riveting plot along with an unconventional prose style. Released in 2006, the novel has won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award (Wilson). Oprah Winfrey also selected the book for her book club ("Cormac McCarthy”). The author, Cormac McCarthy, was born in 1933 in Rhode Island and is said to have wrote the novel because of his son and their relationship. The Road centers around a boy and his father while they try to survive after an unknown disaster occurs. While some people may argue that the unusual style takes away from the novel, it adds to the tone and meaning of the work.

Imagine yourself living in a barren, desolate, cold, dreary world, with a constant fear of the future. The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006, is a vivid and heartwarming novel that takes us through the journey of a father and a son as they travel South in a post-apocalyptic environment facing persistent challenges and struggles. McCarthy proves that love unleashes immense strength to overcome obstacles, even in times of desperation.

The apocalypse is a common subject addressed in films and such Doomsday scenarios have become increasingly popular since the beginning of the Cold War. These films provide a different cause for the downfall of human kind and approach the subject with various degrees of despair and hope. Despite the obvious differences in approach that different directors take, these films all serve to highlight not only the negative qualities of human kind that led to and are represented by the agent of destruction but also to highlight the strength of the survivors who keep the will to fight for their lives despite the bleak circumstances. For the most part, The Mist, adapted from a Stephen King novella, sticks closely to the archetype. The Mist, a