Cheryl Strayed's Journey

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.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, is an enticing, but soul-wrenching novel that perfectly conveys the precise conditions of a cold, desolate world, in which one feels utterly isolated. McCarthy does not hesitate to go into detail about powerful or foul events within the plot. He says exactly what he means, and can effectively incorporate forceful interactions between the characters and each other, as well as characters and their given environment. By using the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and theme, McCarthy handcrafts a novel with such eloquence and grace that such a bleak and miserable world is perhaps a seemingly beautiful one.

“Denying what you feel will not make it go away. It ensures that it never gets resolved,” (Denial). Taking action on difficult situations allows individuals to combat reality and avoid unfavorable circumstances. However, many people think that avoiding the truth means avoiding the situation, equivalating that the circumstances are not real. This leads to other, more costly problems. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a father and son are journeying in hopes to escape the destruction around them. Similar to McCarthy’s book, Toni Morrison centers on a young African American girl, Pecola, in The Bluest Eye, who hopes to escape the ill perceptions of others in her struggle to fit beauty perceptions within her society.

The brilliant, award winning, American author, Dan Brown, boldly declared how “sooner or later we’ve all go to let go of our past.” This is what I believe to be the ultimate moral of Cheryl Strayed’s novel, Wild. The novel is a narrative of Cheryl’s expedition, hiking the extreme Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). While she is on this journey, which is mentally and physically draining, she is also on a journey of self discovery. In the book, Cheryl talks about her past, including: her mother’s passing from cancer, her divorce, growing up poor and without a father figure, and her struggles with other impactful events from her youth. Cheryl decides to drop everything, and hike the PCT, hoping it will help her become the person she wants to be. She expresses early on in the novel how she

The movie “Wild” is based on Cheryl Strayed’s autobiography about her trek along the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995. The story is set on the Pacific crest trail, including a wide variety of climates including: deserts, snow covered mountains, and tropical forests. Along her journey on the trail, the movie flashes back to several traumas that drove her into the wild, in order to reinvent herself as a strong independent woman once again, no longer bound by guilt, shame, and regret. This is a movie that embraces the healing values of nature and how it can help an individual gain a broader perspective on life.

Cheryl strayed has chosen to take the path of wilderness to become free and receive closure. In the novel ”Wild” by Cheryl Strayed , Cheryl loses everything: her mom dies of cancer, her family split apart and her marriage falls apart. She gets involved with heroin and a very bad crowd. She gets pregnant to a man named Joe. Shortly have she discovered that she was pregnant, she decided to have a abortion.

Straying away from life as a whole only to be alone, some may say is the strong way to heal themselves when dealing with extreme grief or a major crisis . In the book Wild, twenty-two year old Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost it all. Dealing with the loss of her mother, her family torn to pieces, and her very own marriage was being destroyed right before her very eyes. Living life with nothing more to lose, lifeless, she made the most life changing decision of her life. Strayed never seems remorseful on her decisions to up and leave everything behind while deciding to flee from it all. This being her way of dealing with life, it shows her as being strong; a woman of great strength and character. She shows personal strength, which is

In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, she gives readers vivid exposure to her turbulent and harsh past. She tells her journey from the beginning of what was the turning page in her life- her mother's death. Strayed goes through a roller coaster with unfortunate events both in her control and out of her control. She makes several poor choices, and she shares all her triumphs with pure honesty. Strayed speaks of her past with a distant remorse, as if she is looking at her past in a movie. She doesn't come across as ashamed of her past, but why should she? As all humans do, Cheryl Strayed makes mistakes and suffers their consequences as well. Everyone handles situations differently, and the best anyone can do is learn from the mistakes and apply it to

Jean-Marc Vallee’s 2014 film Wild is based off of Cheryl Stryaed’s memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”. The film changes the genre by having a woman as the main character in a man vs. nature situation a rare chage from the typical hero. Vallee had a budget of $15,000,00 for the film and it brought in $4,112,752 on opening weekend, January 30, 2015. Wild, was nominated for many prestigious awards and won few. (imbd). In a initial review of the film published in The New York Times, noted film critic A. O. Scott wrote, “The film adaptation of her book — itself already a classic of wilderness writing and modern feminism — provides another reason to be grateful that she did”. Proving that the change in the genre did not

Not only was her education affected, because she was unable to attend full days of class, but she also developed a need for drugs and sex. She began doing heroin and constantly cheating on her husband as a way to cope with her mother’s death. Cheryl did not know how to go about her mother’s illness since that was her favorite person in the world. She remembered the thousand things her mother used to compare her love to and all the times they shared together. Cheryl knew she needed to move forward so she made a life changing decision of taking her mother’s ashes into her own body in order for Cheryl to carry her mother with her wherever she was going to go. She later expresses, “Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while I was on this journey, of all the thing I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety…” (Strayed, 59). Cheryl’s mother continues to play a huge role in her life even after she had passed away which shows how important she really

Cormack McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is set in a post apocalyptic world, where humanity is struggling to survive. Through his simplistic writing style and powerful symbolism, McCarthy tells a story about the human condition as well as what it truly means to be human. Though it is set in a wasteland this novel still manages to project hope through the love of a boy and his father. The following passages are quotes that spoke to me stylistically or symbolically while I was reading.

The Road portrays the journey of the father and son across a black and white world that is analogous to my experiences of the quest of survival in Afghanistan and the refugee camp in Pakistan. Where many have abandoned their beliefs and morals to survive the hellish situation. Those who survive with their beliefs and values still in intact are constantly challenged on a day-by-day basis. Their survival must be persevered to keep the fire burning, however small for their own children. There must be some goodness that remains for their children to carry into the next generations. They must always remain

At times of strife with oneself and during periods in one’s life, people tend to find answers or peace by disassociating from their immediate surroundings and replacing it with the natural world. Although Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer share the same word in their titles, the two are completely different stories with separate narrative purposes. Wild is about the author’s journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and Into the Wild is the author’s discovery of Chris Mccandless’s natural journey, which ultimately led him to his death. Even though the ending of Wild leads to Strayed’s renewal of life, and the ending of Into the Wild leads to the insight on the ending of

In a desolate world ravaged by fire, a boy and his father trudge across the countryside. They encounter people in their most desperate times where their motives are unpredictable and noone can be trusted. The boy and his father try to maintain their morality while facing starvation and having to deal with unpredictable people they encounter on the road. Cormac McCarthy in his novel The Road, uses the theme of hope to demonstrate the human trait that purpose is essential to survival.

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.