Cormac Mccarthy The Road

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.

The man and the boy will survive if they stay together. They are dependent on each other because the man can teach the boy how to survive. The man is alive because he needs to look out for his son. “The father's sole remaining referent of sacred idiom is his son. In sustaining his son's breath, he sustains not only his own capacity for life but for some belief in life's continuance, in the value of life (NEED TEXT CITATION SOURCE 3).” The boy is the only thing that is pushing the man to survive in the world. There are threats on the road and the man and the boy need to protect themselves from these threats. Survival takes skill and skill can be equipped from over time. The man has learned these skills and now he must pass it down to the boy. They scavenge for food and they are limited on supplies. All they have is a shopping cart full of somethings. They are constantly moving to get to the warmer destination on the west, the beach. “As part of his caretaking, he tries to pass his values on to his son, in part through the language of "fire" he uses to justify their lives and to motivate the boy. The boy himself is drawn toward death, but the father assures him that "nothing bad is going to happen." "Because we're carrying the fire," the boy says, having been told this earlier. "Yes," the father affirms. "Because we're carrying the fire" (83) (NEED IN TEXT CITATION SOURCE 3).” The pain brought upon the young boy is

The sense of survival is a factor of the natural way of life. Every living being is conditioned to think that one must do whatever it takes to maintain their own physical well-being at any certain point in time. This is immensely apparent with the character development in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road. The father and the son share a special bond that makes them inseparable. The strong father and son relationship is a conduit of hope that helps convey the idea that survival is vital in the apocalyptic world they live in.

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

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

“The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn before battle,” (McCarthy 129). In the book The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, a father and a boy are traveling towards what they hope is survival. They are in a post-apocalyptic world where all is lost.

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.

Profound in the love shared between the father and son, their sense of unity kept them pushing through the pain for “each the other’s world entire” (6). In a society painted by shades of grey, one cannot help but at times feel the desire to fade into the world full of suffering. In the father’s perspective “there were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead ” (230). However, the man is fortunate because he has a spark in his life that motivates him to keep going- the boy. Many others before the man took their own life in an attempt to rescue themselves from the doomed life ahead. However for the father, “the boy was all that stood between him and death” (29). The father possess such love for the boy that no matter what the situation is he will never take the easy route out. He will never put his own needs over the boy’s. He will never leave him to try to fend for his own. Furthermore, if the boy were to ever depart life before him he “would want to die too” (11), thus proving that the boy is the father’s incentive to carry on. With the love for his son in mind, the father is enabled to carry on with his life. During a difficult situation, love encourages one to see it to the

The need for morals passed down through the generations is a key to being a productive person and citizen. Overcoming obstacles is challenging, especially when it is dependent on a life and death situation. The devastation forces people to use survival tactics that either uphold or abandon morals. In the midst of adversity, a person must decide a course of action that will help them endure the circumstances. In the novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, there are situations that require people to overcoming the hurdles of living in the midst of an apocalypse.

Cormac McCarthy made a name for himself writing about the utter irrationality of existence, and the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life within his novels. He does this in his novel, The Road. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, The Road tells the story of a father and son and their journey throughout their life on a barren road with no life around them. They are faced with the question of, "What really matters?" Throughout this story, they are faced with many hardships that seem to have no end in sight.

Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is a contemporary novel written in 2006 detailing the journey of a father and his son through a post-apocalyptic world, both of whom remained unnamed. Throughout the novel, they see a huge amount of chaos: cannibals, murderers, rapists, people starving, and more. At first glance, the novel seems to be about this apocalypse and the society that develops due to it. However, that is not the case; it is really about the growing relationship of the father and son and how they interact with each other and those around them.

He is the boy's father and believes that he has been entrusted by God to keep the boy safe and to protect him from harm even if that means killing him before the bad guys can get to him. He wonders if he has it in him to do harm to his own son, the only source of light in the man's world. He must push himself and his son to extreme measures in order to survive. He shows his son how to carry the fire, first with his help, and then, later, without him. The man is more concerned about keeping the two of them alive and because of this he view the world as evil and doesn't trust many people at the beginning of the book but still believes good people are out there.

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.

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.

Any vulnerability that is shown by him will be reflected negatively to the boy and thus would stick with him forever. The man is not necessarily trying to show the boy this pride and determination to make himself happy or even to excite the boy. The man is showing the boy this so that when the man eventually passes, the boy will be ready to take on the world by himself with having no fear and all faith in himself. The man explains to the boy, “just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, don't you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget" (10). The man believes that what he continually tells his son about life will always stay there with him. The boy will always want to forget the loss of his father because it will make him sad, but he will never be able to forget the values that his father has taught him. The man will do anything in the world for his son. “Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?” (77). The man believes he is destined to do anything for his son; his son is his legacy and therefore his son is a part of him. This love between man and son goes so deep that the man is poised anything in the