Cormac Mccarthy's 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.

Imagine a world where the skies are grey and the ground is torn to pieces. Where there is no civilisation present, nor another human being to be seen. Where the feeling of hunger influences you to consider the idea of human flesh filling your insides and persuading you to do so. A world infested with murder, crime and despair- which have now become necessary for survival. Imagine the air thick with black clouds towering over your very essence and having to muddle through 10 feet of snow and a strong gust of wind. A world where all faith should be gone, but amiss all bad things, it continues to linger through the eyes of the youth. Being able to see the light when your surroundings are pitch black signifies that humanity has not been lost completely. Although, the man knows in his heart that death is inevitable and dangerously close, he continues to live for the sake of the boy whom he believes carries the final hope for humanity.

McCarthy writes, “I want to be with you. You cant. Please. You cant. You have to carry the fire. I dont know how to. Yes you do. Is it real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I dont know where it is. Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it” (pg. 278-279). Here, the lack of punctuation marks are prominent features of McCarthy’s writing style. One can infer that by doing this, he emphasizes the struggle and hardship of the current world, and how the civilities of the preapocalyptic world are no longer deemed significant in the present society. The dialogue between the man and the boy comprise of no quotation marks, which make it difficult for the reader to understand who is speaking which words. On the other hand, McCarthy structures the interactions between the man and the boy in a manner that it is almost poetic-like. Furthermore, the simplistic nature of the dialogue allows for interpretation of the raw emotion that is present in the text. Fear, lack of confidence, love, and fatigue are common emotions that the man and the boy inflect through their nightmarish journey on the road. “Carrying the fire” is a phrase that is used frequently in the novel. One can assume that the phrase is referring to having optimism in the goodness of humanity. Unfortunately, many of the inhabitants of this gruesome practice repulsive lifestyles including, but not limited to, cannibalism, rape, unprovoked battery, murder, and theft.

McCarthy’s The Road exemplifies the struggle to survive throughout the entire novel. In the most trying times, during the longest stretches without food, the father’s persistence and confidence

In each novel of his personal literary journey, Cormac McCarthy examines death and God in different ways. Edwin T. Arnold, who wrote his essay “Blood and Grace: The Fiction of Cormac McCarthy” before The Road, examines how “McCarthy’s protagonists are most often those who, in their travels, are bereft of the voice of God and yet yearn to hear him speak” (14). In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the father explicitly describes his son as god; however, by juxtaposing the father and the son and examining their divine resemblances, it is not the boy but the man who embodies God, supporting Ely’s claim that this post-apocalyptic world is too harsh for God to exist.

The use of McCarthy’s style of writing is written in a way that someone can detect the feelings of the character rather than the story of what happened. The purpose for narratives is to focused on the plot of the story but McCarthy wants the readers to really feel exactly what the characters feel so he in repetitive of how “Cold and Grey” (McCarthy 19) the world around them is Even when they are physically battle something like hunger, you can really feel that they were almost always “Out of food” (McCarthy 197).

Violence is defined as a behavior involving physical or mental force intending to hurt, damage, or kill someone. In the words of Zak Ibrahim, peace is defined as the proliferation or the increase in the existence of Justice. But where does love fit in to these conversations? Violence cannot necessarily transform into love, but the presence of it is surely important. Violence involving our most loved ones, helps us find love and compassion in the toughest of situations, and leads us toward paths of peace. In this essay, examples will be drawn from Zak Ibrahim 's keynote presentation, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Beautiful Boy; a film directed by Shawn Ku, and Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.

The Road is a literary return, a retrospective on the author’s own previous works, a reviewing of his own work that offers a different perspective to that of the young man whose vision was structured in earlier works of McCarthy’s (Bloom

Julio Mera Professor Kloss EN206-C1 23 April 2015 Final Essay Rough Draft In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I didn’t expect the reading to have any type of religious context. However, in post-apocalyptic occurrences, religious contexts are usually used such as the Book of Revelation in the Bible, the prediction of how the world is going to end. Two readings that can connect to this novel when it comes to the apocalypse are Darkness by Lord Byron and “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Civilization is the basis of life, driving human interaction in everyday life. The texts, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, depict civilized and uncivilized situations, which reflect on and elaborate characterization. This can be seen explicitly with the creature (Frankenstein) and the boy (The Road). Both novels address the civilized and uncivilized in different approaches, however similarly emphasize the significance of the character’s traits and development. The ways that each character approaches civilized and uncivilized situations and behaviours, relate to the character’s experiences and emotions directly in the case of the creature, contrary to the inverse relationship in the case of the boy. The

“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.

The Road is a story where is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the date and location is unnamed. The author of the novel Cormac McCarthy doesn 't describe why or how the disaster has demolish the earth. But after reading the novel, I can sense that the author wanted to present a case of mystery and fear to the unknown to the reader. By the author 's exclusion I think that the story gains a better understanding of what the author wanted to express to the reader. An expression of a man and his son surviving in a post-apocalyptic setting.

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.

In the novel “The Road”, Cormac McCarthy presents and creates a language to comprehensibly describe and create an image of hell. “Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us towards it, whereas literature teaches us to notice…” I feel this quote is particularly relevant to McCarthy, as his description in novels, although seemingly in analysis rather barren, his use of descriptive language creates and extremely vivid image. McCarthy uses simple adjectives, repetition and narrates the novel in a godlike omnipresent voice, as well as employing biblical style language and sentence structure. His language in the novel is “as minimalist as ever” , as indeed it is in his style to write simplistically. One can compare, any line from any of his novels, and see this. This can be seen in his other novels, for example “No Country for Old Men”, which was written too in this style of language and is described as “nothing if not pre-apocalyptic”. If one reads this novel, or any of his novels, this style is obvious, but it is arguably particularly effective in “The Road” to create a language of the post-apocalypse.