The Driving And The Road

One thing that remains constant in the ever-changing world of Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel The Road is the relationship between The Man and The Boy. The father and son’s bond is extremely close, especially due to the isolation they face on The Road, but it is filled with love and endearment, like someone would expect any relationship between a father and son to be.

An important flaw the son has is that he does not remember the world as a peaceful place the son only remembers the world destroyed. This type of naivetes gives the boy a minimal outlook on the past and see the difference of the present. The father knows the difference which gives the father the realization before The Road begins. The son in portions of The Road is starving, this desolate place called the world does not give any chance of hope or second ones. The importance of this geographical state in the book makes the father and son rely on one another because they know the very importance of staying alive, and the only way they can do that is to fight for one another. The Road opens with a setting of desolation, “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him”, which creates a concern within the readers that are realizing the magnitude of this horrible place. (McCarthy 3) The son in the first page of the book is mentioned

Moral and kindness are what the society always teach people to hold in any circumstance. However, Cormac McCarthy— the author of The Road — challenges this principle. The setting of this novel is a world with nothing but ash and dust— sunlight no longer shine on the land, lives nearly die out, and civilization gradually decays. In such a hopeless world, is it still neces-sary to avoid crossing the line of moral and kindness? In this novel, McCarthy reveals the answer of this question by narrating the story of a father and a son on the road. The choices they make demonstrates the point that the existence of humanity does not depend on whether the world is over or not; instead, the world is not over as long as humanity exists.

The language of “the Road” By McCarthy is scant yet poetic and morally inspiring. The text is composed not of chapters but of discrete, punctuated paragraphs that mirror the movements of the father and son on their journey. McCarthy's writing style reflects sparseness in that he chooses to write in fragments and he keeps the father's and son's dialogue very choppy. Authors style of narrating this story is very scrappy and sparse, which describes the infertile and miserable land through which the man and boy are traveling. In the book we noticed, McCarthy makes less use of quotation and apostrophes. There are no brakes through dialogues. Because this is a post-apocalyptic story, the exception of these punctuation basics might help as a way of author to show that in this new world, fragments of the old world such as materialistic objects and humanity exists in scarce amount. McCarthy’s narrative voice is powerful and completely shapes the stories he tells. The story begins with the man and boy making their journey along the road. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, date and place are unnamed. One can assume it is somewhere in America, most of the South, because the man tells the boy that they're walking the "state roads"(43). Neither the man nor the boy is given a

A man and a child, father and son, are alone against an inclement nature while pushing a cart filled with tools, blankets, and things that they have found along the way to the south. About ten years before the world had been reduced to ashes by an apocalyptic disaster, which it is not known whether it was caused by a natural event or the foolishness of human beings. The world is reduced to a single color, gray, that of the ashes covering all that is left, that of hearts and minds, clouded by the pain of the loss and the terror of solitude. All that is left of the humankind is a few tenacious survivors struggling unceasingly against hunger and cold, and those who have lost any trace of humanity giving free vent to the lowest instincts of oppression and violence. But in the novel “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy paints a vivid and dramatic picture of the catastrophic consequences of a cataclysm that are nothing more than an excuse to minimize the outer contingencies with the sole purpose to bring up what is really dear to his heart, the relationship between a father and a son. They have been deliberately left unnamed for the whole story to epitomize the archetypes of the man and the child, a hymn to paternity, and to unconditional love. In a world reduced to the essentials, McCarthy aims not merely to explore the complexities of the relationship between the two, which in fact remains

It is the boy who wills his father to live as “if [he] died [the man] would want to die too,” (McCarthy 11). As well, it is the boy who forces his father to continue on towards the south and to “[get] up [in the] morning,” (McCarthy 272). It is the boy’s innocence despite everything that brings the possibility of new life. When the man and the boy are walking, the boy often asks his father if “[they are] carrying the fire,” (McCarthy 129) a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In the boy’s eyes, nothing will ever go awry “because [they are] the good guys and [they are] carrying the fire,” (McCarthy 129).

The encounters and interactions the man and boy had while on the road help develop McCarthy’s larger theme of humanity losing its selflessness when it’s in danger. For example, while the man and the boy are traveling to the coast they come across a burnt man, half-dead lying in the road. After some observation, the boy asks the man if they could “help him” but is continuously shot down by his father who repeatedly tells him to “stop it” (McCarthy 50). The Road’s setting is one of the strongest over the weak, those who can’t survive for themselves they simply won’t. This burnt man, who was struck by lightning, is an example of that as he is now in no condition to scavenge for food and medical supplies and will probably just die where he currently sits. The boy, realizing this, wanted to do something to give the man even a small chance at survival, but the man knew he was a lost cause and should be left to die. The boy and his overwhelming desire to help the dying man is representative of old society and its pressure to help those with lesser than you, ideals that were result of religious codes and churches. But in a world where none of that matters or is present, the man is what humanity has become, selfish being whom only care about

McCarthy portrays him as a good character, who sticks to his morals and is always willing to help other people, even though this is dangerous. Being full of goodness himself, he naively looks past the evil in the world, and sees the good in people. McCarthy uses religious symbolism in descriptions of him – in the opening scene in the novel, the man says about the boy ‘If he is not the word of God God never spoke.’ This shows us that the boy is McCarthy’s return to God. He portrays the boy as a Christ figure, good and virtuous. He is the remnant of a God in a Godless society. The son believes that he and his father are ‘carrying the fire’ and that they are ‘the good guys’ – this shows that he still has faith in the world and considers himself and his father to be good and moral. Whilst his father refuses to help others, the boy strongly feels that it is the right thing to do. McCarthy writes the dialogue between the father and son: ‘[father] He’s been struck by lightning. [Son] Can we help him? Papa? [Father] No. We can’t help him… they went on. The boy was crying.’ We can see how strongly the boy feels about this, and how it brings him pain to watch others suffer. The character of the boy confronts us with a vast contrast to that of any other characters in the book. Even though he is essentially only human, his empathy and morality challenge us as readers to alter our ideas on nihilism. Although this world is seemingly

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy revolves around a dystopian world. Throughout the book there is very little hope but enough for survival. McCarthy focuses the book around a father and son trying to move west. McCarthy’s writing style throughout the first section of the book shows how hopeless the world is, by extinguishing character names, negative connotations, and almost all of society.

The landscape of a post-apocalyptic society contains nothing to live for, it is a world without the people you love, without sun, flowers or food; only lawlessness, fear and uncertainty of survival. McCarthy creates a post apocalyptic world in his book, “The Road,” that addresses the issues of our time by illustrating the fears of society and the violence that accompanies them. These fears at the time were most recently initiated by the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq war and the resulting violence experienced both in America and around the world. McCarthy’s “The Road” is a worst-case scenario, in which the broad American view that we are invincible and our principles are infallible is challenged. And with the violence in today’s

This quote show how every single day the man wants the sweet release of death but every single day the man chooses to take care of his child. The extraordinary effort that the man shows is a basic parental desire for better for their children. The father wants so much for his son to end up having a good life. When times are toughest for the pair, the man motivates the child by saying that they are carrying the fire. The fire is symbolic for hope. The man wants the boy to know happiness and human civilization like he knew growing up. On one of his last breaths the man reminds the boy of the

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.

Cormac McCarthy is a well-known fictional author, especially well-known for his dystopian novels and his ability to lure readers into his books through his language and his depth of writing. His famous novel “The Road” entices readers in through his well-constructed post-apocalyptic dystopian genre. McCarthy cleverly uses language techniques such as third person and indirect free speech. The relationship of the man and his son unveils the true meaning of love and the willingness to fight for the survival of a

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a post apocalyptic world?Would you have the sufficient skills to fend for yourself in barbaric world? What would you do to survive? In Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road”is about a post apocalyptic world that has been impacted by global catastrophe, which left the United States in total abysmal . The world is grey , cold , and has a scarcity of resources . The two main characters whose names are the man and boy need to journey to the south region since the northern region is unbearable to live in due to arctic temperature drop.The author gives very little details on the background stories of who or what the main characters did before this tragedy occurred.This novel transcends barriers

The characters of the man and the boy change through their journey throughout the novel. The man has great bravery and skill, but one thing that stands out from him is his love and devotion for his son. “He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy, p. 5). The man refers to his son as a warrant which insinuates that the boy gives him a reason to live. The man is ready to protect his son at all costs which makes him ruthlessly violent and cynical. The wife’s suicide and apocalypse have internally wounded the man, but he also seems burdened by his past – a happy childhood; another life before the catastrophe. The man is resourceful, well-educated, and