The Fire And Symbolism In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

Love can be forever, but it is not always enough to bring people through the tough times that they face. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a loving father and son struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with barren lands and barbaric people. During their struggle to travel South, they depict a loving, if rocky relationship. Through the irreplaceable father son relationship McCarthy reveals that love can only carry people so far.

Throughout the novel “The Road by Cormac McCarthy, it displays the tale of survival, a world infested with murder, crime, and despair. However, the author conveys that although cruelty may arise in the world, love overcomes violence and that humanity has not been completely lost. Within the book, violence is shown in a great depth, thus because humans are thrown into a world filled with thievery, murder, and cannibalism as the result of a post-apocalyptic landscape. Despite the crimes that occur, altruism has been explored within the novel. Altruism is best described as the “willingness to do things that bring advantages to others, even if it results in disadvantage for yourself” (Dictionary Cambridge, 2017) Furthermore, two lessons that McCarthy conveys to his readers is that although one may help

In the novel, “ The Road”, by Cormac McCarthy, two characters, a man and his son, traverse the barren, post-apocalyptic United States. Their goal is to cross the southern border of the country alive but they encounter many obstacles along the way. First, they are almost shot dead by bandits from which they scantily escape by hiding in a forest. Next, they are nearly captured and eaten while scavenging in a seemingly deserted house. Worst of all, on multiple occasions they nearly starved to death because they struggled to find food. After months of traveling, the characters nearly escape the country save one who simply could not complete the journey . The boy’s father had a sickness that caused his death on the last leg of the journey. Consequently, the boy meets a stranger with whom he will escape the country with.

Literature is most successful when it is dealing with the big issues of the world

Throughout the world, animals have protected and cared their young from the dangers they must face or encounter such as how humans must protect their children in order to thrive. This is how life is for the protagonist and his son in the book, The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy that introduces us to a man and his son trying to reach the south of the U.S. in order to find salvation. During their journey, they must survive in the wasteland against cannibals and other survivors along the way. Thus, illustrates how they must fight in order to survive throughout the wasteland they wander. Although the Father and Son live in a world of great depravity and hardship, the Father has imparted “The Fire” because his Son is the only person in this wasteland willing to help others rather than scavenge them.

In Cormac McCarthy's “The Road” there are many different ideas or hints of symbolism and hidden meanings within the text. People have come up with these theories involving the road that they spent so long walking alone, the woman, boy and man in the novel, and the whole idea of the world ending.

Cormac McCarthy creates a sense of what a post-apocalyptic society in the novel ‘The Road’. He does this by including dreams, description of the physical landscape and human behaviour. This helps create a sense of a post-apocalyptic world because it gives us insight into what it looks like and how the people think.

I think there is a message about hope, too. The "fire" that the father passes on to his son to keep burning surely can be said to refer to hope in humanity, which is a hope that never dies throughout this excellent novel. It is interesting too that at various stages it is the boy that keeps his father from turning savage like the humans around them. It is his love and belief in others that prevent his father from losing his humanity. Thus I think another important message is how love and relationships keep us human and prevent us giving in to our darker, more savage and evil

Within the first few pages of “ The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, the setting becomes the most crucial to the reader to begin their understanding of this book. For the land surrounding the road is informing the reader of the distressed post apocalyptic state, and how the characters, a father and his son, have to now fight for their lives to survive from a new, hostile and treacherous world with only fear and love for each other to keep going forward. During their journey of southeastern portion of the United States, both have not resorted to rape, murder, or cannibalism despite their grueling winter with limited supplies. Despite all efforts the father’s health begins to deteriorate and ends up dying in the woods with his son by his side. The son having to leave the father behind in order to embark on a new journey was a pleasant ending to the previous unfortunate events that transpired. In “The Road”, Cormac used the

This makes the book about more than a tale of survival but a survival of hope and integrity not only of life itself but of the soul. In “Cormac McCarthy's the Road and Plato's Simile of the Sun,” West Texas A&M University, English, Philosophy and Modern Languages Faculty Members Alex Hunt and Martin M. Jacobsen compare the fire with Plato’s sun. In Plato’s Simile of the Sun, the sun represents the good or absolute truth. The authors contend that the “eye only sees what the sun illuminates” (Hunt and Jacobson 287). Here the sun can be thought of as being reality whereas the human eye is only a perception. The fire is the reality, the morality that can save the world they live in. It is the truth; it is the only hope left to illuminate the mindsets of others to turn their perception of individual survival to that of a collective one. The transcendence of the fire is what, together, the Man and Boy find purpose in and it is this that enlightens the Man upon death. Instead of killing the Boy to save him from a brutal death, the Man too carries the fire by trusting in his divine potential and moral truth in hopes that the Boy can aid humanity’s

The Road American playwright, screenwriter and novelist, Cormac McCarthy, authored a classic post- apocalyptic novel in the year 2006, which was entitled as “The Road”. The novel was based on the story of a father, who had set out on a journey along with his very young son. The author has shown that the earth is totally destroyed due to some natural cataclysm and there is no more life remaining on the earth, except the cannibals and some of the scavengers. The father and son continue their journey in search of food, shelter and clothing also. Their search of food and shelter is successful at times; however they always keep searching for more and more clothes, as it was too cold for them to carry on their journey with a small collection of clothes

The setting in post-apocalyptic literature tends to be described differently than in other genres of literature, as the place of the story and everything surrounding it are usually portrayed in a vague manner. In contrast, the setting of The Road by Cormac McCarthy is described masterfully as it seemed that the most important part for the author as he was writing to set up a great post-apocalyptic world. Many reviewers praise McCarthy's The Road for its exceptional writing "This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. Mr. McCarthy has summoned his fiercest visions to invoke the devastation. He gives voice to the unspeakable in a terse cautionary tale that is too potent to be numbing, despite the stupefying ravages it describes.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road intensely reflects on the importance of relationships as a survival tactic and the struggle to exist as a good person in an immoral world. The relationship between the father and the boy is heavily amplified as the father tries to give his son an understanding of the world he was born into. The father abandons his retelling of history or the past to his son. He struggles to decide if he wants his son to intellectually understand the world or rather survive in it? Their relationship can be compared and contrasted to Rick and Carl from The Walking Dead; both father/son groups relate to being the “good guys” in the new world. However, Rick has full-on moral discussions with Carl, while the father in The Road tends to argue with the boy about moral decisions. After the mother takes her life away, the father is forced to take on the role of a single parent. Demonstrated in modern post-apocalyptic fiction, women are commonly seen as empowering rather than helpless. In The Road, the few female characters are tragic and temporary. The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games demonstrate women as fighters and include female characters that reflect maternal instincts while the women in The Road are viewed negatively by committing actions against motherhood. Female characters in modern post-apocalyptic fiction are quite often independent while The Road female characters seem to have a choice as well, but it is argued that they are portrayed as weak and

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a man and his son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. As they travel south they escape cannibals, and thieves. The man tries to prepare his son for the day he can no longer protect him, as he becomes ill and dies.

In the book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the characters face a dreadful journey through the ravaged world in order to survive. The world was left in ruins after a catastrophe caused the world to burn which took many lives and the ones that were left alive to constantly treck through the wreckage. This book focuses on a man and his son who survived the initial tragedy, however that was only the beginning.The father and son, who were left unnamed, traveled through the roads of what was left of the world avoiding death by scavenging for food, and staying away from the cannibalistic gangs that also roamed the streets.