The Hitchhiking Game, By Milan Kundera

Historical information about the Setting: The novel takes place in the Southeastern part of United States. The characters take a journey, passing Texas, the post-apocalyptic landscape. During this time the novel is taken place, the country was experiencing depression and poverty. When McCarthy was writing this book, he was thinking about the future environment of of Texas.

In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, there are many aspects that play a role in developing the characters. The main aspect that does this in the text is isolation. The characters are forced to live in complete isolation to survive. The isolation they experience plays a vital role in the development of the man, wife, and son. The isolation impacts these characters in many different ways although they experience it the same. As a result, this is the main way through which McCarthy developed his characters. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy illustrates how a society will diminish when its characters are forced to live in isolation due to the social drive in human nature.

After reading “Driving While Stupid,” by Dave Barry, he tells us about some of his experience with seeing bad drivers. Barry uses many old experiences while being in Miami, China, Boston, and Argentina. I agree with this statement because in almost every city I been in the driving was terrible. Everyone, in some way or another, has witnessed people drive very stupid and reckless. Barry indicated that some drivers use insane driving techniques. These include driving very fast, failure of the utilization of headlights at night, and having distractions for the view of the drivers. He says that the drivers do not have a sequence for navigation since some are involved in phone calls, eating, reading, changing CDs, crowd surface makeup, etc. This is a common thing for teens and even adults to be distracted behind the wheel. He drove through various cities where the traffic laws are constantly being violated. For example, has only one traffic law, which is “No driver may ever be behind any other driver.” In his opinion, Miami drivers are the worst drivers that he has ever witness because of the guy who was driving on 1-95. He was watching videos on his phone and was clearly not paying attention to the road or any other drivers. This does not only affect him but also the other people around him. He was not be cautious of the road and putting his and others lives in danger.

The book, “The Devil’s Highway,” by Luis Alberto Urrea tells of the story of a group of men who tried to get to the United States using this long and dangerous pathway. While this book was written in 2005, some of the problems mentioned in the book still go on today, as do their reasons for taking part in this dangerous journey. This book opens up people’s eyes to what people will do for even just a little glimpse of something better, something that they can be happy with. Urrea’s telling of these men’s story relates to many things and teaches us how things are in places a lot of people in America don’t pay attention to.

Juan Felipe Herrera’s @ The Crossroads - A Sudden American Poem considers the nature of social progress in the wake of devastation. In exploring this concept, Herrera reflects upon the atrocious events leading up to society’s titular crosswalk and contemplates how people can respond to tragedy in a beneficial way. Herrera ultimately conveys the theme of unity: to rebuild today’s broken communities, the populace must abandon shallow, divisive views and embrace the common humanity within its different groups. This method, in Herrera’s eyes, provides the sole refuge from entrapment in the luring trap of self-infallibility.

Sheri Fink once said “The moral values, ethical codes and laws that guide our choices in normal times are, if anything, even more important to help us navigate the confusing and disorienting time of a disaster.” Living in a post apocalyptic time can be unbearable if one is stripped of the most basic necessities. Such an event can greatly affect the behaviour of a person, as well as the ability to distinguish right from wrong. But like the boy and his father in the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy they stuck to their morals to overcome the hardships they face. The novels recurring themes such as companionship, survival, and good versus evil, prove that a persons moral standards could change in a time of need.

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.” Memories are both a curse and salvation for people. Happy memories are the memories that we wish to remember, but are the ones we always forget or vaguely remember. Meanwhile, the memories that hold sadness and fear are the ones that creep up on us when we least anticipate it. They are the ones we attempt to tuck away in the back of our minds with lock and key, but always seem to find a way to appear and torment us. On the other hand, our happy memories can lead us to feel nostalgic about the past and cause us to fret about our present since things are not the same as they used to. In the novel, 'The Road ' by Cormac McCarthy, the story is set in post-apocalypse where a father on the brink of death, puts on hold his death to attempt to guide his son south through the cold United States. The cold is not the only circumstance they are at odds with, but also the constant threat of death from starvation, illness, and murder. Both the father and the boy are also not safe from their own minds. Their dreams turn against them causing them to have to confront people or memories from their past. Throughout their journey, the father and the boy both face pessimism, hunger, cold, fear, and much more.

The novel The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is the story of a young, upper class boy by the name of Amir and his friend, a lower class boy named Hassan. While Amir is a Pashtun and a Sunni Muslim, Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a muslim, which causes the main conflict between the two. Amir and Hassan learn more and more about their social status, as well as their personal friendships and problems as they grow up in Afghanistan.

Isolation is one of the most severe forms of punishment that anyone could be faced with. Cormac McCarthy shows the reaction isolation had on the characters in The Road. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, follows an unnamed father and son as they travel towards the coast in search of safety after the world has been destroyed by a catastrophe. As they travel the road, the father has to protect his son from the threat of strangers, starvation, exposure and harsh weather. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy shows how humans react to isolation by when the man leaves others to suffer, taking drastic measures and when the man kills other men.

The title of the book "Running on empty", by Peter G. Peterson tells what really happens behind the scenes of both Democratic party and Republican party, and how in their own way they are bankrupting our future. "Running on Empy" provides a cogent look at americans political, and physical deterioration describing the financial crisis in the United States. Having hands on experience with this several political and govenment views Mr. Peterson discuss how our country is totally in debt and how we as americans can rebuild our future. Being a republican Peterson calls out mistakes made by both parties being equally irresponsible and presenting nonpartisan solutions. As a Democrate I believe that the democratic party focuses more on everyone being equally happy and healthy and ignores the fact that they could help the financial crisis by decreasing some of the social programs they 've created that help people in our society. I truly believe that some of the programs that were created by the democrats have cost our citizems an exponential amt of money, with minimal improvement to our society. Also , a lot of these elected programs have handicapped our society. I personally believe that if you teach a person to fish , they will always eat. But, if you just feed people the fish you 've caught , it promotes laziness and the people will eventually starve. My take on this comparison is that the democrats only supply the fish to the less unfortunate and the Republicans teach the less

constantly in many sources and evidence of the past. This has led many historians to merely regard race as another mode of explanation, which is the case for studying race in Latin America.

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.

Various authors, poets, and playwrights have portrayed different stages of marriages in their works—such as Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman,” Duhamel’s “How It Will End,” and Jarvik’s “Dead Right,” respectively—by discussing certain elements in each couple’s relationship. Each creative piece is centered on important components that either show a strong marriage or depict a couple who is on the verge of separation. These components—communication, honesty, respect, commitment, and intimacy—are beneficial to keep a marriage healthy by allowing couples to work out their marital problems, learn about one another, and generally show their love for each other. The short stories, poems, and play discussed here give the reader an insight into conflicts

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.