The Road Theme Essay

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’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

The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is about a man and his son who endure the adversities of the world in its deterioration. The flashback on pages 11 and 12 of the novel demonstrate the man’s happiness during a special day of his childhood. This flashback is comparable to the Intimations Ode by William Wordsworth. In his poem, Wordsworth explains the concept of how people’s perspective of life differ as they grow. In part 9 of the poem, he explains how the memories that seem the most horrible are usually the one’s that affect someone’s life the most. He claims “not for these I raise the song of thanks and praise; but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things, fallings from us, vanishing.” This indicates that William Wordsworth

The ability to paint beautiful ideas on a canvas of dark events and imagery is an essential skill in the arsenal of an accomplished writer. In his novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy demonstrates his understanding of this skill. A reviewer from the San Francisco Chronicle described The Road saying, “[McCarthy’s] tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy’s stature as a living master. It’s gripping, frightening, and, ultimately, beautiful.” These descriptions of the tale are true throughout the novel, but particularly at the ending of the story. In the final pages of the book, McCarthy continues to engage the reader with gripping and frightening moments, to emphasize the theme of survival, and to reveal beauty and “the miracle of goodness.”

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

-There is a focus on storytelling as a means of healing: "It is the story of my childhood. Now I tell it to you, Xavier, to keep you alive."(35)

Many times the protagonists become the victims of the story and are eventually defeated. This is the case in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road. The protagonist, Xavier Bird, is the victim and is eventually defeated by the powers and doings of the people that he encounters during the war, and also by the uncontrollable forces that act upon him during the course of the war. Ultimately, these two factors overpower him and lead to his emotional defeat.

Three Day Road is a book written by Joseph Boyden, Toronto, Penguin Canada 2005, 384 pages. Joseph’s maternal grandfather and his uncle both served in the First World War. The book is written about history of natives telling us about the hardships of the Frist World War. Joseph’s intent was to honor the Native soldiers who fought in the First World War because many of them did not even get noticed for their great bravery and skill. The War had its way on everyone changing people in the book Three Day Road you can see it between the friendship of Elijah and Xavier and how they both change throughout the story.

Why do you think McCarthy has chosen not to give his characters names? How do the generic labels of “the man” and “the boy” affect the way you /readers relate to them?

It is remarkable how differentiated works of literature can be so similar and yet so different, just by the way the authors choose to use select certain literary devices. Two different novels, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, display these characteristics because of the ways the authors institute such mechanisms. Brave New World describes a futuristic era where humans are genetically manufactured for a certain job predestined to them before they are artificially created, and where common human emotions, desires, wants, and needs have all been modified to support a deemed utopian society where everyone lives and works together in harmony. The Road describes a post-apocalyptic

How does Cormac McCarthy’s Novel The Road, challenge a reader’s ideas, beliefs, experiences and values?

The boy asks the man, “Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay” (10-11). McCarthy points out that the man’s love for his son is what makes the man want to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. In the novel, before attempting suicide, the man’s wife criticizes him for using the boy as a reason to survive. The wife tells the man “The only thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for youself” (57). The quote explains that in the world, where landscapes devastated by fire, the weather conditions are getting harsh, the town and houses are abandoned, little food, no supplies, and no shelter left, no want to live there, but the man wants to continue living the life, so he can always be with his son.

When the mind wanders, dreams serve as a way for the human brain to create an escape from the reality of the world. In the context of the novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, the man dreams often because it’s what his brain naturally does to ease the trauma that he faces every day. However, just like how his brain automatically turns to dreams for ease, the man has trained himself to mistrust those dreams. AAuthor Cormac McCarthy uses dreams, nightmares, and daydreams to show the inviting nature of death and despair in the post-apocalyptic world and how these states of mind allow the man to continue his journey, which conveys the theme of surviving hopelessness.

Country Road has been an iconic Australian brand for 36 years, building its success on its high quality and unique designs that look effortlessly casual yet stylish. Following the high financial performances of their Australian stores, Country Road decided to embark into the United States of America (US) in 1989, in hope of realising the financial gains they saw here. Unfortunately, their strategies didn’t work, and they found obstacles which hindered their success in the US. This essay examines the types of strategies Country Road has pursued and what led Country Road to follow an international expansion strategy. Further, we discuss the impediments to Country Road succeeding in the US retail market, before suggesting strategy options for