In Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel The Road, he uses many physical objects to portray a deeper message. McCarthy creates the main character, the boy, to symbolize hope in a hopeless world.Throughout The Road the boy creates a warm presence to the cold and dark reality of what the world has become. Essentially he shines as the light of the world through all of his actions, not only with the father but with other characters that they come across in their journey along the road.
The boy epitomizes the hope in which the father needs in order to continue to go throughout the doom-laden world. Most nights the boy and the father talk about a variety of subject matter, for example, one of the nights the boy comes up with a scenario and proposes
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On several occasions the idea that the boy is “carrying the fire” repeatedly comes up(129). The idea that he carries the light of the world exists essentially because ultimately the boy resembles the last hope for the human race to move on from this situation. After his father passed away the boy traveled onto the road and noticed a man who convinced the boy to join him and his family so that he could survive. The boy, following the agreement to join them, gets a warm welcome from the mother and breathes life back into her stating that “the breath of God was his breath”(286). The death of the father represents the passing of the old world while the new family represents the hope for a better tomorrow. When seeing the boy the woman is overcome with revival of a light that can lead them out of the dark. This gives her family and herself the hope that a possible future, past all the chaos and destruction of the world, exists.
In a world without hope the boy leads the way with his inner light to guide the reconstruction of a broken society. When it seems as if no light exists at the end of the tunnel, when people stay true to their morals and unite as one anything is possible. Uniting as one creates hope when none exists, destroying the demons that plague society into
A gift from God: The young Messiah in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road The Road shares the rough journey of a man and his messianic-figure son struggling to survive the morality of a post-apocalyptic world. The earth is destroyed and a majority of the once living are now deceased, however, the boy and his father continue to travel through their burned world. On their route south towards the coast, they find injured “good” guys and “bad” guys including thieves, shelter, clothes, and little food and water.
Erik J. Wielenberg argues that The Road implies morality doesn’t depend upon God for existence or justification. It’s the nature of humans to desire things and for the things they do to make sense. The man validates this point because he wants to keep going and tells himself that he carries the fire. In the story fire represents life and goodness. He carries the fire, which he believes is his son.
For both of them, they are “each other’s world, entire” (6). Nothing or no one else matters because they can only trust and love each other. As the man 's wife points out before her suicide, "the boy was all that stood between him and death" (25). In other words, the man 's thirst for survival is fueled by the love for his son. While the man may expect his own death, he lives in order to seek life for the boy.
Being optimistic in tragic times, is a substantial challenge, but the people of Haiti find hope in each other. Author, Edwidge Danticat, portrays the idea of hope in a variety of different stories. Born in Port-au Prince, Haiti, Danticat’s background of Haiti, brings authenticity to the novel. The motif of family and friendship that thread throughs Danticat’s stories, suggests that even though people may be in times of despair, loved ones can bring a sense of hope. Hope is illuminated in “Children of the Sea”, through the unnamed boy and girl 's relationship.
Another symbol is the road, which is a desolate, transient thing full of danger, the man refers to them as "blood cults". The director really emphasises the importance of the fire by the way it contrasts against the gloomy dark post apocalyptic
In Stephen King 's "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," a man known as Red tells the story of Andy Dufresne. The authorities arrested Andy for a crime he did not commit subsequently, he ended up in the Shawshank penitentiary with Red. Red, an astute prisoner, described how prison life could take away all hope of surviving on the outside, but for some reason, it did not take Andy 's hope. With hopefulness being an odd trait for a prisoner, it was no wonder that Red was always pondering as to how Andy could stay hopeful for so many years. His seemingly endless pondering would cease when Andy broke out of jail in a hole he had dug through the wall.
In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses figurative language, to demonstrate the difference in the people’s decisions and values when compared to the real world. The survivors of the apocalypse, including the father all had to undergo a series of radical changes in order to adapt and survive in the new world. When the father enters the house, where the people are kept for food, not only does he see naked people both male and female but also a man with his leg cut off. McCarthy writes, “On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and stumps of them blackened and burnt” (McCarthy 110).
Hope can be a driving force in our lives. It can pick up the phone to call that one girl back for a second date. It can move our fingers to type the first few words of a novel. It can push us to do more and be more than we ever thought we could be. On the other hand, hope can be like an opiate.
In The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 2006, a man and a boy struggle to survive as they travel south on the road in the post-apocalyptic world. On their journey to the coast, the man and the boy encounter the remains of an ashen world, ravaged by men who are willing to kill to survive. Among the death and destruction of the post-apocalyptic world, McCarthy illustrates how the man gains resilience from the spirituality he finds within his son, which proves how in a world void of official religion, belief in something greater than yourself creates the strength necessary to survive. The man sees his son as a spiritual figure that provides him the strength to survive in the desolate world.
The sleeping boy represents the innocent people who are unaware of the challenges in life. The boy is only a small child, and has not experienced many difficulties.
In this scene, the man recalls the final conversation he had with his wife, the boy’s mother. She expresses her plans to commit suicide, while the man begs her to stay alive. To begin, the woman’s discussion of dreams definitively establishes a mood of despair. In the
There are many lessons throughout the novel that could be taught and learned in our world, this society, today. They may be true; however, the reasons the lessons are taught in the first place is because of the society being presented in this literary work, The Road. This gives the sociological approach a more appropriate understanding approach to the road. The society and the characters can be analyzed thoroughly and effectively this way. “When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that will never be and you are happy again then you have given up.
The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is a novel that follows the journey of a father and son traveling south to escape the post-apocalyptic scene they were unfortunately put in. The father and son are survivors of some unnamed disaster that has occurred. As time passes by there is less and less food. There is also a lack of plants and animals. Other than scavenging for food, the only means of survival for some is cannibalism.
Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.
Frost utilizes analogous imagery throughout his poems; specifically in this poem, he uses natural imagery like the woods and roads to signify these themes. The woods represent indecision and instinct. Everywhere in literature, the plots of novels and poems alike contain characters lost in the woods. Similarly, in “The Road Not Taken”, the woods represent indecision while an adrift traveler wanders lost in the woods (Rukhaya). Frost repeatedly uses this symbol, and “the image...has represented indecision in Frost’s other poems…