McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print. The Road is set in a grim atmosphere. It is after apocalypse world where all signs of life are extinct. People and animals are starving, and predatory groups of savages wander around with pieces of human bodies stuck in their teeth. It is both oppressive and disheartening. McCarthy sets an atmosphere like one mediately after the world wars. It is not far-fetched to imagine the possibility of such a sad environment today. The novel tells a story of an unnamed man and his son in who struggle to survive in this horrific environment. I feel that the language in the novel is verbose. McCarthy is blunt in his descriptions. He uses repeated struggles and similar scenes forcing the reader to share the tough experience of the characters. I agree with the author that The Road is the picture of a post-apocalyptic world. I also agree with the opinion that suffering might never end, like the novel indicates through imagery at the very end. The author manages to combine happy moments with sad ones even though the sad ones takes the larger share. In addition, he accomplished his aim of having an audience that is glued to the book all along sine it is both engaging and informative. The author has a perception that the world is composed of more bad things than the good ones. This novel will be important to me as I explore the themes of post-apocalyptic fears and human struggles. However, I do feel that he leans too heavily on sadness
This passage from Dalton Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun shows a relationship between a father and son through a seemingly small and insignificant series of events. The short story depicts a father and his son on their annual fishing trip. The son decides that he wants to go fishing with his friend instead of his father for a change however, is very hesitant to ask. The author’s use of techniques such as point of view, selection of detail, and syntax in this passage helps to better characterize the relationship between the father and his son in a deeper and more thorough way.
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 story “Pencil Crayons” by Robert Currie, is about Josh who live with his parents in a farm far away from the town. One day, the family came to town for a second time after fall. “Now that winter was on the way out, he knew things were getting better.” Josh’s feeling towards everything around him was good and even better based on this quote. When they arrived to town, they met Josh’s teacher who recommend him to join art club. The boy’s father does not like the teacher, and he basically does not want his son to join any activity in the school so he strongly refused the teacher’s advice. Later that night, Josh’s father asked his mother what she bought from town. She told Josh’s father that she bought Josh some crayons and Josh’s father got
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) is a tragic story of a father and son’s struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. The novel follows the father and son as they travel down ‘the road’ towards the coast, struggling with the world around them, which has dissolved into absolute nothingness. Very few people have survived the collapse of society, and the ones that have are savages and killers, doing what they can to stay alive. Seeing that all of the other survivors are turning into appalling and gruesome people, the father and son coin themselves the “good guys,” because they are not interested in hurting any of their fellow survivors. McCarthy never explicitly states the names of the father and son, nor specifies
“You remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember,” (McCarthy 12). With most aspects of life, the horrendous moments are the times that no one can erase. This applied to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Towards the end of the novel when the son loses his father proves to be the most indelible moment with the assistance of the feelings experienced during that part. The son encounters a variety of emotions including loneliness, loss and hope. In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part.
In the book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy the two protagonists, a boy and his father, are set out in a post apocalyptic world where everything is trying to kill them from cannibals to people with nothing. Their main goal is to travel down a road south where the climate is better for living. On their journey they encounter many life threatening obstacles including starvation and “bad guys” that they must overcome to survive. The paternal bond between the father and son is what pushes them beyond what could have been possible and allowed them to make it along their journey.
There is no comparison to the amount of pain a parent endures when they outlive their child. A tale of woe is what resides after such incident. An endless cycle of grief is exemplified in the short story “Night” by Bret Lott. The way the father in the story pays meticulous attention to detail makes the audience believe that he does not want to forget the existence of his child. He is merely in denial. The denial is being caused by auditory hallucinations, and Lott describes those incidents with descriptive words that correlate to the father’s emotions.
Have you imagined how the post-apocalyptic world will look like and will you choose try hard to survive or to die? In the book, The Road, written by McCarthy, the sky is dark. It’s cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. Everything has gone, only except some human beings who try every way to survive even by hurting and killing people. It seems that there is no reason to keep surviving in a world which no hopes remain, a father still perseveres to survive with his son and they are sustained by their love. On their journey, the father sacrifices a lot to protect his son and strongly shows his parental love.
In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke illustrates the complex relationship between a little boy and his father by juxtaposing images of love and violence through word choices that portray feelings of fear yet affection for his father. Roethke’s shifting tone encompasses distress and a sense admiration that suggests the complexities of violence both physically and emotionally for the undercurrents of his father and son relationship.
Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is known as one of the best books written in the last 25 years. McCarthy uses several linguistic and literary devices to illustrate the character’s feelings in the reader’s brain. McCarthy uses symbolism throughout the entire book. He symbolizes “the fire” that the boy is carrying and how the difference between fighting and giving 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. Survival is started to feel unlikely. Throughout the story keeping faith alive or conceding was a constant battle due to these harsh conditions. From questioning the existence of God, to questioning the honesty of one another, and questioning whether they will make it to the south alive; the main characters struggle to keep faith alive. Being on the run and continuously having to watch your back from danger all over, results in a sense of weariness and hopelessness. In this story faith and doubt functions to exhibit the power and significance of each. One cannot exist without the other. Although doubt can be mistaken as a barrier in a situation, it acts as a tool that strengthens faith.
The boy's search throughout the novel juxtaposes his father as well as the uncivilized and ravaged society around him. The uncivilized society that they live in is full of injustice. Some people, or the bad guys, get things that they want by bullying and tormenting others. The bad guys also keep weaker, less fortunate people captive as a source of food. The boy saw these things and it brings to light how different he is than from the people around him. His compassion makes him want to be a just person so he can help others. The one person that he looked to for help and guidance was his father, and he was not a prime example to follow. His father was selfish with their belongings when they came across other people on the road because he wanted to protect the boy. The boy's search for justice is confronted with his unjust father. The boy's father is just to him, but not to the other people they meet on the road. The boy, however, wishes for his father to be more just in these situations. The boy's desire for his father to be just highlights the stark contrast between their pursuits for justice. His father does not care about being just to other people, while the boy wants to be just to everyone they come across. The boy is a compassionate, intelligent( for his age) individual who believes that every person deserves justice, while the father does everything humanly possible to protect the
The father doesn't help anyone to make sure that his son has enough food to eat to survive. He refuses to help the others and he doesn't need to share what he has with anyone. Because of that, his son will survive longer. When he meets a boy about his son's age, he can take the boy with them. But maybe he is afraid that if he does so, he will be distracted in protecting his son. As when he meets the thief, though he knows that chase will be dangerous, but he still chases him because of the blankets and the food, which can keep his son survives. That is why the father says to his son that “‘What do you think would have happened to us if we hadnt caught him?”’(McCarthy258). When he caught the thief, he asks the thief to take off everything. He says, "'Take your clothes off", "Take them off. Every goddamned stitch", "The shoes", "Put them in the cart"'(McCarthy256,257). He does that not because he needs these things, but because he doesn't want the thief has a chance to follow them and steals from them again. He still does that even his son asks him to not doing that. The father's consistency in decisions indicates that he volunteer to be a bad person for the protection of his
the violence. For example if they banned religious books because its against another religion it wouldn’t be right. People wont know what happened in history if we banned them.