The Sociological Approach In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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.

“You can’t win if you wip us. You’ll still be where you were before- at the bottom. And we’ll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn’t do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn’t prove a thing. We’ll forget it if you win, or if you don’t. Greasers will still be greasers and Socs will still be Socs.”

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

Sociological imagination can be defined as one’s awareness of the impact that society has on their personal life because of the outside conditions and circumstances. The outside world create standards for people, even if they do not know that they are being looked at in this way. Therefore, society influences a person’s behavior and limits their free will. This theory is clearly demonstrated in The Truman Show. The movie helps to deepen my understanding of sociological imagination and helps me to see how the outside world controls my life.

His vision of what transcends the ordinary experience is an important theme in American philosophical and literary traditions; two are the figures who paid great attention to the quest for transcendence: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jack Kerouac. For Anderson, these two great figure are the prototypical American “grievous angels”. In what sense are Emerson and Kerouac grievous angels? First, the author explains that “they call us out and have us seek our own self-transcendence”, then “it fits Kerouac best in considering its import of “bringing trouble” or being “sorrowful”. Emerson’s character is perhaps better captured by the sense of being “excessively strong”. There are many similarities, and still, there are differences between the two, but, as the Anderson agrees that we, like Parson, “keep company with both of them”. They were both active in New England Transcendentalism and the Beat Generation; they were literary innovators and exhibited a spirit of individualism, being charismatic and spontaneous. But they were actually very different. In 1844, Emerson claimed that America was a country of hope, a growing nation, country of the Future. In Kerouac’s post–World War II America, things were different. The main ideas of the Beat Generation, the longing for belief and meaning in life, are reflected in On the Road. The novel gave voice to a rising, dissatisfied fringe of the young generation of the late forties and early fifties. It was after the Great Depression and World War II and more than a decade before the Civil Rights movement and the turmoil of the '60s. He also wrote the Duluoz legend, filled with a sense of

Have you ever gone through a situation that has impacted your whole life? The three stories that show a turning point are Eleven, Hatchet, and The Road Not Taken. The three main people in my essay are Brian, Rachel, and the narrator in The Road Not Taken. All of these characters have gone through a turning point which has changed their lives. The next story, Hatchet, will tell us about a turning point that had made him motivated.

In Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates paints the misery that April and Frank Wheeler endure as a couple in the American suburbs in the 1960s. Throughout the novel, the Wheelers repeatedly blame their despairs, monotonous lives, and altercations on the suburbs. Consciously or not, the suburbs and their tags influence the Wheelers’ actions and interactions with each other.

During a poetry unit, many high school students have read the words, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” These are the opening lines to “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, a famous poem included in his collection Mountain Interval. The poem starts with the narrator walking in the woods and seeing two roads split from each other. He has to decide which road to take since this decision will forever shape him as a person. The speaker must recognize what can be gained and lost by each individual road and the choice to follow it. Throughout this poem, Robert Frost uses extended metaphors to convey that every human has a path that causes them to constantly make choices that will continue to shape their lives.

The poem, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost states that in life we come upon many decisions, and there are points where we have to let fate take the lead. “The Road Not Taken” uses two paths as a symbol of a life decision. To understand this poem you have to have understanding of life’s meaning. The author helps us better understand the message by his use of tone and literary devices such as metaphors and symbolism. In this poem we come to realize that life is a combination of decisions and fate. The two paths symbolize the life of the traveler and all his life decisions. This poem expresses life, because in life, there are important decisions that in some instances can make a really big change, sometimes it’s hard to find your way out of something, and there are many possible ways you can do it.

Many novels and plays reveal values of the characters and the society. In the play Our Town ,Thornton Wilder reveals the values of happiness and love are ignored by society.

In Victoria Hoyle's scrutinization of the novel The Road she notices that it has two purposes. McCarthy's first purpose depicts a post-apocalyptic world, where God is nearly dead and humanity is holding on by a thread. The Road is set after a nuclear war that has demolished most of civilization. The admonition used in The Road is referred to as a "clarion warning" to preserve our beautiful world, for if we do not change our current path of ignorance and insolence it could lead to inevitable doom. She states her first claim by showing the examples of barbarity and crudeness that are orchestrated throughout The Road. Victoria then harnesses the father's dire need to have faith in something "independent of man, timeless and beyond death".

The novel On the Road is based on Kerouac’s real life experiences in America with one of his close friends Neal Cassady. Most of the book deals with metaphors like “at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future." This sentence uses geography terms East and West to symbolize how far apart his youth and his future are from each other and how it can change him for the better. Throughout the book Jack Kerouac makes it clear that while he was writing On the Road he made all of his close friends, including Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. The most important person in his close knit group of friends was Neal Cassady mainly due to the reason that Neal was the one of the two main characters in his book. “This is the most open statement of Sal’s desire to “be along for the ride”, all the time he lives out his dream experiences, he is at the same time recording it all as material for this exact novel we are reading.” not everyone believes the best of Jack Kerouac’s books as David L. Ulin says in his article about Jack’s novel On the Road, “Time, however, catches up with everything, including "On the Road." David Ulin’s idea that time eventually catches up with everyone makes him speculate how the book should be perceived. Throughout the decades of The Beat Generation’s fame

There will come a time in every person’s life where he has to make a decision that could alter his life forever. In fact, this exact situation may occur multiple times in his existence. In trying to make the right choices, a person might weigh both options and take into account all the possible effects and arguments for each. For example, when he was growing up, Robert Frost would take strolls with his friend, Edward Thomas, who would constantly face the struggle of choosing the right path and would always worry about whether he made the right decision. In his poem, “The Road Not Taken,” Frost portrays this relatable clash of choices. Going to the woods to make a serious decision, a lonely traveler torn between two paths fears choosing wrong.

From the time I was born, I was given certain characteristics and behaviors that follow through my life and creates a barrier for myself to have a limit on opportunities that could be taken. Every single person has a unique way of expressing their cultural identity because no one grew up exactly the same. I wouldn’t have my own identity if I didn’t carry morals and beliefs I had while growing up. I also gained characteristics that represent me from the society we live in today. Thinking of the daily tasks I partake in and how I do them in a certain way makes me wonder why I do it. Sociological imagination determines how individuals in society differ from one another based on their historical or social circumstances. This essay will define sociological imagination, and how race, religion, and gender plays a significant role in my life to affect how I am as an individual today.

Throughout life, people are often faced with many decisions. Some of these decisions are easy to make, while others are excruciating, as they can be life altering. From a Christian’s perspective, however, people never have to make these decisions alone. God promises that he will never abandon his people, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (New International Version, Deuteronomy 31:6). In the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost uses beautifully crafted metaphors, imagery, and tone to convey a theme that all people are presented with choices in life, some of which are life-altering, so one should heavily way the options in order to make the best choices possible.