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
Examples of this maturation are shown when he explains, "It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all" (284). Our view of the story changes as well when we notice that Grady 's life of adventure and experiences turns into tragedy and misfortune. His life is more about loss than accomplishment to the point where his life is an ultimate failure. By the conclusion of this story Grady has undergone a complete change. First person point of view used by McCarthy has ended up being a very successful way of telling the story. We see each individual aspect of the story through Grady 's perspective as we are able to understand by his emotion and decisions. The protagonist is also a very reliable character because the reader is never left out of any internal information of the story.
Panic, anxiety, and most importantly, fear, are all components that form the adventurous tale, The Most Dangerous Game. Rainsford, the protagonist of the story, is widely recognized as an experienced hunter who ventures off in a ship to travel to Rio in order to hunt jaguars. However, the story turns when Rainsford falls off his ship, encounters a hunter who hunts men, and becomes the prey himself. Although Connell sets up an intense plot by using irony, characterization, word choice, and other literary devices, imagery is one of the main aspects that releases an uneasy feeling within the audience. Imagery is a common literary device that authors use to engage a reader into the story, by painting the scene in the audience’s mind. Authors would describe several details of the event, using imagery in their writing. The short story, The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell, incorporates imagery to intensify the suspense within the literary piece. By using this literary element, Connell depicts a mood that escalates from casualness to increasing panic.
One technique McCarthy used was imagery. Imagery was used a lot in this piece from his novel. An example of imagery would be ¨coyotes were yapping along the hills to the south and they were calling from the dark shapes of the rimlands above him where their cries seemed to have no origin other that the night itself¨. He used imagery to show the readers what the experience was really like.
Risks are a possibility of loss or injury; all humans at least once in their lifetime have to do something risky. If life has no risks, you’re not really living it, since we humans do not grow as a species (or society) if there is no challenge in life. People in this world must have challenge and struggle to overcome an obstacle in their life to discover the real world. This way a person will grow physically and most importantly, mentally, to never do something adventurous or take the easy way out is on them. Krakauer, Emerson and Thoreau all have their own ideas on risk, but they all have in common is that risk can change a person for the good or bad.
Life is fleeting and time moves quickly. In the blink of an eye, childhood becomes only a memory and the difficulties of the world become a factor of everyday life. E.B. White reflects on his earlier years in his personal essay “Once More to the Lake,” a detailed account of his childhood memories with his father at the lake. He carries on the father-son tradition by bringing his own son out to the lake, experiencing flashbacks to his youth. White lost his sense of self, as he began identifying himself as his son, feeling as though he was back at the lake with his father. This trip changed White’s outlook on life, for he finally realized that mortality was closer than he imagined. He was no longer young, and watching his son mature only made this notion more real. One day, he will be only a memory to his son, just like his father is to him. White uses a variety of rhetorical devices to convey the message to his audience that life moves quickly, not stopping for anything, including emotionally-charged diction, imagery, and personification.
Through the book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy the boy and the father show a great amount of change and maturity, while also learning to adapt and love. The story has a good balance of how different events can affect and impact someone's life in either a good or bad way. There are many events that change the mind and heart of the boy and father, but change can only be helpful if you learn from it and mature out of being afraid for things to happen.
In the novel of the Call of the Wild, Buck tried to adapt to his new and difficult life. He was forced to help the men find gold; he experienced a big transformation in him. At the end, he transformed into a new and different dog. Buck went through physical, mental and environmental changes. In my essay, I talked about how Buck was like at the beginning, what he changed into, and how he was forced to adapt his new environment, and underwent these changes.
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.
Wolves, when in groups, are universally threatening and recurrently feared. This being known, they are often portrayed as an evil or opposing force. Although, on occasion, they have also been known to be referred to as “noble creatures who can teach us many things.” (http://www.wolfcountry.net/) But consequently, despite the popular interpretation of wolves and their characteristics, each story presents its own interpretation of their many characteristics.
Chris McCandless didn’t have it easy growing up in his household. His parents would always fight which he didn’t want to be in that house and around that environment. McCandless one day had enough of he drama and set out on a journey. His journey would impact his life, as he was out of society and in the wild. His journey would lead to his death, but seemed like he achieved by living in the wild other than in society. Chris McCandless seeked to find his own truth in life by going into the Alaskan wilderness. Even though Chris’s journey turned fatal, he should be admired for his courage on going into the wilderness and seeking his values, where most other people won’t end up in a wilderness for their beliefs.
When there are hard times in life many people turn to those they love most those people are called family. The meaning of family is a group of relatives but family doesn’t always have to be people that the person is related to. Cormac McCarthy wrote the book, “The Road” to show people that family will always be there through the rough times. In the book Cormac McCarthy had wrote about a son and his father surviving after a huge catastrophe.
Diversity: a group of people with differences from each other, that create a variety in society. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Boy and The Man (which are the son and father respectively), are alike in that they have to share their unfortunate circumstances together. They go through situations such as hunger, freezing temperatures, and lack of shelter. They also encountered people that sometimes caused them danger, because those people wanted to survive too. However, The Man and The Boy are very different from each other, in that they have different personalities, perspectives, and experiences. These differences are important because they show that these different perspectives, experiences, and personalities cause people to make different
The Road by Cormac McCarthy and the Red Rising by Pierce Brown, shows and explains how both books are different but show some same qualities. Both books show, love,and good vs evil. although both books where written in different years they both show same qualities of themes.
The thrilling novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a story about a post apocalyptic world following the lives of a man and a boy as they head south to escape the cold winter that is headed their way. Along with the cold of winter approaching they also have to deal with the new dangers of the land while traveling such as cannibals, robbers, and many more dangers. This is a tale of a unnamed man and a boy who must not only learn how to survive but find a inner “fire”, establish a code of ethic, and continue in finding reasons to live in this “new world”. With McCarthy’s unique approach to the characters of the book having no names or the cause of destruction of the world unknown it helps the reader feel the confusion and whats really important