Viggo Mortensen Essays

Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, covers the journey of an unnamed man and boy as they travel across the desolate, “charred ruins”, scrounging leftovers of the “vanished world” to postpone the inevitable death invariably looming over the two. As the man and boy struggle to survive in the harsh environment, against the lack of resources, and the “bad guys” who resort to cannibalism, slaughtering and consuming those they find along the road, McCarthy comments on what is good and what

For the preliminary paper, we were asked to read Haruki Murakami’s short story “Super Frog Saves Tokyo”, which is about an ordinary loan collector, Katagiri, who finds a giant talking frog inside his apartment one night and tells Katagiri that they are going to save Tokyo from a destructive earthquake which will be caused by the Worm. This short story was written originally for GQ magazine, but was published later along with his other short stories in a book entitled “After the Quake”, published

Importance of control elsewhere in the play • How control is shown • Reasons for control within the play Control is a recurring theme in the play "Macbeth" as it warns the audience of the repercussions of trying to control your fate. The first key event where control features in a significant way is the witches' prophecies. They tell Macbeth that he will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland which establishes the importance of fate. Shakespeare conveys the witches as agents of evil that are

The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier are stories badgered with conflict, anxiety, and passionate self-confidence. The Road is about a man and his son living in a post-apocalyptic world, scavenging for food and shelter for survival. Cold Mountain includes both the story of Inman, an impaired civil war veteran struggling to travel back home to his lover, Ada, and Ada’s story as she has to deal with her father’s death and run her farm single handedly. Although the plots

Michelle Moffo English 1110.03 Peter C. Dully Jr. 26 February 2018 Most people who read The Road by Cormac McCarthy would describe the novel as a very bleak and grim tale. McCarthy uses a wide array of vocabulary and imagery to create a world that the reader themselves would want to escape from, describing the world as “Barren, silent, godless” (McCarthy 4). While the novel may appear to be very depressing on the surface, the hope and goodness that exist within the two main characters, referred

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, the boy and the man vary in many ways such as their bravery, thought process, and attitude. McCarthy clearly shows this throughout the book with various scenarios. The man is always extremely brave, while the boy is scared to explore and take risks. The man has a survival thought process. This process is clear when he says, “We’re not going to die” (94). On the other hand, the boy still does not always think clearly. The man has a confident attitude throughout

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, McCarthy specifically chooses moments in the novel to get the readers anxious. An example of this is the scene in which the man and the boy come across a gang member and inevitably have to shoot him to stay alive. The shooting scene in the book is a significant moment that adds suspense, excitement, and danger. The scene starts with the man and the boy sleeping in an abandoned truck on the side of the road, until suddenly, the man is awakened by a

In the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy has a very dark and sinister tone, but what exactly gives the novel this feeling of dread and hopelessness? The element that gives the book its uniquely dark feel is cruelty, cruelty is defined as:callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering.Cruelty in “The Road” not only sets the tone of the story it also shows how barren and barbaric life is in a world where the strongest people are also the cruelest. From the very first page of the

For my final analysis to the road I decided to create a collage to better help me have a visual of what I seeing while reading the book, the road had an end of times/apocalypse theme. I decided to take that theme and create a world that the father and son was living in which was full off wildlife nothing but nature and humans with no souls. As I read all three of the stories they're all related to death and a disoriented world. The three stories all had seemed to begin as dreams, the narrators were

One theme in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is paternal love; the bond between father and son. Their connection impacts their decisions throughout their journey. Although the two protagonists have hidden identities their familial relationship grants them identities and makes them more relatable. Plainly they just have each other's organization and that the father feels that his lone activity is to shield his child from any risk. However, the child's motivation is to "carry the fire", an illustration

What do ethics look like when the world we know disappears? In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, a man and a child have survived the apocalypse and the collapse of modern society. While the man and his son choose a nomadic scavenger existence, many of the people they meet on their journey have resorted to cannibalism or despair. Nevertheless, the boy and the man continue to “[carry] the fire” and reshape their ethical standards to fit their new environment (283). However, as they travel further down

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a novel, a post-apocalyptic story that follows the journey of a father and his son as they travel through a deserted and harsh environment in search of safety and survival. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where an apocalypse happened, leaving the whole world in a state of ruin. "The Road" is a novel about survival, endurance, and the bond between a father and son. The father is someone who is determined to protect his son and keep him alive in this harsh

Cormac Mcarthys The Road is often considered a post apoplectic book as it dives deeply into the idea of survival, perseverance and the idea that even in a big world it is still possible to be alone. In the book, The boy and father both experience the harsh conditions of the desilated world they know live in. Although the father does his best to protect the boy he can never truly shield him from all the bad. McCarthy introduces these problems in the book through Symbolism and Imagery making it easy

My novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy does pose many questions regarding human conduct and about humans themselves. Firstly, it becomes quite apparent that in the setting the man and the boy are set in, it is dangerous and they fear for their lives constantly. By seeing their hardships they face with who or what they encounter it reveals how they must act while under pressure. For instance, when the boy and the man encounter the basement filled with people they must choose whether or not to assist

"The Road" is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy. The book tells the story of a father and his young son as they journey through a landscape of ash and darkness following an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed most of civilization. The novel explores themes of love, sacrifice, and the importance of morality in a world that has lost all sense of hope and humanity. One of the key life lessons that "The Road" imparts is the power of love and the importance of protecting the ones

Within the Bly household as read in The Turn of the Screw, where the governess is the only person able to see ghosts, everything seems as it is falling apart. As the governess starts working at Bly, everything seems picture perfect, but is quite the opposite as the story progresses. As everything unfolds at Bly the governess seems to become progressively mentally incapacitated. As days pass by the governess believes she begins to see the ghosts on a daily basis, and she becomes so frustrated she

I chose a quote written by Shakespeare because it portrays revenge of Madea in a very clear manner. Shakespeare describes Madea’s revenge indirectly through his words. “ Vengeance is in my heart, death is in my head, blood and revenge are hammering my head.” – Aaron, Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, 1588. Medea is a tragedy of a woman who feels that her husband has betrayed her with another woman and the jealousy that engrosses her. She is the principle who provokes sympathy because of how her desperate

Misunderstandings As represented in the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor, a good man was hard to be and had different ideas of how to pursue it. Going through the journey with the grandmother and her family learning about the Misfit, the audience can witness the actions being made by different characters to witness their fall and/or their triumph. When looking into the grandmother more deeply, the audience can detect the intensity of her self absorption. She would consider

Temptations and Trickery: Evils Control in Macbeth Humans are ill-fated for self-destruction. They constantly search for fulfillment in empty pursuits that never fill the hole, and leave them longing for a better life, or none at all. “Better to be dead, to be nothing, than to base one’s joy upon destruction” (Frame, 48); In the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, the audience is engaged in a grueling tale of the bloodshed against evil. From a murderous man and his wife, to the victims of the play

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