...Survival Why do you think McCarthy has chosen not to give his characters names? How do fake names generate character of the man and the boy. In Cormac McCarthy the Road, the man and his son face infinite amount of obstacles throughout the novel in order to keep themselves alive. While reading the road, McCarthy wanted the figures in this book to be universal, so that the reader could imagine him or herself as the boy or man. Doing so allowed reader to have different perspective of being one of the characters. To do this McCarthy did not designate the characters in his book with names, and because of that i was able to connect with the man and the boy more closely on a personal level and have a good idea putting myself in their journey....
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...Running Head: Biblical Comparison of The Road Biblical Comparison of The Road by Cormac McCarthy Joshua G. West Henry County High School Abstract The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) is a novel that explains the struggles of a father and son as they thrive to survive in a post-apocalyptic society. Cormac McCarthy (2006) put a lot of details into the story and this world, but I believe he did not make up this. There are many clues and links between his story and what the Bible has so say about the rapture and tribulation period. From the beginning of the world they live in, to the characters involved in the novel, Cormac McCarthy’s (2006) novel could be described as parable of what the bible has to say of the end times. However, the novel goes deeper than just a comparison to the end times, it goes into saving your moral values, no matter how difficult your trials are becoming. Biblical Comparison of The Road by Cormac McCarthy Words often have a deeper meaning then what we first see or hear. In Cormac McCarthy’s (2006) prize winning novel, The Road, McCarthy (2006) wrote down the story of a man and his son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Along their journey you see the mother walk out on them, robbers attack them and inner struggle in their own minds. If one takes a closer look at the story, they see several points which could all lead back to a single source and hold a deeper meaning. When facing a tough dilemma, it can be a quite difficult...
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...AP Literature and Composition 14.9.14 The Road’s Question Critic Roland Barthes states, “Literature is the question, minus the answer,” which is present within the novel ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy, who depicts the story of a father and son in a post-apocalyptic world. As the novel develops and the characters grow, McCarthy’s use of imagery and symbolism help create the question of whether or not ‘humanity can survive in a world that has lost everything.’ The man and the boy attempt to find a place that is not overrun with ‘bad guys’ and journey to the south where their hope of warm weather and safety may or may not be found. On this journey, vivid images and events about the people who have survived are seen through their trip. Due to the apocalypse that has struck the world, a lack of food, water, and safety are equivalent, if not trivial to the rape, murder, and cannibalism that has become a certain norm for the remaining humans. Unfortunetly those lack of rights and crimes happen in society today which comes to show that humanity, at its very core, is not much better than it would be in the novel’s situation. However, in the book, the ‘bad guys’ take these crimes and lack of law to an extreme not seen in life today, as seen by the mother of the boy, “No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it.” The fear of death and...
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...Throughout Cormac McCarthy’s harrowing novel, The Road, he depicts the precarious journey of an unnamed father alongside his innocent son as they endeavor the post-apocalyptic world in desperate hopes of survival. After an unnamed disaster sweeps the Earth, the diligent pair fights to navigate the “cold and dark and heavy” (19) terrain, as they travel South in hopes of reaching the coast where they will be “warm at last” (147). The dynamic pair faces challenges of nature and man alike as they traverse the lifeless landscape, encountering vicious packs of cannibals as they become meek prey to the blood-thirsty beasts. They depend on their vitalizing love to bear the constant, rigorous obstacles they face in the “stark, black, burn[t]” (8) world....
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...Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel, The Road, effectively utilises narratological techniques and structures to convey complex ideas of the importance of hope, morality versus survival, and the integral role of relationships between humans in surviving extreme circumstances. An essential component of survival under conditions of great adversity is a drive to survive and a hope for the future. McCarthy’s protagonist knows that his quest to head “to the South” is fruitless; he knows he is going to die “Sometime. Not Now.” However he recognises that without some kind of goal or destination, humanity has no purpose. McCarthy utilises aspects of the symbolic code to illustrate how keeping the boy alive has become the man’s sole purpose for carrying on; he represents his father’s drive and his hope for the future. This is displayed in a synchronic analeptic episode through the contrast between the father’s devotion and the reaction of the mother; “The one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself. I know because I would have never come this far.” She cannot place her hope and her motivation to continue in the boy like the father can, and as such succumbs to the world she is a part of. The semantic code is also utilised through the continued reference to fire to further develop how the pair’s hope allows them to survive. The audience associates fire with resilience and spirit, such that when the pair continually discuss how they are “carrying the fire” the reader connects...
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...After difficulties and hardships, only a person’s true character remains. In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road, the father and son balance between their earnest scavenge for food and a dying code of human ethics. Taking place in world with no resources remaining, the types of meals throughout the novel symbolizes the survivors’ changing, or persisting, values and integrity. Throughout their journey, the father and son’s shared meals offers insight into the old world’s enduring morals. When the pair share “hard and brown and shriveled” apples found in a barn, the relic from the past suggests that, perhaps, goodness still exists (121). The ancient apples, a symbol of knowledge and temptation, implies how wisdom about teaching...
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...said that there was no way I was going there and that I needed to come home and pick somewhere else to go. I had invested a lot into that college, and they tore it away. They told me that they have picked a new college for me to go to and I’d be starting in a few weeks. It was culinary school, and though I didn’t mind the classes I hated the outcome. So then I went to Suffolk Community College, with no help from them, and no support in order to start a career path that actually interests me. What I have learned through my limited experiences with life and trust is to be very wary of who you trust, and always trust yourself. Trust needs to be a two way road, and though you cannot get through life only trusting yourself, there needs to be a line where you can distinguish between trusting others or only yourself. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, “The Right to Remain” by Melanie Marnich, “Straightway” by Mark Wisniewski, and “Autobiography of Eve” by Ansel Elkins all deal with trust with their characters, and how they need to trust themselves or the people they’re with. In “Autobiography of Eve”,...
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...lifeless world, seeing burned half eaten bodies for? Death isn’t a lover, but watching the color fade and the sun vanish taking faith and humanity with it. Death is seen as living and living is seen as death. In a world where snow falls gray, the ocean isn't blue, birds don't soar, trees slowly plummet and humanity has lost all meaning, in his novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy portrays a colorless and lifeless earth while teaching a boy the purpose of life and faith. The greens have turned grey, the blues have turned black, the sun cannot be seen, warmth cannot be felt. “The clocks stopped at 1:17pm. A long shear of light and a series of low concussions.” is McCarthy’s only...
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...taught about the birds and the bees. But what happens when we’re the ones teaching our parents? In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, we are met with the nameless characters, known as a father and his young son, who travel and attempt to survive post apocalyptic Earth. They set out to the south west in hopes to find people just like themselves, who are still morally correct in a world full of cannibalistic savages. The father shows the boy how to survive through making fires, dispersing their daily intake of food, sleeping in various locations, and other ways just to be safe and healthy. The father teaches him that they are the few morally correct people still left on Earth, as he wishes to teach his son as much as he can, before the father’s time runs out. The boy is seen as a God-like figure to his father as he is a beacon of light in a world full of darkness, the hope of the future, due to his correct moralities, as this reflects onto the father in various situations through the novel. It is quite notable that though the father plays an influential figure for the boy to look up to, the boy also is able to praise teachings upon his father to restore faith in himself. The bond between the father and son is one of the learning, as the father finds himself learning from his son. To start with the case of the son teaching his father, the two spot a young old man ahead of them on the road, to which the young boy insists on helping him, going against...
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...Characters: The man (the father, called Papa) travels the road with his young son. He believes he has been appointed by God to protect the boy, and he does so at all costs, even killing another human being in order to save his son. Unlike his son, the man remains deeply suspicious and even paranoid of other individuals and their intentions, understandably. He is loath to approach other travelers on the road to offer them assistance, while the boy often wishes that he would. The man grows sicker throughout the novel, and his illness is manifested in his persistent cough and bloody spit. At the end of The Road, the man dies next to a stream in a clearing in the woods. The boy is born into the post-apocalyptic world. He knows nothing about the world before the catastrophe. He travels the road with his father and believes that he and his father are the "good guys" who carry the fire. In various encounters with other travelers on the road, the boy continually displays his faith in humanity and his humbling trust in others. Despite their near brushes with brutal violence and death, the boy consistently pleads with his father to help others in need. After his father's death, the boy is rescued by a family of people who assert that they are also the good guys. The wife of the man who is the protagonist has already died, and her situation is only described in flashbacks. She chose to avoid rape and murder, which she believed were inevitable, by committing suicide. She used a...
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