Topic > "The Road" by McCarthy: Post-Apocalyptic Story

“When he woke in the woods, in the dark and cold of the night, he would reach out to touch the child sleeping next to him. Dark nights beyond the darkness and days each grayer than it had been before. The beginning of a cold glaucoma moving away from the world road”. The Road describes the journey of a boy and his father in a post-apocalyptic world where they both travel through devastated landscapes to reach the coast with the hope of surviving. Why should violent video games not be banned"? Get an original essayAfter an unnamed disaster struck, it left only a few living creatures left on earth. The world is now a terrifying and terrifying place as there is a constant fear of rape, murder and cannibalism. Father and son fight to survive in harsh weather conditions with minimal food and shelter. The journey continues, both pushing a shopping cart full of the necessities for their survival. Along the way, they must hide from predators who kill and eat people alive. Author Biography: Cormac McCarthy born 1933, July 20 is an American novelist born in Providence, Rhode Island, but spent much of his early childhood in Knoxville, where his father worked as a lawyer for a city council. He attended the University of Tennessee but never graduated. While at UT, McCarthy published his novel: The Phoenix, which received the Ingram Merrill Award for Creative Writing in 1959. McCarthy's other masterpieces include Child of God, All the Pretty Horses, Outer Dark, and The Road, which was adapted into a film in 2009. directed by John Hill Coat. Due to enormous critical success, the novel received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The road was also chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club which led to McCarthy's first television interview in April 2007. The inspiration behind The Road: “In the Guardian newspaper article, Cormac McCarthy described that the main inspiration behind The Road came when McCarthy and his son "John McCarthy" went on vacation to El Paso, Texas. Early in the morning, when Cormac woke up and looked out the window at the city and began to imagine "what would the city be like in 50 or 100 years?" hill, everything was being devastated, and she thought a lot about my baby. He wrote two pages. And then, about four years later, I realized it wasn't just two pages, it was a book and it was about that man and that boy. Additionally, McCarthy described the conversation he and his men had about the different scenarios humans will face during an apocalypse: one of them was the transformation of survivors into cannibals. trying to share with the public. Use action scenes and longer sentences deeply to create travel, camping, or reminiscence scenes. McCarthy's work deals with many issues of life and death. Cormac is also known for his language and does not use quotation marks for dialogue, which makes the book difficult to read. The lack of quotes and grammar refers to the concept of hardship as father and son go through hard and difficult times. McCarthy also wanted the reader to face little difficulty in understanding who was speaking. His novels are very domestic and create an atmosphere of separation and isolation by following a solitary character into the wastelands and ravaged landscapes of America. • McCarthy has a boundless interest in the choices his character makes and how those choices define him and hisfuture forever. The Road demonstrated different forms of language representing multiple themes, morals, and a variety of literary devices to reinforce the content. Love: “That the boy was all that remained between him and death." (McCarthy 29). There was a constant representation of the theme of love throughout the novel highlighting the strong bond between the man and the boy. In quote the mother describes that the boy is only the man's reason to be alive The man cannot bear to see his boy die: the man will live if he can help his son to live. His love for the boy pushes forward the story and saves him from an untimely death due to a dangerous disease, the man had developed McCarthy writes “I will kill anyone who touches you” (McCarthy 129) proves that there is no limit to which man will go to protect his. son. They both depend on each other as the boy cannot live without his father and the man sees no point in living without him At the end of the novel, the man lies badly injured and dying, he tells his son. to eat his share of food, instead of keeping it for himself. These small favors and sacrifices are strong examples of his love Evil: “He sat there cowed by the blanket. After a while, he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said. YES. We're still the good guys. And we always will be. YES. We always will be. That's fine." The theme of good versus evil is a well-known theme throughout the book. At the beginning of the novel, the boy has no concept of evil until the cannibalistic chase begins. As the story progresses, the boy begins to identify the bad guys as murderers, thieves and cannibals, while the good guys are the ones "who keep trying and never give up and carry the fire" symbol of hope and determination carry the meaning of always trying to live in all conditions. However, there is a thin line between good and bad in the post-apocalyptic world where most people have abandoned morality together man on the street are "If it is not the word of God, God never spoke." The man does not declare his son as the word of God but leaves the reader with a hypothetical question. Therefore, the man's statement is that or his son is the word of God, or the universe is without God. There have been countless events that lead readers to question the possibilities of God. For example: when the father and son are on the verge of starving to death but they find a hidden bunker full of food to regain the resistance. Later, faced with the hardships of hunger, the boy finds a house full of food and a flare gun which becomes indispensable during a meeting. Do all these events have God's blessing to protect the son or is it just luck? The question remains unclear, yet there are hints of divine activity, but never more than hints. During their journey, father and son come across an old man named “Ely”, a person whom the man decided to help after the boy's endless requests. In the conversation, Ely states "What if I said he is a god?", The man was not surprised as he treated him as one with all the feelings of love, care and protection. The road which is the title and main setting of the book. The road signifies indestructibility as it is one of the few things that was not destroyed by the disaster. A road is a unifying place that is safe and harmful at the same time as both the bad and the good strive to reach the coast with the hope of surviving and living prosperously and represents the human nature to move forward and continue to survive . The road also symbolizes an object that gives the characters direction, hope, and reason to survive. The trees that fall and scatter the ashes"..