The line between good and evil is often blurred, even more so in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. ‘The Road’ is a horrible beauty about a man and his son’s journey to the coast. In this post-apocalyptic world, everything that once was is no more and everything that was once known is questioned. Does the small difference between life and death tip the balance of good and evil? Can some evil doings be justified and even be considered as good? In this world of conflict, the answer is not so clear. Is the man who commits murder to protect his son any different from the man who eats a person to save himself from hunger? In a world of survival, why is a man who is only trying to survive branded as evil? The man constantly assures his son that they …show more content…
The man and his son are the ‘good guys’ easily distinguished from the ‘bad guys’: those on the other side of the line, the evil, the thieves, murderers and cannibals. But however different they may be, the father does stumble on the line that supposedly separates good and evil.
Although his father teeters along the line of good and evil, the boy is undoubtedly good. He doesn’t understand the need to hurt others in any circumstance, even when they are a threat to his survival. He not only pleads for the life of a thief but also wants to help him. The boy does not stumble the thin line separating good and evil but rather, he does not even see the line. Too good to truly understand that a small evil is sometimes necessary. But is his goodness good or a danger to their survival? Readers are left wondering where they stand on the scale of good and evil. There is an awareness that the line is thin and given certain circumstances, we might find ourselves on the wrong side. The story shows readers how the balance of good and evil is easily tipped and the difference is not so clear. Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ offers no comfort or reassurance but is a beautiful enchantment of wisdom, love and
What is morally right, wrong, or in between relies on the individual making the judgment. Concepts of “good” and “bad” are not the same universally. In the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”, author Flannery O’Connor uses goodness as a theme and utilizes badness to establish the idea of goodness. In most cases, this is not so straightforward. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” has an elusive definition of what a “good man” is.
That’s how I feel about Peter and Ender the two boys always at eachother’s throats In Ender’s Game Colonel Graf and the instructors are training the boys and girls to be soldiers to fight against evil. Although, the evil ones are the instructors because they tricked Ender into wiping out a whole species. Also when someone gets hurt they don’t really care about them getting better which I think is pretty darn evil to me.
In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the significance of truth is what the boy has come to believe along their journey, which is that himself and his father are the “good guys” and the people they encounter along the road are the “bad guys”. Throughout the book the boy continuously asks his father things like “are we still the good guys?” and “were they the bad guys?” and his father continues to give him validation and goes on to tell him that they are the good guys and everyone else they see is bad. I feel that throughout the story the boy comes to realize that they are not the good guys because he sees the way his father treats those innocent people that they have encountered, but he thinks it is necessary that he believes him and his father are
Have you imagined how the post-apocalyptic world will look like and will you choose try hard to survive or to die? In the book, The Road, written by McCarthy, the sky is dark. It’s cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. Everything has gone, only except some human beings who try every way to survive even by hurting and killing people.
“Road Not Taken” is a renowned poem by a famous American poet containing a message about life’s choices that is familiar to most people. Donald M. Murray uses the notoriety of the poem’s message to his advantage by alluding to it. In doing so, he emphasizes the similar message of his essay about how innocence causes blind decision making and the way in which people look back on those
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 lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and stumps of them blackened and burnt” (McCarthy 110).
Open Your Eyes Good versus evil is a battle as old as mankind. Every second of every day, the score changes. Sometimes, good is winning. Other times, evil. But at the end of day, good always prevails.
In The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 2006, a man and a boy struggle to survive as they travel south on the road in the post-apocalyptic world. On their journey to the coast, the man and the boy encounter the remains of an ashen world, ravaged by men who are willing to kill to survive. Among the death and destruction of the post-apocalyptic world, McCarthy illustrates how the man gains resilience from the spirituality he finds within his son, which proves how in a world void of official religion, belief in something greater than yourself creates the strength necessary to survive. The man sees his son as a spiritual figure that provides him the strength to survive in the desolate world.
The novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is a story based on good versus evil. The story is a coming-of-age tale, in which three characters encounter an inner conflict between their idealism and truth; one of the characters is Jim. Ray Bradbury presents the reader with two sides of James Nightshade’s(Jim’s) character, and introduces the conflict of idealism and truth within him. Through Jim’s journey from a character who had an idealistic view of seeking adventure to escape his painful past through his realization that he has an inevitable past, Bradbury relates the importance of this conflict to Mr. Dark, who acts as a trigger for Jim’s desire to grow older by riding the carousel, which in turn, adds to Jim’s internal conflict.
In the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and his son struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Told through a lens of constant hardship, the book follows their arduous journey towards a coast in order to survive the winter. Throughout the novel, McCarthy shows that having hope enables people to persevere in dire circumstances because it counteracts the possibility of negative outcomes. First, the woman’s monologue about her death displays the despair necessary to abandon all hope.
There are many lessons throughout the novel that could be taught and learned in our world, this society, today. They may be true; however, the reasons the lessons are taught in the first place is because of the society being presented in this literary work, The Road. This gives the sociological approach a more appropriate understanding approach to the road. The society and the characters can be analyzed thoroughly and effectively this way. “When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that will never be and you are happy again then you have given up.
The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is a novel that follows the journey of a father and son traveling south to escape the post-apocalyptic scene they were unfortunately put in. The father and son are survivors of some unnamed disaster that has occurred. As time passes by there is less and less food. There is also a lack of plants and animals. Other than scavenging for food, the only means of survival for some is cannibalism.
In Cormac Mccarthy's novel, The Road, the overall outlook on humanity and life is negative. Death, fear, and sadness consumes humans lives. Mccarthy mainly writes about how darkness has taken over in this apocalyptic world in The Road. The apocalypse has unrooted many humans making them live in harsh ways, even turning them into cannibalistic animals. Some events make the father and son live in fear.
“You remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember,” (McCarthy 12). With most aspects of life, the horrendous moments are the times that no one can erase. This applied to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Towards the end of the novel when the son loses his father proves to be the most indelible moment with the assistance of the feelings experienced during that part. The son encounters a variety of emotions including loneliness, loss and hope.
A Questionable Flaw In a fight between good versus evil, good is the recurring victor. However, when the good and evil are fighting within oneself, the outcome is not as desired as we wish it would be. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I would rather be a little nobody than an evil somebody.” Although good should definitely triumph evil, most people struggle between the two and it is a recurrent flaw.