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.
Throughout life, we all go through rough moments where we think all is lost. However, we as humans always grow from these experiences and turn into beings with a new awakening and understanding of the world. In a passage from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, the narrator describes a striking ordeal, in which a man is coping with the death of a she-wolf. Despite the cause of death being left ambiguous, this dramatic experience has a vivid effect on the main character—causing him to change and grow into a new man by the end of the passage. McCarthy uses eloquent and expressive diction to create imagery which gives the reader an understanding of the narrator’s experience, supplemented by spiritual references as well as setting changes, elucidating the deep sadness and wonder felt by the protagonist.
He saw his father slow down and struggle but he knew he had to push forward to keep alive. The death march leads to a terrible death toll and led to fathers and sons splitting even more apart than
Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.
However, this time the Protagonist Nick is overwhelmed with by the loss and death of his son Josh. Nick struggles to function in his day to day life as he has no hope and finds it difficult to remain part of his existing family. The loss and struggle of losing his son and not having the ability to function properly becomes not only a struggle with himself but his family. He becomes disjointed and disconnected to his family to the point of not wanting to eat dinner with his children. However, once he receives a letter from his boss he eventually goes into the city where he finds refuge in a church.
“The Road“by Cormac McCarthy is a powerful novel based on the starvation, survival, struggles and love between the main characters (the boy and the man). In this book peculiar events at night are portrayed in depth with a secret meaning behind it. The dream sequences. In these dreams many abnormal events happen maybe to convey a hidden meaning to the reader. “In dreams his pale bride came to him out of the green and leafy canopy.
Throughout the novel the father's love for his son pushes him to protect him no matter the risks. For example in the novel many times the two would go to an abandoned house
The father’s wife had recently died, leaving him with the boy to take care of with the only mindset of keeping him alive, doing anything for their survival. This affected the father in a big way, leaving him with little hope and hardly any reason to stay alive, but the boy was “his warrant” (McCarthy 5) , his only reason for life. The boy starts out very scared and weak, always wanting to hide behind his father, knowing that one day he will die. The boy matures with every event that happens, and he maintains to have hope throughout most of them. “The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.
The evil people and the cannibals lose sight of who they are, become psychopaths, disregard integrity, and respond insanely to the apocalypse. Through various events, McCarthy displays that as people make their journey through life, hope is challenged, but never truly lost. The boy is driven by his yearning for a greater future. While “moving south” (pdf), they reach an ocean; as they sit and look out at the great beyond, the boy asks the father if they “could write a letter to the good guys” (pdf) in the sand. To the boy, this is a stellar idea to instill hope in other people that good guys “[are] here” (pdf).
Fear eventually catches up to them because what the father had been afraid of since the beginning has finally come. He dies, leaving the boy to fend on his own. Mccarthy concluded his novel with a tragic ending filled with gloom and
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. This symbolism is part of a bigger literary analysis that I read this novel through. The literary analysis is called Formalism and it is used to separate everything apart from the novel to just read the novel in its raw state to find the symbols and meaning behind the text.
Although Cormac McCarthy envisioned the world stating that only the violent survive, he also created two characters that would defy that belief by having them survive and simultaneously stick with their good morals. Cormac McCarthy defines the difference between the good and the bad. He used detailed imagery to describe the corrupt appearances the bad guys have. Cormac McCarthy created the setting to make it seem like only the corrupt
Hopelessness is the feeling of desolation, something one would turn to when there’s simply no more options. It haunts the human in a myriad of ways and in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, this topic is traversed. McCarthy’s novel expands upon this topic with many indications of hopelessness. In his tragedy, McCarthy tells the story about a father and son who live on an abandoned earth, which was devastated by fire. Some of the aforementioned symbols include the infant.
The Cold War was a rivalry of ideas between USA and the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Both were superpowers with different perspectives on economics and governance. The Cold War involved arms and space race (outdoing each other in technology and power) and proxy wars (both countries used external conflicts to hurt each other’s interests). The Soviet Union was more responsible for the Cold War.
In the novel readers had a sneak peek in what happened before readers got to know the son and father. The story explains that before the son was born the mother did not want to live in the post apocalyptic world and fight for her life.
