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Imagery In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

611 Words3 Pages

Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, follows a father and son on their journey through a post apocalyptic world. Throughout this journey, the man and his child are faced with many challenges and obstacles that they must overcome in order to survive. These obstacles consist of cannibals, food scarcity, and even harsh outdoor environments. One theme that is heavily presented throughout the duration of this novel is that death is inevitable. McCarthy often uses imagery to show death, whether that be through the horrific and detailed descriptions of the corpses or through the destroyed and ash-filled climates. Imagery is a crucial part of every novel; it helps readers to better understand the conditions in which the characters are living in. McCarthy uses imagery within this novel to show that death is universally present through every decision that these characters make. One example of this is when the text states, “The dead grass thrashed softly. Out there gray desolation. The endless seacrawl. ‘Do you think there are any people on the boat, Papa?’” (McCarthy 221). This imagery is evidence that the boy and his father are constantly aware of issues that each task may bring, even if the environment seems to be quiet and free of danger. The father has taught the boy to be cautious of all people due to the fact that when …show more content…

Our protagonists run out of food on multiple occasions leaving them malnourished and exhausted, after not eating for days on end, the man and his child look physically unwell. Imagery is being used to show this when the text states, “So white. Knobby spine bones. Razorous shoulder blades sawing under pale skin” (McCarthy 218). To survive and endure within this world you need to be conscious and ready to fight through anything, when one is starving they often lack the energy needed in order to fend for

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The slow surf crawled and seethed in the dark and he thought about his life but there was no life to think about and after a while he walked back.” (McCarthy, 237) Through the father, McCarthy depicts a different type of intensity. The father’s intensity creates a feeling of sadness whereas the son’s intensity creates a felling of wordiness. Through the son, he shows how the son engages in an intense situation and was able to escape by someone or something. On the other hand, McCarthy presents father’s condition in an intense way to allow the readers to know that the father’s escaping of death would be different.

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Some days they go hungry, the weather uproots their lives, and other hindrances place a awful, dark outlook on life. Cormac Mccarthy writes about a disgusting world. It is the dying of lie on the planet, the end of the world. Not only do the gruesome events in the novel led the reader to take an opposing view, but even the setting of the novel

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a father and his son in an unspecified apocalypse. In the colorless and dreary post-apocalyptic world the man and his boy must survive on what scraps they can find left over from the old world to survive their journey south down a long road to the coast hoping to find a better future for themselves there. On the road, the man and the boy encounter other survivors most of whom are cannibals, remnants from the pre-apocalyptic world, and supplies and scraps they use to sustain themselves in their dreary world. This quest, marked with fortunes and misfortunes, ends in both success and failure for the father-son duo. Even though man and child both make it to the coast, they find it to be no different

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