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Song Of The Open Road Symbolism Essay

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The road can have many different meanings and symbolize an array of philosophical and theoretical meanings. For some it is merely a connection from one place to another, and to others the meaning is deeper and more profound. For those who find a deeper connection and a spiritual tone the road find it symbolizes things such as hope, despair, life, and death. Films, books, and other media sources use “the american road” to adhere to what the author or director believes explains the meaning of life, or at least tell a story in which hope and despair accompany each other like light and dark. This idea is evident in the two films On the Road and Grapes of Wrath. There are many differences and similarities between On the Road and Grapes of Wrath, but there is an …show more content…

Whitman’s poem states: “I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, / I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them…” and “Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me, / Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.”, which describes open Dean’s sexuality with men and women who he meets on the road. His temperament is what also differs from the other characters; Dean cheats on his wife multiple times, he’s a constant nomad who is unable to settle in one place or with one woman. In Mortenson’s article “Beating Time: Configurations of Temporality in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road”, he describes, “Dean is frenetically living in the moment, trying to stay within the ever-unfolding horizon of the ‘now’....Dean accepts the belief that life must be lived in the present and practices this knowledge by filling each of these moments with as much activity as possible…” (p. 56). Although Dean’s perception of life is to live on the edge, nomadic and ever changing, he has no regard for the feelings of others. Even as his friend, Sal, lies dying with a fever in Mexico, he abandons

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In The Road by Cormac McCarthy there are many different lines of imagery. All of these lines convey different moods and each line can make someone feel a different way. For example his imagery can make you feel almost numb.. One example of this is,” Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before” (3). The paints a picture of all gray.

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Through this, the characters eventually seek help and companionship from family and friends. In The Grapes of Wrath migrants are forced out of their homes and move West in hopes of attaining a better life. When “a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the screaming fact that sounds through history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history.

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Erik J. Wielenberg argues that The Road implies morality doesn’t depend upon God for existence or justification. It’s the nature of humans to desire things and for the things they do to make sense. The man validates this point because he wants to keep going and tells himself that he carries the fire. In the story fire represents life and goodness. He carries the fire, which he believes is his son.

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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.

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1457 Words | 6 Pages

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.

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646 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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1612 Words | 7 Pages

There are many similarities and differences between the “Back Roads” by Vinnie Rotondaro and “A Winter’s Drive” by ReadWorks. Some similarities between the two stories are how they both have a similar theme about life and put a lot of meaning to a simple drive. One difference between the two stories is how they both have a different mood, like how in the “Back Roads” the mood stays the same, while the mood in “A Winter’s Drive” changes in the story in order to create the theme. First the theme between “Back Roads” and “A Winter’s Drive” are very similar because they both have to deal with parts of a person’s life. The theme of the “Back Roads” is to slow down and take it easy, to enjoy life and not to rush it.

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In the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” the short story, “The Reunion, and the novel, The Summer I Turned Pretty authors show how characters come of age through their own actions by making decisions and psychology or emotional revelations. In the poem “the Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, the main character has to decipher two roads. The two roads have different outcomes, eventually chooses the harder path and resulted his/her best decision. The narrator sees a fork in the road.

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The road is considered to be a symbol of his multiple life decisions. When you first read the poem your first instinct is to think that the “traveler” just needs to pick a path to take; but it has a greater meaning. The fact that Frost chose to use this symbol to portray the message makes us have a clear idea of what he is going through. Towards the end of the poem, Frost shows signs of regret because of the road he chose, it shows us how in life a decision can really impact your life and can shape who you are as a person and what type of person you become. The use of symbolism in this poem is basically what leads you into understanding what it’s really trying to say.

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When reading the poems “The road not taken” by Robert Frost,and “O’Captain,My Captain” by Walt Whitman it is evident that both have a great deal of distinctions, as well as commonalities. The first poem,“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a symbolic story of a young man discovering his path in life. “The Road Not Taken” begins during Autumn, in the woods. The speaker,a young man, takes a stroll along a road. Eventually,he reaches a point in which the road diverges into two.

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The Everlasting Symbols of Irony “When the Doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - - of the joy that kills.” (Chopin 4). The Story of an Hour is a short story published by Kate Chopin that consists of a woman who was diagnosed with a heart disease and appears to present a rather complex relationship with her husband who was presumed to be killed in a work-based accident.

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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.

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The poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost was about a decision. Two inviting roads existed in front of the speaker, but he could only choose one to travel in the rest of his life. No one knew which road was better or what’s waiting for him in the future, there seemed plenty of imaginary spaces left to the audiences. However, instead of focused on the importance of his finally choice: the road taken, more attentions was given to the given up choice: the road not taken. The writer’s opinion was explicitly showed in the title ‘The Road Not Taken’; which meant from the very beginning it was a poem about lost, not gain.

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1777 Words | 8 Pages

‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ ‘Birches,’ and ‘Mowing’” (Rukhaya). The woods can also dually represent self-reliance and nonconformity. By acknowledging his choice in the woods alone, the traveler shows that he is willing to “oppose social norms” (Rukhaya) and rely on his own instinct to come to a decision. As an extended metaphor for choice, it makes sense that the roads represent the journey of life and decision. There are two roads, two choices, and two representations of decision.

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1036 Words | 5 Pages

In the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost uses beautifully crafted metaphors, imagery, and tone to convey a theme that all people are presented with choices in life, some of which are life-altering, so one should heavily way the options in order to make the best choices possible. Frost uses metaphors to develop the theme that life 's journey sometimes presents difficult choices, and the future is many times determined by these choices. Throughout the poem, Frost uses these metaphors to illustrate life 's path and the fork in the road to represent an opportunity to make a choice. One of the most salient metaphors in the poem is the fork in the road. Frost describes the split as, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both (“The Road Not Taken,” lines 1-2).

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