...In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, It is said that fear is the strongest motivator in the world. People in fear are willing to do whatever, go beyond any border and forget all rules. Fear can easily take over our mind and control our every move. But how much does it take to push a person beyond his limits? What kind of a fear can make us forget everything about humanity and morals? These questions are one of the main themes in Cormac McCarthy’s novel ”The Road” We are all afraid of different things. Some are afraid to lose their family and friends others on the other hand their money and possessions. Cormac McCarthy’s great novel ”The Road” tells us a story of a post-apocalyptic world where everything is destroyed and life is almost extinct. There are left only handful people, who are willing to do everything to survive. But some of them are willing to go further than the others. Fear influences every person differently. But how can some of us still maintain our moral values even though we might be scared to death? In ”The Road” the main characters, the man and the boy represent a group of people who does not let the fear control their minds. The man is constantly afraid of his son getting killed or starving to death. The boy is worried about his father and about being left alone in this terrible world if his father should die. Every single day they live in fear. They can never be sure whether they find food, whether they will survive the cold nights in the woods, or whether...
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...This humble adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s classic meets many of the hideous, gut wrenching aspects of the post-apocalyptic horrors in which we encounter in the torturous novel, writes Arnold Amet. i magine living in a world where hope, sanity and morality are absent. What necessities will we really need in order to survive? How far will we push the boundaries of our humanity in order to ensure our survival? These questions come to mind when thrown into a catastrophic post-apocalyptic scenario. Alas, nowadays, the ubiquitous rise of screen-filling explosions and overfamiliar “I’ll be backs” have taken over the very essence of the emotive connection shared between the audience and film. Fortunately, trending releases such as I am Legend (Francis...
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...The book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a post-apocalyptic fiction book. It’s a story about a man with a young boy walking south to find there way to the coast for a presumed better life through a nuclear winter. Although the book doesn’t state where it’s taking place, one can infer that it’s somewhere in the United States. The major characters of this book are the man and the young boy. The man is the opposite of an open book, personality wise. He has no one to talk to about his thoughts because him and his son are alone. His words are plain and simple, yet interesting. All he does is care for the boy the best way he can. Whenever they encounter strangers he is stern because he wants to keep his son safe. The boy on the other hand voices his thoughts. If he has a question, he will ask it. The boy as well cares about his father. The boy is strong when need to be, but is also compassionate towards strangers. The whole book is based on the journey of both the father and child. The whole conflict of the book is that the boy and the father are trying to get to the coast by surviving the horror of storms, winter, cannibalism, and most of all, the...
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...AP Literature and Composition 14.9.14 The Road’s Question Critic Roland Barthes states, “Literature is the question, minus the answer,” which is present within the novel ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy, who depicts the story of a father and son in a post-apocalyptic world. As the novel develops and the characters grow, McCarthy’s use of imagery and symbolism help create the question of whether or not ‘humanity can survive in a world that has lost everything.’ The man and the boy attempt to find a place that is not overrun with ‘bad guys’ and journey to the south where their hope of warm weather and safety may or may not be found. On this journey, vivid images and events about the people who have survived are seen through their trip. Due to the apocalypse that has struck the world, a lack of food, water, and safety are equivalent, if not trivial to the rape, murder, and cannibalism that has become a certain norm for the remaining humans. Unfortunetly those lack of rights and crimes happen in society today which comes to show that humanity, at its very core, is not much better than it would be in the novel’s situation. However, in the book, the ‘bad guys’ take these crimes and lack of law to an extreme not seen in life today, as seen by the mother of the boy, “No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it.” The fear of death and...
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...Works Of Literature In The Road Novel English Literature Essay Contemporary authors are influenced by those who preceded them in terms of both the form and content of their works. This is evident in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. McCarthy chooses not to imitate those greats that came before him such as Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Tennyson in terms of form; in fact, he deliberately avoids almost all conventional choices in terms of form. However, he is obviously influenced by their ideas. He ties together Wordsworth’s concern at his society losing touch with nature and Tennyson’s exploration of what a society’s priorities should be. He creates a world in which civilization has dissolved and the ecosystem is in chaos. It is implied that the society has lost touch with nature and this has resulted in the death of global civilization. His goal seems to be to awaken the world to the impact that humans have had on the environment and how that can or perhaps will be the source of our downfall. This concern is comparable to the fears of many in the environmental movement that humanity is destroying the natural world and unless drastic changes are made now, this degradation will be permanent. Many prominent politicians in the United States, such as Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth, include environmental responsibility as a core aspect of their political platform. Indeed, in Europe there are many parties whose only focus is environmentally responsible legislation. The...
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...Set in the aftermath of an unnamed apocalypse, Cormac McCarthy's The Road follows a father and son as they travel down the eponymous road attempting to navigate the difficulties of morality while surviving in a world that has lost all vision of society. To this end, the man encourages the boy that they are the “good guys” because they “carry the fire.” The fire is symbolic of what German philosopher Immanuel Kant called the Categorical Imperative, one fundamental principle that guides all of our moral duties by demanding that “one respect the humanity in oneself and in others, that one not make an exception for oneself when deliberating about how to act, and in general that one only act in accordance with rules that everyone could and should obey.” (Jankowiak) As the novel progresses and the...
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...Characters: The man (the father, called Papa) travels the road with his young son. He believes he has been appointed by God to protect the boy, and he does so at all costs, even killing another human being in order to save his son. Unlike his son, the man remains deeply suspicious and even paranoid of other individuals and their intentions, understandably. He is loath to approach other travelers on the road to offer them assistance, while the boy often wishes that he would. The man grows sicker throughout the novel, and his illness is manifested in his persistent cough and bloody spit. At the end of The Road, the man dies next to a stream in a clearing in the woods. The boy is born into the post-apocalyptic world. He knows nothing about the world before the catastrophe. He travels the road with his father and believes that he and his father are the "good guys" who carry the fire. In various encounters with other travelers on the road, the boy continually displays his faith in humanity and his humbling trust in others. Despite their near brushes with brutal violence and death, the boy consistently pleads with his father to help others in need. After his father's death, the boy is rescued by a family of people who assert that they are also the good guys. The wife of the man who is the protagonist has already died, and her situation is only described in flashbacks. She chose to avoid rape and murder, which she believed were inevitable, by committing suicide. She used a...
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