...The trees slowly begin to lose their leaves just as they do every fall but this time it's mid July and supposed to be scorching. The trees themselves begin to fall and with them the sunset and sunrise. The days begin to run together in an endless blur of a bleak grey. This mind-numbingly blase world has become home and there is nowhere else to go and nothing can fix it. The end. This is it. The world that was is no more and there is no world to come. Nothing. What would you do? This is exactly what has happened to the main characters within Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Set in a post-apocalyptic meaningless world McCarthy really emphasizes key aspects of why it happened and how there are real life applications to our present day world. There is no god, no hope,...
Words: 1401 - Pages: 6
...Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel, The Road, effectively utilises narratological techniques and structures to convey complex ideas of the importance of hope, morality versus survival, and the integral role of relationships between humans in surviving extreme circumstances. An essential component of survival under conditions of great adversity is a drive to survive and a hope for the future. McCarthy’s protagonist knows that his quest to head “to the South” is fruitless; he knows he is going to die “Sometime. Not Now.” However he recognises that without some kind of goal or destination, humanity has no purpose. McCarthy utilises aspects of the symbolic code to illustrate how keeping the boy alive has become the man’s sole purpose for carrying on; he represents his father’s drive and his hope for the future. This is displayed in a synchronic analeptic episode through the contrast between the father’s devotion and the reaction of the mother; “The one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself. I know because I would have never come this far.” She cannot place her hope and her motivation to continue in the boy like the father can, and as such succumbs to the world she is a part of. The semantic code is also utilised through the continued reference to fire to further develop how the pair’s hope allows them to survive. The audience associates fire with resilience and spirit, such that when the pair continually discuss how they are “carrying the fire” the reader connects...
Words: 894 - Pages: 4
...the sun vanish taking faith and humanity with it. Death is seen as living and living is seen as death. In a world where snow falls gray, the ocean isn't blue, birds don't soar, trees slowly plummet and humanity has lost all meaning, in his novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy portrays a colorless and lifeless earth while teaching a boy the purpose of life and faith. The greens have turned grey, the blues have turned black, the sun cannot be seen, warmth cannot be felt. “The clocks stopped at 1:17pm. A long shear of light and a series of low concussions.” is McCarthy’s only...
Words: 2265 - Pages: 10
...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...
Words: 8091 - Pages: 33
...persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he began to sense a revulsion for everything around him. Maybe he was really happy on the island —more than he realised. Once more he thought about a job; if he didn’t find one soon he might starve. But 30 as the reality of this dawned on him he began laughing. No! No one starved in Canada; that only happened in such places as India or Africa. But definitely not Canada! A growling in his...
Words: 37585 - Pages: 151
...persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he began to sense a revulsion for everything around him. Maybe he was really happy on the island —more than he realised. Once more he thought about a job; if he didn’t find one soon he might starve. But 30 as the reality of this dawned on him he began laughing. No! No one starved in Canada; that only happened in such places as India or Africa. But definitely not Canada! A growling in his...
Words: 37585 - Pages: 151
...www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Praise “A must-read resource for anyone who is serious about embracing the opportunity of big data.” — Craig Vaughan Global Vice President at SAP “This timely book says out loud what has finally become apparent: in the modern world, Data is Business, and you can no longer think business without thinking data. Read this book and you will understand the Science behind thinking data.” — Ron Bekkerman Chief Data Officer at Carmel Ventures “A great book for business managers who lead or interact with data scientists, who wish to better understand the principals and algorithms available without the technical details of single-disciplinary books.” — Ronny Kohavi Partner Architect at Microsoft Online Services Division “Provost and Fawcett have distilled their mastery of both the art and science of real-world data analysis into an unrivalled introduction to the field.” —Geoff Webb Editor-in-Chief of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Journal “I would love it if everyone I had to work with had read this book.” — Claudia Perlich Chief Scientist of M6D (Media6Degrees) and Advertising Research Foundation Innovation Award Grand Winner (2013) www.it-ebooks.info “A foundational piece in the fast developing world of Data Science. A must read for anyone interested in the Big Data revolution." —Justin Gapper Business Unit Analytics Manager at Teledyne Scientific and Imaging “The authors, both renowned experts in data science before it had a name, have...
Words: 146629 - Pages: 587
