...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...
Words: 1303 - Pages: 6
...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...
Words: 828 - Pages: 4
...Running Head: Biblical Comparison of The Road Biblical Comparison of The Road by Cormac McCarthy Joshua G. West Henry County High School Abstract The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) is a novel that explains the struggles of a father and son as they thrive to survive in a post-apocalyptic society. Cormac McCarthy (2006) put a lot of details into the story and this world, but I believe he did not make up this. There are many clues and links between his story and what the Bible has so say about the rapture and tribulation period. From the beginning of the world they live in, to the characters involved in the novel, Cormac McCarthy’s (2006) novel could be described as parable of what the bible has to say of the end times. However, the novel goes deeper than just a comparison to the end times, it goes into saving your moral values, no matter how difficult your trials are becoming. Biblical Comparison of The Road by Cormac McCarthy Words often have a deeper meaning then what we first see or hear. In Cormac McCarthy’s (2006) prize winning novel, The Road, McCarthy (2006) wrote down the story of a man and his son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Along their journey you see the mother walk out on them, robbers attack them and inner struggle in their own minds. If one takes a closer look at the story, they see several points which could all lead back to a single source and hold a deeper meaning. When facing a tough dilemma, it can be a quite difficult...
Words: 1877 - Pages: 8
...Trusting someone new can be difficult depending on the circumstances of the meeting. Throughout Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a father fights to see his son survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Although he is unsure of his own chances of survival, and does not think they are particularly strong, the father does his best to hide his fears from his son. The father's love for his son and his desire to protect him outweigh his own fear of their bleak situation. However, as the two face more obstacles to their path, the man becomes increasingly less trusting of the fellow survivors they encounter. Furthermore, the challenges they face forces him to question their likelihood of survival. Cormac McCarthy determines that intense situations can impair...
Words: 1578 - Pages: 7
...Gabrielle Van Tassell Professor Shadi Halabi Journey of Transformation 8 December 2016 Hope Where All Hope Is Lost The novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is a post-apocalyptic story that consists of underlying biblical references. McCarthy, with or without intention, incorporates themes and stories directly related to the Christian Bible. The boy and the man are living in a seemingly godless world trying to survive, and the novel describes this as “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.” (McCarthy 32). McCarthy creates a post-apocalyptic world in which a man and a boy are attempting survive off of hope, and he uses biblical references to exude this hope on their journey....
Words: 1158 - Pages: 5
...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...
Words: 771 - Pages: 4
...For my Independent Literary Response Project I have chosen to compare the following two texts; George Orwell’s, “1984” and” Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. These texts were chosen because upon researching them I developed a great deal of interest in the plots, and upon starting to read them I was immediately submerged in the capturing storyline. I very much like science fiction novel and ideals involving the topics of seemingly impossible or unimaginable scenarios, and both of the works that I chose have a certain aspect of science fiction to them. “The Road” is book solely about a young boy and his father living in an apocalyptic word that is run by gangs, rapists, cannibals and families clinging on the edge of life. Almost no life exists anymore, the conditions people face each day are unforgiving: abandoned houses, rotting corpses, raging fires and near to nothing as food goes....
Words: 578 - Pages: 3
...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
...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...
Words: 1698 - Pages: 7
...After difficulties and hardships, only a person’s true character remains. In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road, the father and son balance between their earnest scavenge for food and a dying code of human ethics. Taking place in world with no resources remaining, the types of meals throughout the novel symbolizes the survivors’ changing, or persisting, values and integrity. Throughout their journey, the father and son’s shared meals offers insight into the old world’s enduring morals. When the pair share “hard and brown and shriveled” apples found in a barn, the relic from the past suggests that, perhaps, goodness still exists (121). The ancient apples, a symbol of knowledge and temptation, implies how wisdom about teaching...
Words: 844 - Pages: 4
...Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is about a boy and his father and their travels walking south in a post-apocalyptic world. On their journey they face and overcome many challenges together. The father is very loving of his son and would do anything to protect him even if that means killing him to save him torturing from the ravages that also walk the streets. The book often references grey skies or a soot covered ground, this suggests that the ground is covered in ash. McCarthy does not give the boy or man a name or their location but it is presumed that they are in the United states. McCarthy does not give a background explanation as to what happened to the world in which the book took place. Its to my belief that the earth was scorched by solar...
Words: 516 - Pages: 3
...and after one semester my parents said that there was no way I was going there and that I needed to come home and pick somewhere else to go. I had invested a lot into that college, and they tore it away. They told me that they have picked a new college for me to go to and I’d be starting in a few weeks. It was culinary school, and though I didn’t mind the classes I hated the outcome. So then I went to Suffolk Community College, with no help from them, and no support in order to start a career path that actually interests me. What I have learned through my limited experiences with life and trust is to be very wary of who you trust, and always trust yourself. Trust needs to be a two way road, and though you cannot get through life only trusting yourself, there needs to be a line where you can distinguish between trusting others or only yourself. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, “The Right to Remain” by Melanie Marnich, “Straightway” by Mark Wisniewski, and “Autobiography of Eve” by Ansel Elkins all deal with trust with their characters, and how they need to trust themselves or the people they’re with. In “Autobiography of Eve”,...
Words: 1532 - Pages: 7
...taught about the birds and the bees. But what happens when we’re the ones teaching our parents? In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, we are met with the nameless characters, known as a father and his young son, who travel and attempt to survive post apocalyptic Earth. They set out to the south west in hopes to find people just like themselves, who are still morally correct in a world full of cannibalistic savages. The father shows the boy how to survive through making fires, dispersing their daily intake of food, sleeping in various locations, and other ways just to be safe and healthy. The father teaches him that they are the few morally correct people still left on Earth, as he wishes to teach his son as much as he can, before the father’s time runs out. The boy is seen as a God-like figure to his father as he is a beacon of light in a world full of darkness, the hope of the future, due to his correct moralities, as this reflects onto the father in various situations through the novel. It is quite notable that though the father plays an influential figure for the boy to look up to, the boy also is able to praise teachings upon his father to restore faith in himself. The bond between the father and son is one of the learning, as the father finds himself learning from his son. To start with the case of the son teaching his father, the two spot a young old man ahead of them on the road, to which the young boy insists on helping him, going against...
Words: 1299 - Pages: 6
...Who’s the person you’d go to hell and back for? Who would you walk for years in a dark, cold, lifeless world, seeing burned half eaten bodies for? Death isn’t a lover, but watching the color fade and 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
...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...
Words: 1413 - Pages: 6
