Cormac Mccarthy Hope Analysis

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Patrick Salter 3E-2 THE ROAD A novel By Cormac McCarthy 287 pages. Vintage Books. $14.95. In a world devastated by an undisclosed disaster that left the world crippled, Cormac McCarthy’s novel tells the story of a journey by a father and son. From the opening pages, McCarthy depicts the love and protection the father has for his son as they continue their impossible journey. McCarthy successfully depicts this relationship’s growth, while writing the same high standards for despair that he is most known for. Through the “dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him” (3). In just the first sentence, McCarthy manages to outline the entire story. In a world that God has abandoned, where the sun no longer shines through the ashes, the hope that the father and his son will survive ultimately gives the reader something to look forward to. Cormac McCarthy successfully writes one of the most classic stories of survival while using such grotesque details of a post-apocalyptic world. Throughout the story, both of the protagonists, a father and a son, remain unnamed as they continue their journey. The father “hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There’d be no surviving another…show more content…
As the man's wife points out before her suicide, "the boy was all that stood between him and death" (25). In other words, the man's thirst for survival is fueled by the love for his son. While the man may expect his own death, he lives in order to seek life for the boy. Unlike his wife in her suicide, the man does not wish to "save" his son from civilization's destruction, rape, murder, and cannibalism by killing him preemptively. To the father, suicide is only an option for the son if he is to be imminently harmed. Perhaps for this purpose he leaves the pistol with the boy whenever he explores a new and potentially unsafe location
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