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.
The boy also helps his father find the faith that he needs. The journey is about a man who loses faith at then finds it. This faith is how they survived the destruction and devastation they encountered on their journey. The father and the boy travel along the old highways that have now been deserted. They go from town to town and search for things they need like food, clothing, blankets, etc.
The Road By Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy’s subject in his new novel is as big as it gets: the end of the civilized world, the dying of life on the planet and the spectacle of it all. He has written a visually stunning picture of how it looks at the end to two pilgrims on the road to nowhere. Color in the world — except for fire and blood — exists mainly in memory or dream. Fire and firestorms have consumed forests and cities, and from the fall of ashes and soot everything is gray, the river water black. Hydrangeas and wild orchids stand in the forest, sculptured by fire into “ashen effigies” of themselves, waiting for the wind to blow them over into dust.
Wallen 1 Michael Wallen English 121 Professor Borer 27 September 2012 McCarthy’s Cryptic Ideas in The Road A gray, mysterious, colorless world has come about. A father and his boy stand on a cracked road with nowhere to go. This world, along with mankind, seems to be ending. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy composes a realm in a post-apocalyptic state, where a nameless man and his son, also nameless, persevere through the hardships of walking down a highway while trying to escape from murderers, rapists, and cannibals. Even though McCarthy writes in a minimalistic and simple form, he provides us with rich picturesque examples of symbolism.
In his review of The Curious Incident, Jay McInerney suggests that at the novel’s end “the gulf between Christopher and his parents, between Christopher and the rest of us, remains immense and mysterious. And that gulf is ultimately the source of this novel’s haunting impact. Christopher Boone is an unsolved mystery” [The New York Times Book Review, 6/15/03, p. 5)]. Discuss. _________________________________________________________ Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a remarkable novel exploring the world of Christopher, a fifteen-year-old boy with Aspergers Syndrome.
When reading Cormac McCarthy's excellent The Road, I couldn't help being struck by the contrasts between the two characters. The young boy is innocent, hopeful, accepting, trusting, and always looks for the goodness in other people and strives to help the less fortunate despite his own desperate circumstances. His father, on the other hand, is world-wise and world-weary, suspicious, guarded and fearful even as he tries to project a face of optimism to his son on their journey along the endless road and toward an indeterminate future. The son has never known any world other than the bleak wasteland through which they traverse, and accepts things as they are. His father, endlessly remembering what things were like before, and being painfully
It is in the desolation, the absolute and utter hopelessness of this novel that the idea of a personal God arises. In the novel, the father’s personal God is his son; the only reason he has to keep going, to keep trying. Without his son, the man would have no reason to live. On what is labeled as page 5 of the text, but is in reality page 3, the reader gets the first hint that the boy is an embodiment of his father’s
While a mountaintop or a scenic view of the Norwegian landscape displayed from an elevation. He pains the sky red because he fells that the world is a very dangerous place and he is in fear. The technique he uses is that he uses different colours so emphasise different emotions in the painting. He uses this technique when he paints the sky bold red and colours the landscape behind him in a very deep blue colour. This emphasises that something’s wrong, furious nature and darkness is looming.
His peers’ offenses and unfriendly remarks left him with insecurities. Will struggled with the humiliations from schoolmates, but learned how to overcome the cruelty of people. As the reader keeps exploring Wallis’ novel, Hawk, the reader comes to understand how the series of events that young Will went through, made him a strong surviving boy not just physically but mentally. Will had to explore and learn on his own. His life experiences taught him to strive for survival day and night.
The fact that the baby died, with the fact that Paul's farming land was ripped up, and everything involved in his farming life was ruined, made the ending pessimistic. This is because more tragic issues are