John Hillcoat

The Dark Side of Innocence The world is filled with desperation, where survival and self-reliance is the only way to live, and every minute, every second, and every single breath is precious. In an apocalyptic situation, wherein one’s survival is the priority, McCarthy reveals a repentant and ashamed tone towards the evil deeds humans are essentially forced to do for their own survival. In the novel The Road, author Cormac McCarthy utilized forthright diction and significant details to epitomize an apologetic tone when discussing the loss of innocence through one’s lifetime, proving that despite mankind being innately innocent, greed overpowers and induces humanity to eventually lose their purity. Throughout the entire novel, Cormac McCarthy utilized multiple literary devices and particularly used notable details to exemplify a remorseful attitude. McCarthy used significant details to display an apologetic tone about the loss of innocence to prove that humans are innately greedy when put in difficult circumstances. After discovering the bunker filled with naked and soon to be victims of the cannibals, the man contemplatively observes his son in which he noticed and described the boy as, “Starved, exhausted, sick with fear” (McCarthy 117). In the man’s perspective, McCarthy included this detailed description of the boy. This information induces the readers to feel sympathy and pity towards the boy. Evidently innocent through the first half of the novel, the boy demonstrated…

An interest to me that comes up in the novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, is survival. The Road is 287 pages telling a journey, in third person omniscient, of a man and his son on a road trying to survive in a world where a catastrophic event caused destruction of human civilization. Death is a constant worry as The Man and The son continue on the road. There is no electricity or phones, all stores are empty, no houses for shelter, plant life is gone, and no fish in the water. In the novel,…

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” This quote by Cormac McCarthy refers to the main conflict present in The Road: the need to survive and to persevere through the challenges the characters encounter. Along their journey, a father and son discover more about their morals and values and how to continue on in dire circumstances. In The Road, McCarthy develops moral dilemmas using character development and imagery in order to show that destruction and death can exist…

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates is amongst literary works an explorative piece into the life of the typical suburban family in the 1950’s. The story focuses on the relationship between a couple, April and Frank Wheeler, and their interactions and immersion within the suburban setting that they reside. This is where the up’s and down’s of their marriage is laid bare and the reader gets a glimpse into the impact of the social pressures that are forced upon them to affect their suburban lives…

In The Road, Cormac McCarthy shows how family and love can lead a person through their hard times. He reveals how family and love helps and inspires one to overcome obstacles that are unfamiliar to them. A boy who has dealt with the worst of the worst by losing his mother in a horrific way is left alone with his father. At a young age he is taught everything he needs to survive by only one parent. His father teaches him that there are others around still after a disaster that nearly erased the…

Every Trip is a Quest: The Road to Self-Knowledge A road leads to a destination. In How To Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas Foster advises “When a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention, just to see if, you know, something’s going on there” (6). Given that Cormac McCarthy titled his novel, The Road, Foster provides a “heads-up” that something special is about to happen. The challenge is to dig beneath the surface, and discover the underlying gem hidden by the…

The book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy displays a very powerful underlying message throughout the book. Love is something that we humans need in order to survive in this day an age anymore. Our world has become so destructed that we we need love in order to have hopes for the future and to keep us going in our everyday lives, without love there is no reason to look forward to the future such as the message in this book is showing us. After an apocalypse had struck, the man and they boy thought…

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “Hope is in truth the worst of all evils, because it protracts the torment of men” (Nietzsche 45). The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic “grey world” where the last remnants of humanity fade away into oblivion. This world is literally “dead”(%^%), life as we know it is over and civilisation is beyond saving. To complicate the situation, however, McCarthy infuses hope into this dystopian world. This creates an illusion of hope where in fact, there is none for the…

The Road: Sympathy in a World that Offers None Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is a tale of a father and son’s journey of survival in a post-apocalyptic holocaust world full of marauders and cannibals. The father’s animalistic behavior throughout the novel reflect the intentions of most of the society around them, while the son represents sympathy in a world that has no more to offer. In The Road, whenever the father and son encounter others on their journey the boy shows more sympathy…

Religion Without faith, life has no meaning. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Papa and the boy journey through a post-apocalyptic time where they seem to have no purpose, but they still carry the fire and keep going. Faith in God provides purpose and hope, even when all has been lost. A life without faith is a life without purpose. The man, “Knew only that only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). The man sees the…