Literary Techniques In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

This scene in the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy, shows a man and a boy who are two survivors in an apocalyptic world. After the economy collapsed in a world war, major natural explosions and accidents occurred which burned and destroyed just about everything in the world.

Even though they are not related the boy calls the man Papa. The boy is about years old and is pale, tall and skinny for his age, probably because he does not eat regularly and is borderline starving. He is dressed in mismatched clothing that they find in different places they stop to salvage from. A lot of the clothing is dirty, very worn out and does not fit the boy. The man looks about the same condition as the boy, hungry and pale. The man usually wears goggles to protect his eyes from the …show more content…
They have been walking south for weeks, passing through hilly country. Everything is cold, dark and ashy, and they man thinks about the lonely, abandoned earth. They have just left a deserted gas station where they hoped to find food or tools but they found nothing. After they walked away from the gas station the man turned back to get all the left over oil. He remembered they could use it to light their lamp during the “long gray dusks, the long gray dawns.” They have been moving south for weeks and the man noticed the lack of marauders on the road. Silently he hopes the “bloodcults” have killed each other off. During this time the man dreamt of his wife emerging as a bride from green leaves. Sometimes he dreams of walkin though a “flowering wood” with the boy, surrounded by birds and blue sky. The man doesn’t trust these good dreams, as he thinks of them as “the call of languor and death.” He worries about the old world fading from his memory, and tries to wake himself up from the good