Mental Illness In The Road

Mental Illness is a Road Social sciences are broken into micro and macro levels; however, political science is studied largely on a concept of how the micro affects the macro. The combined effort of the individual, therefore alter our political sphere as a whole. A new and emerging political issue is mental illness-- something traditionally thought of as an individual strife. As a postmodern author, McCarthy delves into the issue of mental illness in his novel The Road. This reinforces Foster’s claim from How to Read Literature Like a Professor that “it is all political” in his book . Moreover, the mental illness statement is not direct, it is developed through symbolism and the interpretation of outside knowledge. McCarthy emphasizes the …show more content…
A quest within oneself is still a journey worth pursuing. The road is, in a broad sense a symbol in itself. “A symbol can’t be reduced to standing for only one thing” (Foster 105). In The Road, the journey that the man and the boy are going on is a symbol of the quest of the mentally ill. It highlights a multitude of aspects and mirrors the growth of mental illness. For example, McCarthy uses an unreliable narrator, violence, and obsession as tools to explain the severity of mental illness in our nation. “Don’t read with your eyes”, Foster urges his readers (234). However, it is our hearts that we must follow. This message of continuing down a road resonates with so many mentally ill people. Mental illness plagues a multitude of citizens across the globe. When those people, and those who bleed for their ill brothers and sisters, read with their hearts, they often find themselves relating to the boy and the narrator more than …show more content…
The man exhibits signs of violent trauma in the way he perceives his reality. The symbolic road being traveled, a product of the man’s own consciousness, is littered with violent obstacles. For example, their encounters with other people were rarely pleasant. They even came across a burning baby. “Violence in literature, though, while it is literal, i usually also something else” (Foster 95). In the man’s case, violence is his mind formulating and understanding trauma. Coping with this can be extremely difficult and affect people across the globe. A desire to cause harm to others is a sign of severe mental illness, and this scattered and dangerous journey that he somehow invents from himself shows an obsession with violence. His mind is stuck on