Cormac McCarthy’s tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing, yet deeply personal work, published in 2006. A setting stripped of all natural life with a father and son as the sole survivors of a post nuclear holocaust. The Road is essentially an existential tale as the father and son have one focus: to survive and to attain some meaning in their lives. Without any cultural and economic influences, the father and son must carve out their existences from a world devoid of life. The only meaning that they have come from the paternal and filial love that they feel, the essence of the family and life. Love maintains humanity, as is illustrated through the love the Man and the Boy share in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Arguably, the father and
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The father and the son remind, educate, influence, and encourage one another from time to time in order to keep faith in life and themselves. This factor is inter-located throughout the whole essay. Probably the most significant phrase from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is “carrying the fire” (Cormac McCarthy 79). It is a central focal point in the man and the boy's overall interaction. The significance of the phrase cannot be stressed enough and does, without a doubt, carry a significant meaning for them both. However, in the novel, we are never really given an explanation as to what the phrase really means, which inevitably allows for the readers to come to their own conclusions as to what the phrase truly conveys. It remains ambiguous throughout the novel, but in terms of motivation it has to do with surviving and/or the upholding of values remembered from the pre-apocalyptic society. As I address the phrase “carrying the fire” through its meaning, it becomes possible to see that there are motivating factors for both the man and the boy that affect their morale to keep the fire(their hope)going. Ashley Kunsa from West Virginia University wrote , “The novel is best understood as a linguistic journey toward redemption, a search for meaning and pattern in a seemingly meaningless world—a search that, astonishingly, succeeds.” How is hope then redeemed? From my point of view I believe hope brings redemption in …show more content…
Contrarily, to the people who give up their lives, such as the man’s wife, who is completely despairing and walks out of the house to death of her own accord. “What in God’s name are you talking about?” We’re not survivors. We’re the walking dead in a horror film.” (Cormac McCarthy 55) the mother lost her life because she did not possess hope for her life. Also, the cannibals, who were faithless people that did not commit suicide, but instead chose to eat people. In the minds of the cannibals, they held a belief that eating each other was the only way to prolong their lives, especially now that the world has basically come to an end and they are all inevitably going to die. Changing how some people think of the world, hopelessness over time actually turns these people into animals, who care only about their own well being and the fulfillment of their desires. This fact also correlates with the father’s words of “carrying the fire” - carrying fath. Normally people that do not hold any hope in the future result to doing horrible and irrational acts, because they believe there will be no retribution for their actions. However instead of the father and son committing such acts they choose to seek survival, they do believe or have hope that there is in fact going to be a future. Even though this may be true, the father is having inner struggles which are shown in the differences of his dreams and actual reality. In the
The father and the son remind, educate, influence, and encourage one another from time to time in order to keep faith in life and themselves. This factor is inter-located throughout the whole essay. Probably the most significant phrase from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is “carrying the fire” (Cormac McCarthy 79). It is a central focal point in the man and the boy's overall interaction. The significance of the phrase cannot be stressed enough and does, without a doubt, carry a significant meaning for them both. However, in the novel, we are never really given an explanation as to what the phrase really means, which inevitably allows for the readers to come to their own conclusions as to what the phrase truly conveys. It remains ambiguous throughout the novel, but in terms of motivation it has to do with surviving and/or the upholding of values remembered from the pre-apocalyptic society. As I address the phrase “carrying the fire” through its meaning, it becomes possible to see that there are motivating factors for both the man and the boy that affect their morale to keep the fire(their hope)going. Ashley Kunsa from West Virginia University wrote , “The novel is best understood as a linguistic journey toward redemption, a search for meaning and pattern in a seemingly meaningless world—a search that, astonishingly, succeeds.” How is hope then redeemed? From my point of view I believe hope brings redemption in …show more content…
Contrarily, to the people who give up their lives, such as the man’s wife, who is completely despairing and walks out of the house to death of her own accord. “What in God’s name are you talking about?” We’re not survivors. We’re the walking dead in a horror film.” (Cormac McCarthy 55) the mother lost her life because she did not possess hope for her life. Also, the cannibals, who were faithless people that did not commit suicide, but instead chose to eat people. In the minds of the cannibals, they held a belief that eating each other was the only way to prolong their lives, especially now that the world has basically come to an end and they are all inevitably going to die. Changing how some people think of the world, hopelessness over time actually turns these people into animals, who care only about their own well being and the fulfillment of their desires. This fact also correlates with the father’s words of “carrying the fire” - carrying fath. Normally people that do not hold any hope in the future result to doing horrible and irrational acts, because they believe there will be no retribution for their actions. However instead of the father and son committing such acts they choose to seek survival, they do believe or have hope that there is in fact going to be a future. Even though this may be true, the father is having inner struggles which are shown in the differences of his dreams and actual reality. In the