Golden Hair and Yellow Parkas The Road by Cormac Mccarthy is a harrowing journey of day-to-day survival that speaks to every individual in a sense. It sculpts subconscious feelings of our insecurity of hope for the future through symbolism by color. Yellow becomes a flag, it is the signal fire for objects that correlate to hope. Use of this color conveys the ideal of optimism in the face of loss. It is the ability to continue in a world of nothing.
Yellow is the first color mentioned following gray and black. It is the man’s most prominent memory. It has become the one that he will base all other days upon. It is yellow leaves. “This was the perfect day of his childhood. This was the day to shape the days upon.” (Mccarthy 13). In a world made up of ashen skies and black rivers, the yellow of the leaves created a sense …show more content…
“Inside was a yellow plastic flashlight… A yellow plastic EPIRB.” (240). There were in fact two yellow objects in the passage. The yellow flashlight was just that; a light. After wandering lost for so long they now had something to guide them. The EPIRB was an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. This creates an idea of others like them existing. Those others who carry the fire like them. As well as giving a sense of connection to others, the hope in these objects was rewarding. They had completed their initial goal and made it to the coast.
The next mentioned color is copper; a sort of blunt yellow. “The light was a candle which the boy bore in a ring stick of beaten copper.” (280). The man was dying. He was fading from the world similar in that the boy’s hope was fading. The survivability of the boy alone in the world was questionable, especially concerning of contact with other humans. The fact that the item held was a light parallels to the man’s life and the “light at the end of a tunnel” expression used in correlation to someone near death. As the man faded, so did their
Yellow is the first color mentioned following gray and black. It is the man’s most prominent memory. It has become the one that he will base all other days upon. It is yellow leaves. “This was the perfect day of his childhood. This was the day to shape the days upon.” (Mccarthy 13). In a world made up of ashen skies and black rivers, the yellow of the leaves created a sense …show more content…
“Inside was a yellow plastic flashlight… A yellow plastic EPIRB.” (240). There were in fact two yellow objects in the passage. The yellow flashlight was just that; a light. After wandering lost for so long they now had something to guide them. The EPIRB was an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. This creates an idea of others like them existing. Those others who carry the fire like them. As well as giving a sense of connection to others, the hope in these objects was rewarding. They had completed their initial goal and made it to the coast.
The next mentioned color is copper; a sort of blunt yellow. “The light was a candle which the boy bore in a ring stick of beaten copper.” (280). The man was dying. He was fading from the world similar in that the boy’s hope was fading. The survivability of the boy alone in the world was questionable, especially concerning of contact with other humans. The fact that the item held was a light parallels to the man’s life and the “light at the end of a tunnel” expression used in correlation to someone near death. As the man faded, so did their