Regardless of whether literary characters, authors, or readers believe in God/ a higher power, it is human nature to search for morality in the midst of immorality and injustice. Often that search leads people to seek answers above the fray of humanity’s wickedness from some divine being. Traditionally, prayer is seen as a form of this communication and search, while the cross is a symbol of a holy figure’s guidance; its base reaching upward to the heavens and the horizontal piece extending outward to humanity. However, these literary symbols also represent the daily struggle between good and evil in every individual’s life that instigates a hope for a better world. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard both emphasize
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In Native Guard, prayer functions as a cry of desperation, rather than a mundane act of faith. Many of Trethewey’s poems depict the violence and inequality that touched the lives of so many African Americans in the South spanning from the Civil War to the present. In one such poem, “Scenes from a Documentary History of Mississippi,” a father and his son kneel at the church altar in 1913 questioning the “routine hardships of their lives” by crying out “why, Lord, why?” The boy’s profile looks like “the outline of suffering,” showing his distress yet hope in finding peace through prayer. Even 50 years after the Civil War, these southern African Americans were hated and disrespected. However, because they could turn to prayer, an act of desperation for a higher power to intervene in their difficulties, it shows their belief that humanity’s evil can only be satiated by looking to a higher power who could potentially rein in what they …show more content…
The boy prays and seeks God as a means of reconciliation with the old world and its morality, revealing the power of morality the characters see in a higher power even as they are surrounded by cannibals and thieves. One instance of the boy’s communicating with a higher power happens after the pair finds a bunker filled with food and goods. Before they settle down and feast, the boy gives thanks for the food and prays the bunker’s builders are “safe in heaven with God” (McCarthy 146), showing the boy’s hope for humanity’s salvation and his inherent kindness. Prayer is often described as divine communication, a way of talking with a higher power, which parallels how the man sees his communication with his moral son as divine. However, the boy’s prayer more closely represents an attempt to connect with goodness, divinity, and morality, rather than simple worship or communication. This gratitude is a crucial example of how the man and the boy attempt to reconcile with the morality and goodness of the old world, a place where they consider God to be present, in order to negate the immorality and greed in their current world, a place where they believe God has vacated and allowed cannibals to rule. Yet, even while he has only lived in this new world, the boy
In Native Guard, prayer functions as a cry of desperation, rather than a mundane act of faith. Many of Trethewey’s poems depict the violence and inequality that touched the lives of so many African Americans in the South spanning from the Civil War to the present. In one such poem, “Scenes from a Documentary History of Mississippi,” a father and his son kneel at the church altar in 1913 questioning the “routine hardships of their lives” by crying out “why, Lord, why?” The boy’s profile looks like “the outline of suffering,” showing his distress yet hope in finding peace through prayer. Even 50 years after the Civil War, these southern African Americans were hated and disrespected. However, because they could turn to prayer, an act of desperation for a higher power to intervene in their difficulties, it shows their belief that humanity’s evil can only be satiated by looking to a higher power who could potentially rein in what they …show more content…
The boy prays and seeks God as a means of reconciliation with the old world and its morality, revealing the power of morality the characters see in a higher power even as they are surrounded by cannibals and thieves. One instance of the boy’s communicating with a higher power happens after the pair finds a bunker filled with food and goods. Before they settle down and feast, the boy gives thanks for the food and prays the bunker’s builders are “safe in heaven with God” (McCarthy 146), showing the boy’s hope for humanity’s salvation and his inherent kindness. Prayer is often described as divine communication, a way of talking with a higher power, which parallels how the man sees his communication with his moral son as divine. However, the boy’s prayer more closely represents an attempt to connect with goodness, divinity, and morality, rather than simple worship or communication. This gratitude is a crucial example of how the man and the boy attempt to reconcile with the morality and goodness of the old world, a place where they consider God to be present, in order to negate the immorality and greed in their current world, a place where they believe God has vacated and allowed cannibals to rule. Yet, even while he has only lived in this new world, the boy