Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy and Death By: Ben Sershen History of Cormac McCarthy • Was born in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933 • He attended the University of Tennessee in 1951 and joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953, serving for four years • Has been married a total of 3 times and his youngest son, John Francis was the inspiration for his book The Road • Now regarded as one of America’s top Novelists • William Faulkner and Herman Melville • Read Moby Dick at a young age • Time in military influenced morbidity…

Literary analysis of “No Country for Old Men” : Is Greed Worth it? In No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy’s book explains the problem of greed; all through the book we mainly follow main character Llewellyn Moss. Who finds himself in a pretty scary place. He found a bag filled with millions of dollars of drug money and many people are hunting for him, to collect that money. He is running for his life for a great deal of the book. All of which is because Llewellyn loved the power of money.…

Good versus evil and despair are two of the many themes in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Geographical surroundings are just as important and significant as any other determining factor that can be thought of like fate, destiny, and any other supernatural agency. The setting of a book can determine the morals of a character by putting said their ethics to the test. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy tests the man’s and the boy’s morals by placing the characters in extreme weather conditions including…

In Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 bestseller, No Country for Old Men, he presents the reader with an exploration of human depravity through the lives of three main characters. While two of these integral characters, Anton Chigurh and Llewelyn Moss, clearly display what society would identify as vice, Shariff Ed Tom Bell is presented as a weathered, virtuous man, who struggles to reconcile himself to the ever-expanding presence of evil in the world. Despite McCarthy’s use of Bell as a type of moral…

“Because we’re carrying the fire”: A brief analysis of how Cormac McCarthy displays a world without societal pressures in juxtaposition with his protagonist's ethical dilemmas Cormac McCarthy sets the scene of The Road in a brutal post apocalyptic world where most humans have resorted to stealing, murder and cannibalism for survival. His story revolves around two characters, a man and a boy, who fight for their own lives, while also claiming they are acting as “the good guys.” The man in the…

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a story of a father and his son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Together, they walk through a wasteland searching for necessities essential for survival, while trying to avoid roaming bands of cannibals. Along the way their morals are revealed in the choices they make to survive. McCarthy develops the theme of morality by showing the conflict between the boy’s and father’s moral impulses, especially when moral choices affect their own and others’…

along a distant road to escape the treacherous winter. Experiencing many dangers the entire way to the sea, the boy and his father came across many threats to their lives, such as the bad guys, starvation, and hypothermia. Throughout The Road, Cormac McCarthy displays the theme of death repeatedly through the father and son almost starving to death, murder, the description of the landscape, and hope to exhibit the abilities of how harsh and destructive humans can potentially be. The man and…

In the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy shows that “the good guys. Keep trying. They don’t give up.” (McCarthy 137) As one of the good guys, the man has to teach the son to carry the fire so he can replenish the earth by turning the world from evil. If the man does not do this the son will not have anything to live for and will want to die with the man. The man and son have only a few pieces of hope keeping them going; without the son the man would have given up but in the hardest times they…

In every novel or series, the important characters will have a rite of passage. This is an event that will mark an important time in someone’s life. In the novel No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy one of the main characters, Llewelyn Moss, experiences his rite of passage. Through his choices, mistakes and adventures within the novel Llewelyn Moss proves himself as an all American outlaw hero. One of the most important characters in No Country for Old Men is Llewelyn Moss. Moss is a…

knowing they would live the same fate if caught, was ready to sacrifice himself to ensure the boy’s freedom. After realizing he couldn’t leave his son alone, he explained, “I was going to run. To try and lead them away. But I cant leave you [sic],” (McCarthy 113). If he had run, he would have been caught and tortured like the rest of them. By staying, he still may be caught if the men find them. However, the man would use the last bullet in the pistol to grant the boy a quick and painless death,…