John Hillcoat

In the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy a young boy and his father are struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. In the beginning of the book both Papa and the boy have strong moral values, but nearing the end Papa will do anything in order to escape danger and death. When one is trying to survive, the lines between good and evil become blurred, causing individual’s morals to shift when put in life threatening situations. In the beginning of the book, Papa was very set on being a…

Living in harmony with people during a time of despair is like trying to have 5 people live off one apple for a week; it will not work.. The Road written by Cormac McCarthy tells the heartfelt story of Papa and his boy making a growling journey to the East coast. Papa and the boy live in a world that lacks compassion: though they resist the temptation of sinful acts and live honest lives. Maintaining sensitivity on the road is not easy, but the man knows showing kindness and tolerance to the…

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, disregards many standards put in place by other writers. None of the characters have proper names, dialogue is not put in quotes, and the characters are not complex. Complex means that the character goes through some sort of change. It’s a very common literary element. In this story there are two main characters and neither of them have an apparent change in personality throughout the book. The Road seems to have no complex characters whatsoever, and that’s a…

Do Life or Death Situations Challenge Morality? “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” (3) Cormac McCarthy greets the reader with opening lines, stern, humorless, and a tone that sets the tone for the entire story. A nameless man and his son are the main characters in…

Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road contains an excellent example of survival instincts in a destructive world and of how a person’s love can motivate someone to continue on the right path. Since the novel is dedicated to McCarthy’s son John Francis, some readers like Oprah Winfrey have stated that the novel is similar to a love story. The narrative describes a post-apocalyptic world where two main characters, the man and the boy, travel along the abandoned state roads to reach the South for better…

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a story between the protagonists, a father and his son, versus a post-apocalyptic world. The father and son leave their house after the wife shoots herself and heads south, where it is warmer. Throughout their journey, they meet survivors whom the father does not trust and it shows. Some of the survivors are terrible people who eat other people or murder others and some are thieves who are forced to steal to survive such as the thief who tried to steal the cart…

Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, transforms our thinking about the world today by creating a world in which few things exist. In plain contrast to the devastated surroundings stands the man and boy's unwilling dedication to one another. In a landscape where nothing grows, their love flourishes and grows deeper, even as they wander into vast nothingness. Through McCarthy’s writing, the reader is left constantly thinking about the “absolute truth of the world” (McCarthy 130). The prospect of…

The Road by Cormac Mccarthy (2006) portrays the idea of a man and his son surviving in a post apocalyptic world. Through tough conditions, the man and his son create a bond that makes them depend on natural resources and each other to survive. The hard times bring many emotions that show how caring they are for each other. Cormac Mccarthy illustrate the boys compassion towards others through his characterization of speech and emotion. First, the author illustrates the compassion of the boy…

When thinking about the theme of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, many subjects come to mind. Throughout the story we see death, violence, and darkness. However, what is the most apparent throughout the story is love. The theme that comes out on top and is the most obvious, is the theme of love conquers all. The love that the little boy and his father share is incepretable. They face so many challenges as they are traveling down the road like, the “bad men,” illnesses, and even mental struggle, but…

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…