Explanatory Synthesis Essay: The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, tells the tale of a man and his son as they travel across post-apocalyptic America. The duo searches for food and bonds over their loneliness during their quest to reach the ocean. Over the course of their voyage, the man and the boy confront people on the brink of starvation, cannibals, and their own mortality. The Road is a bleak and pessimistic novel because of its hopelessness, general immorality, and depressing subject matter.

The Road, a post apocalyptic novel,written by Cormac McCarthy, tells the story of a father and son traveling along the cold, barren and ash ridden interstate highways of America. Pushing all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart, they struggle to survive. Faced with despair, suicide and cannibalism, the father and son show a deep loving and caring that keeps them going through unimaginable horrors. Through the setting of a post apocalyptic society, McCarthy demonstrates the psychological effects of isolation and the need to survive and how these effects affect the relationships of the last few people on Earth.

For my research proposal I have decide to choose a book titled: The Road, by Cormack McCarthy, published in 2006. This novel is about a middle aged man and his young son who are trapped on a newly apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by intense fires, earthquakes and winds that leave everything around them covered in ash. The man and the boy face a difficult task of trying to find safety among what is now a somewhat deserted wasteland. Their journey is confronted with many obstacles such as; bad air quality left by the ash and dangerous chemicals, a minimal amount of food and water supply, thieves, and scavengers who are made up of gangs that go around murdering any human or animal alike for their meat and other supplies.

The novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy works to develop a central theme throughout the journey of the man and his son. The man and his son show the reader along the road that the intrusion of fear into one's actions may lead to limited prosperity. One of the main ways McCarthy is able to establish this theme is through the introduction of symbols throughout the text. The major material symbol that only has meaning in the context that it is used is the pistol. The author is able to give the pistol the representation of not only a form of self-defense but also a way to remind the characters that fear may limit the opportunities provided to the boy and his father.

Colorless, alarming, and cannibalistic. This is the life in which a father and his son have to live through each and every day. They only have each other, family, to make life worth living for. In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road family is the most important thing in one’s life. For example, the father’s capability to do anything to protect his son, giving his son the gun to end his life from any further suffering, and always putting his son’s life first before anything else.

hildren are often referred to as the future, but what would they be considered in a world that's crumbling down to its core? People consider children to be the next great minds because they have a fresh set of eyes; kids can see the world in an entirely new lens and fix it for the better. People desperately rely on the innovation of children to solve the problems that previous generations made, but there must be point where that will not be enough anymore. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author depicts the journey of a man and his son in a world that is far beyond saving. From the man’s perspective, the only point of living is for the boy, but for the boy, it’s much more than that.

Cormac McCarthy made a name for himself writing about the utter irrationality of existence, and the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life within his novels. He does this in his novel, The Road. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, The Road tells the story of a father and son and their journey throughout their life on a barren road with no life around them. They are faced with the question of, "What really matters?" Throughout this story, they are faced with many hardships that seem to have no end in sight.

There are a few luxuries in life that may seem necessary, but in the midst of a tragedy such things that were close to the hearts of many become useless. In The Road certain pleasures morph into sorrow, mocking the characters of a past world that is now out of reach. Examples Cormac McCarthy incorporates in The Road are: the “childhood home”, “Coca-Cola”, and the “flute”, in which these items were scraped from the characters everyday lives. Their standard of living calls for only the basic necessities in life. The novel revolves around the idea that it takes a tragedy in order to recognize what has value, extraneous articles become a thing of the past.

Humanity disagrees about tradition, religion, party choice, and almost everything that people could agree or disagree with, but music has the power to put aside all those differences and bring people together. The Road by Cormac McCarthy takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where everything including the sweet sounds of music is gone. No matter the time or the place, music has an effect on every living human being. Whether it’s the first time hearing music or listening and bonding with friends over the new top song, music is what people can always rely on to create endless sounds of joy. The people in this book have a feeling of emptiness and silence in which now they forget what those beautiful sounds are like.

“And nothing bad is going to happen to us… because we’re carrying the fire.” (McCarthy, 83) In the award winning novel, The road, by Cormac McCarthy a boy is traveling down a road with his father in a post-apocalyptic world where around every corner something bad can happen, in this dark and gloomy world there are cannibals and death all around. The world is dying and with it everyone's humanity. The boy is a symbol of hope compassion and protection in a world that is full of death and destruction.

The Road is a story where is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the date and location is unnamed. The author of the novel Cormac McCarthy doesn 't describe why or how the disaster has demolish the earth. But after reading the novel, I can sense that the author wanted to present a case of mystery and fear to the unknown to the reader. By the author 's exclusion I think that the story gains a better understanding of what the author wanted to express to the reader. An expression of a man and his son surviving in a post-apocalyptic setting.

The Road, published in 2006, and written by Cormac McCarthy, is a book of it’s own. You can’t compare it to another, because there is arguably no book quite like it. Many think that while the novel is not as popular as McCarthy’s best works, it gives you just as much to read and think about. McCarthy did this through various literary devices. McCarthy’s dark themes, original Southern Culture, vivid dialogue, unique lack of punctuation, concealed structure, and exotic characters, are all significant in The Road.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is his post-apocalyptic magnus opus which combines a riveting plot along with an unconventional prose style. Released in 2006, the novel has won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award (Wilson). Oprah Winfrey also selected the book for her book club ("Cormac McCarthy”). The author, Cormac McCarthy, was born in 1933 in Rhode Island and is said to have wrote the novel because of his son and their relationship. The Road centers around a boy and his father while they try to survive after an unknown disaster occurs. While some people may argue that the unusual style takes away from the novel, it adds to the tone and meaning of the work.

Imagine yourself living in a barren, desolate, cold, dreary world, with a constant fear of the future. The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006, is a vivid and heartwarming novel that takes us through the journey of a father and a son as they travel South in a post-apocalyptic environment facing persistent challenges and struggles. McCarthy proves that love unleashes immense strength to overcome obstacles, even in times of desperation.

“The Road” depicts a solemn and deteriorating environment that can no longer provide the fundamentals to a society due to the nuclear disaster. The sudden depletion of the resources within their environment made it difficult for the father and the son to find sustenance. They were constantly traveling towards the South looking for safe places to situate themselves because the father knew that they would not be able to survive the nuclear winter. The genre of the novel is post-apocalyptic science fiction because it revolves around a dismantling society. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” depicts how environmental destruction finally gave sense for people to value the world and what it had to offer.