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The Road And Riddley Walker: A Comparative Analysis

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Both The Road and Riddley Walker present post-apocalyptic worlds. However, within the narrative of a post-apocalyptic timeframe, The Road is set right after such an event, whereas Riddley Walker is 2000 years into the future. Points of comparison between the texts are the usage of quasi-religious imagery and ideas of youthful forbearers (the son and Riddley) of a new light after devastation.

The physical and societal backgrounds of the two texts are quite contrasting. The Road is set in a society very shortly after a large, apocalyptic event. The language used by McCarthy to depict the world around the man and the son is continually referential towards the colour grey. Societally, the last few humans have denigrated into acts such as cannibalism …show more content…

Contextually, this links to ideas of an increasingly nihilistic world, a theme seen in many vestiges of popular culture today. One example of such would be Eugene Thacker’s book In The Dust Of This Planet, a reference within the title to humanity destroying itself and having nothing to live for, which is seen in The Road. Ashley Kunsa’s Maps of the World in Its Becoming labels The Road as nihilist, arguing that whilst there is always grace and redemption as a possibility for characters, “such redemption requires more of McCarthy’s characters than they seem capable of giving.”, highlighting a lack of empathy in what is, figuratively and literally, a dog eat dog world. In Riddley Walker, the Kent Riddley himself walks around is not seen to be affected by the event in the way The Road is, though socially and culturally it has changed the world around him. The people of Kent in the future are much more averse such as savagery and cannibalism, and death is described, and sexualised, in an almost …show more content…

In The Road, fire and light are the only clear colours in an otherwise grey world, and take metaphorical symbols of hope. For instance, on p.137 the son asks the father a confirmatory question; “And we’re carrying the fire”, to which the father responds “And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.” The idea of the pair “carrying” the fire is repeated throughout the text, possibly alluding to the son as a “last hope”. However, it is also arguable that the idea of fire is a substitute for religion throughout the whole text, something that the father and son must cling onto in order to have a sense of “being”, rather than just give up hope. Indeed, the son is frequently seen as similar to a Christ-like figure, one last hope in an age where there is little to hope for. George Monbiot’s article in The Guardian suggests McCarthy to describe a “collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs”, meaning fire would be one of the last few things the man could truly cling onto. Ideas of fire resonate with the usage of ash as a metaphor to describe the world around them, with the “ashes of the late world” implying a demise, and metaphorical cremation of the society which existed prior to the catastrophe. In Riddley Walker, fire is mentioned in the first myth of the text, called “The Hart of the Wood.” At first, the word “Hart” simultaneously seems to refer to the centre of the wood, a stag found in the

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