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`` The Road `` By Cormac Mccarthy

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Literature has always been a medium to express writer’s concerns; in her award winning book The Handmaids Tale Margaret Atwood warns of the instability in our patriarchal society, likewise Cormac McCarthy in his acclaimed book The Road also gives a warning; that of the fragility of human nature. Using the setting of hostile, post-apocalyptic America these authors explore what happens to both individuals and the wider society when rights and basic human necessities are taken away. Atwood creates the patriarchal dystopia, Gilead, which strips women of their identity and through her protagonist, Offred, she explores a society where human instinct is forcibly suppressed, but cannot be completely stifled. McCarthy on the other hand shows humanity which has not yet rebuilt itself and because of this basic human existence is a fight and the man’s survival is a constant battle throughout the novel. Using hostile environments as well as symbolism, metaphor and characterisation the two authors reveal their ideas about identity and, subsequently, human nature. In both texts the authors explore identity, revealed through the harsh and hostile setting. McCarthy’s fragmented and sparse writing reflects the barren and bleak landscape ‘With the first gray light he rose and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country. Barren, silent, godless,’ the simplicity of his writing replicates the emptiness of the landscape and basic need to survive which is now all that underpins the

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