Lit. Analysis #3 The Road

General 1. The novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy takes place in a post-apocalyptic world with a father and a son traveling through deserted and desolate cites in search of food. Throughout the novel the father and son are faced with the dangers of this wasteland, such as cannibalistic survivors hunting them down, thieves and dying of starvation. The main of the objective of the two is to keep moving south, due to rumors of not such a destroyed earth to be there. Throughout the novel the father questions if he should have his son die with him if anything were to happen. As the two head further south their hopes of a better situation die off as the starvation and gruesome scenes they go through get worse and worse every day. At the end of the novel the caring father who has done everything to protect his son is no longer strong enough to keep going, and although fearful of his son not being able to make it alive alone, tells him to keep going on south and to keep alive. The novel ends with the boy meeting non-cannibalistic family who takes him in.

 2. The theme of this novel was the will to keep moving forward. Throughout the novel these characters fight to stay alive by scavenging for food and water while also defending themselves by the cannibals that hunt them down.

 3. The author’s tone was very dark and serious throughout all of the novel
 • “Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.” Pg. 1
 • “Barren, silent, godless.” Pg.4
 • “The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it.”
 4. Setting: “The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it.”

 Mood: “There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin sobbing uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death.”

 Tone: “The country was looted, ransacked, ravaged. Rifled of every crumb.” Oxymoron: "There is no God and we are his prophets." Imagery: They followed a stone wall past the remains of an orchard. The trees in their ordered rows gnarled and black and the fallen limbs thick on the ground. Characterization 1. Direct

Characterization:

 • “Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.”

 • The boy lay with his head in the man's lap. After a while he said: They're going to kill those people, aren't they? (The Man) Yes. (The Boy) Why do they have to do that? (The Man) I don’t know. (The Boy) Are they going to eat them? (The Man) I don’t know. (The Boy) They're going to eat them, aren’t they? (The Man) Yes. (The Boy) And we couldn’t help them because then they'd eat us too. (The Man) Yes. (The Boy) And that's why we couldn’t help them. (The Man) Yes. (The Boy) Okay. (pg. 194)

 Indirect Characterization:

• “The roadrat let go of the belt and it fell in the roadway with the gear hanging from it. A canteen. An old canvas army pouch. A leather sheath for a knife. When he looked up the roadrat was holding the knife in his hand. He'd only taken two steps but he was almost between him and the child. (The Man) What do you think you're going to do with that? He didn’t answer. He was a big man but he was quick. He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.”

 • “They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276) 2. The diction and syntax do change between the dialogue of the Father and the son as the father has a more mature diction while the son is that of his age

. 3. The father in the novel is a dynamic character as throughout most of the novel he wanted his son to die with him but at the end he has his son to keep moving on and to try and survive the world.

 4. Well this was a very fictional novel so I couldn’t say I felt like I met the characters, but it did make me think of the decisions us as a society might have to go through in a disaster such as the one in the novel.