THE ROAD BY “CORMAC MCCARTHY”

The Road by “Cormac McCarthy”

I. SYBMOLS & SETTING

Q. The road takes the form of a classic excursion story—a form that designated days back to Homer's The Odyssey. To what destination are the man and the young man journeying? In what sense are they "pilgrims"? What, if any, is the symbolic implication of their journey?

The Road chronicles a dad and a son—maybe the last of the “good guys”—as they tread along a forsaken patch of main road peopled by marauders and cannibals. The innovative can be read in a kind of ways. The road is possibly the most chilling commentary of the post-9/11 world. The post-apocalyptic setting plays upon the public's worry of terrorism, pandemics, genocide, and tools for fighting of mass destruction. Other readers discover the poetic routes of desolation and think of Dante's fall into torment orT. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

II. STYLE AND TONE

Q. Cormac McCarthy has an unmistakable prose style. Whead covering do you see as the most distinctive characteristics of that style? How is the composing in The road in some ways more like poetry than narrative prose?

McCarthy continues to write in an unmistakable prose style to wrestle with the existence of God, as the father tells the boy, “There is no God and we are his prophets.” The novel certainly plays upon a parent's worst fears, but because its father-son relationship is crafted so tenderly, the overall effect is, ironically, anything but morbid.

III. CHARACTER

Q. What makes the connection between the boy and his father so mighty and poignant? What do they seem for each other? How do they sustain their fondness for and faith in each other in such brutal conditions?

At dawn, the dad (who, along with the son, remains nameless all through the novel) reviews the countryside, endeavouring ...