The Road by Cormac MacCarthy

Résumé du document

The novel titled 'The Road' was written by Cormac McCarthy in 2006. Before studying the book, we have to learn more about his author. He was born in 1933 in Rhodes Island and he is now considered as one of the four major American novelists, along with Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo. He is even compared to the great William Faulkner. His last novel was a success as we can see with the Pulitzer Price he was awarded for 'The Road'. The novel describes the journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and life on earth. The two protagonists walk to the South and the Ocean. They fight against natural adversity to survive and find the 'good' people in a world where everybody has changed and where human violence is revealed.

Extraits

[...] Finally, he acts like the Christ. He is the one who gives hope to his father and the people he meets on the road. He plays the role of the Savior and of a prophet. Human nature Another theme is very important in this novel: it is the violence and the potential of aggressiveness of the human. Indeed, the author underlines that when people are confronted with adversity, hungry, when they are hopeless and powerless, they could become very violent. [...]

[...] Some of us are stronger. What is relevant here is that the boy seems to be the strongest. His ignorance of the world protects him. He is not already aware of what people can do to survive. To conclude, we can say that this novel is very rich. It suggests a lot of references and lets us find our own interpretation of this tale. There is a sort of moral lesson, a message of hope for future generation. We should consider the young boy as a model. [...]

[...] The adults are only worried about their interest and are really individualist. They lost the moral values. Even if it is a metaphor, we can see a representation of our materialistic society. All these material concerns are a varnish which hides our real nature and our weakness. After discovering this message which appears along the book, it became very interesting to me and I accepted the lack of action, the lack of information about the protagonists and the place. I think it is a beautiful book about the human condition. [...]

[...] What could they do? To me, the protagonists would be confronted with an endless situation and they would have nothing to do except fight in order to survive. II- The themes of the book The fisher king in the novel The image of the Fisher King is really present in the novel. Indeed, this very ancient Celtic legend can help us to give significance to this post apocalyptic tale and to understand the message. At first, we have to explain what the fisher King Myth is. [...]

[...] He is a kind of guide for his father too. The young boy: Jesus Christ? We can also see the boy as a representation of Jesus Christ. Indeed, on page 172 the father compares his child with an angel and a God. He says to the old man they meet on the road: thought he was an angel?” and “What if I said he's a In addition to that, in various excerpts the child is praying. For instance, page 110, we can note: “Please, help us. Christ”. [...]