The Road Essay -- Literary Analysis, McCarthy

Why do you think McCarthy has chosen non to give his characters names? How do the generic labels of the man and the son modify the way you /readers relate to them? While reading The Road, a novel compose by Cormac McCarthy, I was jerked from the warmth, comfort, and safety of my home and thrown into a cold, dark, and pine away world, walking alongside the man and the male child. McCarthy composes his work so diagrammatically that readers are drawn right into the story. I believe Cormac McCarthy wanted the figures in this book to be universal, so that the reader could imagine him/her self as the boy or the man at any given moment, and to be able to feel as they do. To do this McCarthy did not designate the characters in his book with names, and because of this, I was able to connect with the man and the boy on a personal level and envision myself uniting with them in their scary journey. As the reader, I was latelyly overwhelmed with many mixed emotions such as co mpassion, sadness, happiness, disgust, remorse, and fear. I have pity for the characters in the book The Road, because the man and the boy have to pass day to day struggling to survive in a frigid bleak world where food is scarce They squatted in the road and ate rice and cold beans theyd cooked days ago. already beginning to ferment.(McCarthy 29). The landscape is blackened, and mankind is almost extinct The mummied dead everywhere.(McCarthy 24). As I read on I noticed myself connecting more deeply with the characters. When the boys mother takes her own life, I was deeply saddened and my perfume broke for the boy simply because his mom, someone he cherished and love so much, had given up on hope and faith and leave him. I just wan... ..., I jumped in the bed got as cobblers last to my husband as possible and eventually drifted off to sleep. When I correct reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I was astonished at how deep I was able to connect with the characters and the fa ct that this book touched me as deeply as it did. It also made me think what if? In candor if this were to happen would I have the courage and strength of the man and the boy or would I be like the mother as McCarthy states it a faithless slut (57), who has taken death as a crude lover. Over all I personally believe that this novel was absolutely fantastic, even though I had nightmares for a few nights after I had completed the book. This just goes to show what a great writer McCarthy is, he touches his readers so deeply they even dream about his work. I would defiantly pick up this book and read it again just for fun.