The Road Cormac Macarthy

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Corey Emden Pd. 3 The Road Theme Essay What separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom? Humans are able to have compassion, build tight bonds with family, and are even able to build a structured society. In the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy writes of the journey of a young boy and his father who are trying to survive the apocalypse. In order to survive they must hide from most other humans who have succumbed to cannibalism because of the lack food. But the father and son’s ultimate goal of the journey is to escape south, to the coast in order to escape the impending, frigid winter that will soon swallow them. Their hope is that near the coast they will find other humans like themselves who might have survived and may have even built a small civilization, but they don’t find what they expected. Throughout the novel McCarthy uses literary techniques to demonstrate that when civilization and society break down, humans revert back to their natural, animalistic instincts. As the father and son begin their perilous journey they encounter many people who have lost their humanity and have succumbed to cannibalism. When the father and son encounter their first cannibal, the father notices how he looks “like an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes” (63). This simile compares how the cannibal is so feral and animalistic that he almost looks like a wild animal. Because the world has fallen apart and society has broken down the cannibal has reverted to his primitive instincts of survival. These instincts dictate that food is necessary for survival, and that when there is a shortage of food he must do anything in order to obtain nutrition. Later, after the encounter the father recollects it and remembers the cannibals “reptilian calculations in [his] cold and shifting eyes”(75). This metaphor compares the cannibal to a reptile to characterize
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