A Fleeting World Cormac McCarthy’s The Road depicts a post apocalyptic world devastated by cataclysms unbeknownst to the reader. The world, seemingly set in the United States, is barren, desolate, and cruel. Cult groups of cannibals roam the the unyielding lands in search of their next victims while the the threat of famine and disease is ever looming. McCarthy focuses the story on a boy and his father who remain unnamed throughout the entirety of the book. The book follows the duo’s progress along an unnamed road throughout the country that eventually brings them to the coast. Along the way, McCarthy details their struggles over lack of food and growing hunger, various encounters with the cannibal cults, and the fight for survival against
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The main focus of this passage is the books that the father sees in his dream, they are constantly referenced throughout the passage. First when the man is standing in the building above the street, there are said to be “books and papers” all around the room (McCarthy 187). Continuing on later in the vision he stands in the ruins of what was an old library and, “blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row” (McCarthy 187). McCarthy utilises the idea of books as a symbol of knowledge and permanence and then proceeds to show that these books and all the words within them have been ruined as a metaphor relating to the world; specifically, how the world was filled with life and knowledge, to what it is today, a barren wasteland that threatens death every living moment within it. Through this metaphor using the books, McCarthy shows how prevalent the world’s impermanence has become. At the end of the passage there is more evidence to suggest McCarthy was alluding to the idea that the old world has been lost and there is no going back when he writes, “He let the book fall and took a last look around and made his way out into the cold gray light” (McCarthy 187). This allusion is the nail in the coffin that there will be no going back to the world that was long past, when the father drops the book and proceeds out of the library, it signifies the idea that the book, an object or piece of the past, is now being left behind and the father acknowledges this and the idea that the world will never be the same when he walks back out into the present world (“the cold gray light” (McCarthy 187)). With this thought in mind, McCarthy alludes to the fact that there will be no going back to the old world as it was something that was impermanent and now destroyed,
The main focus of this passage is the books that the father sees in his dream, they are constantly referenced throughout the passage. First when the man is standing in the building above the street, there are said to be “books and papers” all around the room (McCarthy 187). Continuing on later in the vision he stands in the ruins of what was an old library and, “blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row” (McCarthy 187). McCarthy utilises the idea of books as a symbol of knowledge and permanence and then proceeds to show that these books and all the words within them have been ruined as a metaphor relating to the world; specifically, how the world was filled with life and knowledge, to what it is today, a barren wasteland that threatens death every living moment within it. Through this metaphor using the books, McCarthy shows how prevalent the world’s impermanence has become. At the end of the passage there is more evidence to suggest McCarthy was alluding to the idea that the old world has been lost and there is no going back when he writes, “He let the book fall and took a last look around and made his way out into the cold gray light” (McCarthy 187). This allusion is the nail in the coffin that there will be no going back to the world that was long past, when the father drops the book and proceeds out of the library, it signifies the idea that the book, an object or piece of the past, is now being left behind and the father acknowledges this and the idea that the world will never be the same when he walks back out into the present world (“the cold gray light” (McCarthy 187)). With this thought in mind, McCarthy alludes to the fact that there will be no going back to the old world as it was something that was impermanent and now destroyed,