The Road 6

"You're not the one who has to worry about everything. The boy said something but he couldnt understand him. What? he said. He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one (110)."

            In the book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy we have learned that the man always speaks of his son as of some higher power, like a god like figure, He puts his son on a pedestal, which is good because it ensures the man that he treats his son the proper way he should be treated when they are on this horrific journey. To compare his son to that high of a powerful figure shows that he loves his son very much. Also the boy might realize that he is old enough now and has been on this journey long enough to realize what is his position in the world. I think that it is his time to make a change, for the good of his survival and his fathers. He has been on this journey long enough with his father to realize what the world is like after the disaster struck. The boy realizes that it is his time to make a change in the world, and unlike everybody else he and his father didn’t die. They didn’t die because they were meant to be alive, they are meant to make a difference in the post-apocalyptic world. He was chosen by a higher power to get the world out of the turmoil that they are in, this is why they didn’t die because the son is the chosen one to make a difference. My reaction to this is that I believe that the wife had a big part in this book even though she committed suicide at the beginning of this novel. The wife gave the man and the boy strength to survive, she knew that the boy was the chosen one and I believe that she was the one that chose her son to be the chosen one because she saw what he was capable of after going on that long journey to try and find a peaceful civilization with his father.  

The purpose of this passage is to show how important the boy is in the book. Even though he is just a child his role in the book is a big one. The boy is the chosen one to make the world a better place, to get the world out of destruction and make a peaceful civilization. The literary techniques used are a comparison strategy, diction and a reflection by the father. The passage is comparing the boy to a God like figure because he is considered to be the “chosen one” to save the Earth out of the disaster. I believe that the God like figure in the book is the mother of the son because she sent a message to the son before she committed suicide, she said to her husband to treat her son right so they can survive. This is why I believe that the woman is the God-like figure. The diction in this passage is that of the Earth and the way it is described by the father, when he was growing up and how the world is after the disaster. The reflection by the father shows his son how different it was when he was growing up, there was structure in the society and everybody was at peace, unlike how it is now-a society of destruction. The overall effect of this passage is to show the young boy that the world wasn’t like this forever. It used to be a good place until the disaster hit. He reflects back on the past to show that this boy can make a change; he can be the one to bring the world back to life.

            In the novel, the word “human” means for the boy to be the chosen one, to be the one that saves the society from destruction. He will be the only to make a difference in the world because he has learned the values of his dad and those values have made the son a better person. Before the son was the chosen one, the chosen one was his mother but then she decided that she couldn’t go on any longer so she committed suicide. Our depictions of the future reveal that the present can change in an instant. For example the dad had his world perfect until this disaster struck their civilization. And for the son he never got to experience the world that his dad saw because he was born into a world of destruction. We use images and language to manipulate people’s minds by using images and words that people can relate to that they see everyday in their life. When they see these images and language around the society people think that they can use them in their lives.

       

The Road 5

"Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he (129-130)."

In the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy the father is telling his son stories about his childhood. Although these stories are true the son yet once again still does not believe what his father is saying because he is not used to the world as his father is telling him it. The boy is only used to the world after the disaster struck, he is not used to the world before the apocalypse. The way his father described the Earth when he was a child was like no other to the son, it was foreign to the boy and he could not understand why the Earth wasn’t like what his father was describing anymore. The father then attempts to tell specific stories of his childhood but then quickly refrains from doing so because he realizes that they all would scare his son because they all end in a sad way and he doesn’t want to scare his son. My reaction to this passage is that I agree with what the father did, he gave the boy a little quick description of his childhood life and what the Earth was like but he didn’t go into great detail because he did not want to work his son up. This was a good move by the father because if he told his son the stories and he got scared then this would create a lot of controversy and when you are out on a journey you don’t want any controversy, you want it to be as simple and straight forward as possible so there is no confusion. And plus, before his wife committed suicide she told him to take care of the boy, treat him right, be nice to him and in return they will be able to survive. If he told the boy the stories then he would break theses values that his wife had for them and something tragic could have happened.  

            The purpose of this passage is to show how smart the father is, he is willing to recollect the past of his childhood but he didn’t want to take it too far because if he did then his son would get scared. If he got scared then the boy wouldn’t be able to go on in his journey because he would be afraid of dieing just like the rest of the people because he would realize that the world wasn’t always like it is now, it used to be a peaceful place when his father was growing up. The literary techniques used in this passage are imagery. The imagery used in this passage help represent helps contribute to the sadness of the passage. The tone is sad because the man realizes that life is no longer what it was when he was growing up. The man is reflecting back on the past which makes him sad and it makes the boy wonder what life was like back when his dad was growing up. The overall effect in this passage shows that life can change in an instant, things are handed to you so be grateful for what you have because it could be gone in an instant.

            In the novel the word “human” means that you are in a dystopian society, trying to find a peaceful civilization to settle in when you are on a horrific journey with your father, your mother just committed suicide and you are now being descended upon as the “chosen one.” Our depictions of the future reveal that the present can not be wasted. You have to work and strive to be the best and you can not take anything for granted. Things can be perfect one minute and then everything can be gone the next. We use language and images to manipulate people’s minds by posting pictures of events that people can relate to.

           

The Road 4

" He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it (110)."

In this part of the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy you see the world suffering worse than it has ever been. They are starting to realize that there is no hope for the people on Earth or the Earth. It is just going to disappear one day and be gone. The people are hopeless and anyone that has survived so far is considered to be very lucky because they can’t believe anybody could survive in these harsh conditions like it has been. In this quote it says that the Earth is still “cold” and it is not welcoming its survivors, it is only getting colder and colder, it is as if the Earth is being “relentless” and it wants to kill everybody on Earth. Whatever caused this disaster on Earth has left the Earth a dead wasteland, there will be no future on the Earth and there is going to be no survival. My reaction to this text is that I believe that the man and his son are going to find a way to beat the odds and they are going to survive. I believe this because you never see the main characters die in a book because it defeats the purpose and because I believe that they are going to find “A Road” to travel down upon where they will find life and a land that they can live. It just wouldn’t be right for them to die. I also feel bad for the victims that couldn’t survive and make it through these harsh conditions, the way that this passage is describing the Earth after the disaster is unbearable and I cannot imagine trying to have to survive on this type of wasteland.

The purpose of this passage is to show how bad the living conditions were on Earth after the disaster stricken. It’s unbelievable to me how the man and his son were able to survive these conditions. I guess it goes back to your will to believe that you can survive. Earlier in the book the man’s wife said to him before she committed suicide that they will survive as long as the man shows strength, care, and love to his son. So this reminds me of someone’s will and courage to survive, if you put your mind to it and believe that you will survive then you will be able to get through anything. The specific techniques used to achieve this purpose were imagery, word choice, tone, and similes. The imagery in this passage is great; it really provides the reader with a good mental/vivid picture in their head with a description of what is going on in the scene. For example the imagery in this passage shows what the Earth looks like after the disaster, “Cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover. There is imagery throughout that whole passage, it is very descriptive and there is more than one visual image that you can picture in that portion of the passage. You can see the cold relentless earth, you can see the darkness, you can see and hear the blind dogs in their running, you can picture the crushing black vacuum that the Earth now looks like, and you can see and hear the trembling animals that were compared to the ground foxes. The diction/word choice helps to contribute to the tone and the mood of the passage. The negatively connotated words like “darkness, cold relentless, dark, crushing black vacuum, and trembling” all suggest a sorrow tone in the passage. When you think of these words you think of bad things, just like in this passage when they are describing what the Earth looks like now after the destruction. The tone in this passage is a sorrow/mournful tone; you get sad that these people had to deal with these harsh conditions. The simile in this passage is comparing the two hunted animals that were trembling to ground foxes. “Somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover.” This simile shows how much destruction that was on the Earth because even the animals were feeling the effects of this disaster not just the people on the Earth, even the animals couldn’t survive this disaster. The overall effect of this passage is it shows how much destruction really took place on the Earth and it shows what the Earth like after it got destroyed, it was a deserted wasteland with dead people everywhere.  

In this novel so far the word “human” means that you are getting killed on the Earth, you cannot suffer through the pain that you are going through anymore because the disaster is too great to survive through. Most likely you are going to die and the Earth is going to be gone, it is going to have no future and nobody living on it. In this book the word “human” is not something to be proud of because your species is being eliminated by the Earth. Our depictions of the future reveal that the Earth is going to be one day a disaster and we can already see how we are treating the Earth badly and the negative effects that it is going to have on us one day by the way we treat it. We are already starting to see the Earth being affected, with warmer winters, global warming, pollution, melting of the ice caps and overpopulation. We use language and images to manipulate people’s minds by providing content that is not fake to certain situations to make them believable.

The Road 3

"You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand? Yes. He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said. Yes. We're still the good guys (65)."

            In this part of the novel of “The Road” the man and his son are along their journey through the world to find their new homeland. On this journey so far the man and his son had to face several encounters such as the people who tried to attack them and kill them but they are still alive. Several questions are starting to arise as the boy is noticing what is going on. In this quote the son does not know if they are still consider the “good guys” anymore because his father killed the people that tried to attack them. The father shot their enemy as a survival method and protection for his son. If he did not kill them then they could have died. The man said that he had to kill the man to protect his son and that God had assigned him to kill the man. But the boy does not know if his father should have killed the man, he wonders if they are still considered the “good guys” even though his father shot and killed a man. My reaction to this text is I feel that the man did the right thing by killing the attacker. He had to protect his son, and this shows that he will protect his son at all costs. The man will do whatever it takes for them to make it on this journey. I feel like they are still considered the “good guys” because it wasn’t as if they went searching for trouble, the trouble came to them and they were only trying to protect themselves which makes it justified that the man shot and killed the attacker who tried to kill them.

            The purpose of this passage is to show how much the man loves his son. He will do whatever it takes for them to survive, he will even go to extreme circumstances to protect his son as is shown in the passage when he shot and killed the man who tried to attack them. The man loves his son, and knowing that his wife committed suicide he has to show even more love to his son because he doesn’t have a mother anymore. The specific techniques used in this passage are rhetorical questions, tone, acknowledgement of a higher power and short sentence structure. The rhetorical questions in this passage such as “do you understand” and “are we still considered the good guys?” These rhetorical questions are meant to reassure the boy that even though his father killed someone they are still the good guys and that his father had to kill the man for the protection of himself and his son. The tone in this passage is confident. When the boy asks the question if they are still the good guys, the father says “yes” in a confident voice to make sure the boy still believes him and to show that his father believes that he made the right decision to kill the man. The father acknowledged an important figure in “God” in this passage. He says that God “appointed” him to kill the man. By the father saying this, he is yet again trying to reassure his son that he made the right decision. But the boy still questions if his father made the right decision. The short sentence structure used in this passage is a way that the father tries to make sure the boy believes in him and his decision. The overall effect of this passage is to show that the man loves his son and will do whatever it takes on this journey for them to survive.

            In this novel so far the word “human” means to try and survive under extreme living conditions and any other problems that you may encounter. The “humans” in this passage are the man and his son who are on their long journey throughout the world trying to survive after a disaster has hit their hometown. On this journey these “humans” were faced with attackers who could be considered “non human” because they tried to kill the man and his son. The word “human” means to be trying to survive under the harshest of conditions and situations. Our depictions of the future reveal that the present is not as easy as some people may think. People take things for granted but that is not always the case. In this situation the man did a good thing in the fact that he didn’t take the attacker for granted, if he took him for granted then he might of not killed the man because he wouldn’t have thought that the man would try and attack him. We use images and language to manipulate people’s minds by showing people things that are not true but we make them believe that it is true by the images or the language that is often written on it. We often see this in newspapers, magazines, and ads.   

The Road 2

"The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body (49)."

In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy a man and his father are off on a journey after a disaster, the chaos and the destruction that has plague their environment that is causing people to lose their minds. In this quote the man’s wife is very depressed and she can’t handle the disaster in the society anymore so she is talking to her husband about her planned suicide. They then discuss about how the man will raise their son without his mother being around anymore. The woman says that they will be able to survive these harsh conditions on their journey as long they stick together and the man shows love to his son. When on this journey the woman suggests that he needs to give his son food and share it with him. He needs not to be greedy or else they won’t survive. The only way they will survive is if the man shows great love, respect and care towards his son. My reaction to this passage is that it shows a side of karma that is present in the book and that is also present in our current society. It shows you that if you do good things then you will get good things in return. In this case the man, if he is good to his son and treats him well then they are going to be able to survive their long journey through the post-apocalyptic world. But I also feel sad for the boy because his mother is going to commit suicide because she can’t take it anymore. It is going to be hard for the boy to progress through the novel without the comfort of his mother being there for him through thick and thin.   

The purpose of this passage is to show the sacrifices that you have to make in order to be able to survive sometimes when times are harsh. The mother is sacrificing herself because she can’t go along anymore; she is willing to sacrifice herself so that her husband and her son are able to survive. She knows that she is weak now and she is only going to drag them behind if she continues on the journey. She can’t take the chaos and the destruction that is going on in the society any longer. In this passage the specific techniques that are used are imagery, vivid description of words and tone. The tone in this passage is sad/ remorseful because the woman has to commit suicide in order for her family to survive because she can’t go on living this way anymore. The words that help contribute to the tone are words like “phantom,” “harm,” “crumble,” and “ghost.” These words are negatively connoted and they are associated with death. These words help to show how the woman his feeling inside of her with all of this destruction and chaos in the world. The imagery in this passage is created through the tone and the word choice. With very descriptive words the reader can visualize the scene much better and more effectively. With words such as “phantom crumbs,” “well advised to cobble together some passable ghost,” and “shield it from harm with your body.” These words provide a sense of imagery to the passage. You can see the phantom crumbs and the passable ghost and you can the passable ghost cobbling together. The overall effect of this passage is to show through the woman’s eyes how she feels and how the destruction and chaos in the world is breaking her down and destroying her. It has destroyed her so much that she can’t go on anymore and she must commit suicide.

In the novel the word “human” means you are struggling to survive because of the chaos in your society. You are not living in the right living conditions that you need to survive because of the destruction in the society so you are forced to move out of die, so the man and his son decided to go on a journey across the landscape of the world for survival in hopes to reach a better place. Our depictions of the future reveal that the present has much value to it. The present is very real, you can have everything one minute and then the next day everything is gone, things can be gone in a blink of any eye so worship every aspect of life, the good and the bad. We use language and images to manipulate people’s minds by creating a vivid description of the situation so the reader can visualize it in his or her head. By visualizing it the reader can maybe relate to it because that situation has happened in their lifetime and the way they view the situation now could change because of the manipulation of their mind.

The Road 1

"The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality (75)."

            In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a post-apocalyptic book about the journey of a father and his son. This journey took several months; they are going across a land that has been destroyed and much of the civilization has also been destroyed. In this quote it talks about how things are being forgotten by the human civilization such as colors, types of birds and certain foods. People are losing their values and their customs that were once so important to them. They are losing their objects, their memory and their principles that they had in place before this disaster took place. My reaction to this text is that how can these people forget everything that they once relied on so heavily? These values were once so important to them and then now they all of a sudden forget these important values. My reaction is that I feel bad for these people because it is almost as if these innocent people are suffering a type of amnesia from this horrific disaster. I feel sad because they can’t do anything about their memory loss; they are suffering from the effects on Earth that was caused by this disaster. 

            The purpose of this passage is to show the horrific effects that the people on Earth suffered due to this disaster which caused the man and the boy to set out on a journey across the landscape to try and survive. People are forgetting the things that they used to do on a normal basis, pretty soon the world will be corrupt (if it is not already corrupt) because of what has happened on the Earth. The civilization is in a disaster and the people are going crazy because of their memory loss. The specific techniques used to achieve this purpose are diction, rhetorical questions, imagery and short sentence structure. The diction in this passage helps to create the overall mood in this novel. The mood of sad is created through the way that the author writes his paragraphs and the tone that he uses. The use of rhetorical questions in this passage like “How much was gone already” presents the reader with a different view on things. Maybe it posses something different that the reader never thought of before or maybe it presents a different position on the situation. The imagery in this passage contributes to the senses of seeing and hearing. You can see the “world shrinking” and you can hear the “raw core” of parsible entities and the “birds.” The imagery helps the reader to paint a picture of the situation in his or her head. The short sentence structure helps contribute to the tone, the short sentences lead up to the dramatic parts of the book. The short sentences are little hints of bigger ideas and the reader reads right through them and holds their breath to wait for the bigger idea being presented. The overall effect of this passage is to show the tough times that the people in this society are facing because of the memory loss and the disaster that has taken place in their society.

            So far in this novel the word human means to be degraded down in the society because you are suffering from memory loss because of the surrounding factors of your environment. The humans are suffering from a loss of memory because of the disaster and this is causing them to not be able to remember things that they used to be able to do on a daily basis. Our depictions of the future reveal that the present is more valuable than we may think. For example in this society everything was perfect until this disaster took place. The people had everything but now they are forgetting everything and are losing everything. People in this society took everything for granted because they thought that they would have it forever but not it is all gone and they are suffering. We use language and images to manipulate people’s minds by providing images that relate to the subject and then describing them in a different way than what they were presented in which causes the people’s minds to be confused.  

The Giver (government) 6

" He forced his eyes open as they went downward, downward, sliding and all at once he could see lights, and he recognized them now. He knew they were shining through the windows of rooms, that they were the red, blue and yellow lights that twinkled from trees in places where families created and kept memories, where they celebrated love. Downward, downward, faster and faster. Suddenly he was aware with certainty and joy that below, ahead, they were waiting for him; and that they were waiting, too, for the baby. For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people signing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo (178-179)."

            This passage from The Giver by Lois Lowry talks about Jonas and his first ever Christmas celebrating town, he is now in a utopian society instead of a dystopian society. He has a different view point on life thanks to the Giver. At this new town he can now live a life in peace and live his life to the fullest. Jonas now sees what life is supposed to be like so he has a new perception about things, a new perception that wasn’t available to him in his previous town because of the dystopian ways of the community. Jonas is now living by himself without the Giver for the first time, how will Jonas survive on his own without the Giver? Jonas is listening to the music that he hears in his new town that he had never heard before, he listens to the people singing all together in one which shows how together the community is and they are willing to accept Jonas even though he may be different from them. This is the total opposite of what Jonas experienced in his previous dystopian society.

            My reaction to this passage is that I wonder how Jonas will survive on his own without the help of the Giver. The Giver was such an essential part of Jonas’s life and he acted as a father figure to him. It will definitely be tough for Jonas without the Giver being around but I think that he will do fine because the Giver stored a lot of good qualities in Jonas that Jonas will take with him to his new town. Also I think that we can already tell how opposite of a society this is from his previous town. The values are different, the people are different and the whole town is different, this new way of living for Jonas will definitely benefit him in the long run. He needed to get out of his dystopian society and into a town that is going in the right direction and the Giver helped him do that.

            The overall purpose of this passage is to show the differences between the two societies that Jonas has lived in. The one he was previously living in is very different from where he is living now, the one where he is living now is very utopian like while his previous town was very dystopian. When Jonas first heard the people playing the music all together he could already tell that this place was different, he felt accepted in the society unlike any other time when he was previously living in that dystopian society. Jonas feels appreciated in the society, he feels loved and he feels like everybody is different, everybody is unique and nobody has that “sameness” about them that was so obvious in his previously town. This society is all different, with difference comes good things not everybody can be the same, if everybody is the same then that is what creates problems like we saw in Jonas’s dystopian society. The specific techniques used to achieve this purpose are the people signing represent a symbol of the new town that Jonas is in. The words “he heard people signing” is used as a symbol to show how united and together the people are, something that you would never see in Jonas’s past community. Also there is more symbolizing with the music because the Giver loved music and he would always share this music with Jonas. This music represents a symbol of hope and that the Giver isn’t with Jonas anymore and he has nobody to share his music with which makes Jonas reflects back on the good times he had with the Giver right before his death. The overall effect of this work shows how one person can have such a big impact on someone’s life; they can act as a role model and a father figure. The Give was definitely a role model/father figure to Jonas.

            After finishing the novel, the word “human” means something different to each part of the word. Each part of the world might have a different view on what the word “human” actually means or what it is supposed signal but in this book the real “humans” were shown in Jonas’s society that he moved into at the end of the book. They were the real “humans” they lived life free without living in fear or without anybody telling them what to do, or controlling them. They were the total opposite of what the so called “humans” were in the dystopian society that Jonas previously lived in before his death.

            Our depictions of the future reveal that the present is better than what people make it out to be. Yes, there are places that are bad like we seen in the dystopian society that Jonas lived in, but for the most part it is good and people need to cherish these moments because they could be gone soon. In Jonas’s case he was lucky enough to get into a good town with the help of the Giver. We use images and language to manipulate people’s minds by posting irrelevant things so people get scared but in reality people have no reason to be scared.