Posted: August 10th, 2022

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Paper based on book: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
-Opening paragraph captures the reader’s attention, thesis statement last sentence of opening paragraph
-Each body paragraph must have a topic sentence that supports the thesis. A paragraph must be at least six sentences.
-In total at least 4 body paragraphs plus the intro and the conclusion
-Conclusion: A conclusion should leave the reader with a sense of completion about the research paper’s topic and thesis. It might give information about the future, its outcome, how it has changed over time, etc.
-At least 5 pages in length plus works cited
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Road (2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers) by Cormac McCarthy has been one of the most famous novels for its return to the genre of Blood Meridian that is both adventure and an art piece written within the traditions of Melville, Lawrence, Conrad, and Hardy (Wells et al., 2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). Notably, religion’s theme is very apparent through its characters, such as the man, boy, and Ely. One evident scenario is how the man believes in God and constantly asks God questions, especially while expressing his pent-up rage. The child intensified the man’s belief in God since he considered him to be holy and sacred. The man is on a mission of taking care of the child as that is God’s appointment upon him. Therefore, the Road novel takes the reader through a journey of religion and spirituality, specifically asking about God’s presence (Trotignon, 2014: 2024 – Essay Writing Service | Write My Essay For Me Without Delay). The author constantly broaches on whether God withdrew himself from the world or is merely inexisting without the provision of any clear-cut answer (Trotignon, 2014: 2024 – Essay Writing Service | Write My Essay For Me Without Delay). This paper presents the religion theme within the novel, specifically the role of religion, the references to God, and even those situations raising concerns.
Religion in “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
The Road presented how religion sustained humanity, ethical actions, and relationships during the devastating period and even in life outside the novel’s pages. The main characters, the man and his son, adhered to a particular set of ethics founded on their folk beliefs and the folkloric religion between them (Toone, 2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). The other characters never adhered to these ethical standards demonstrating the apparent difference between father and son and the other survivors. The father and his son used the folkloric religion to keep them together and formed folklore, beliefs, and customs. These shared values allowed communication between the members, ensuring that the fundamental relationship endured (Toone, 2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). The father compared him to the angels and God. When everything had been lost in darkness, the father counted his steps away from his son to count his steps back to him. As he returned, the father was amused by his son considering him as the lode or matrix in which he and the stars were a common satellite (McCarthy, 2016: 2024 – Do my homework – Help write my assignment online). The world and the light it possesses were literally and figuratively centered on the boy in comparing the son to the stars. The son carried “carried fire within him,” which gave their journey and coexistence meaning and worth. The fire metaphor represented contrasting issues where goodness and humanity were dwindling, and the man endeavored to protect his son through protecting rt5yhe divine fire. In this relationship, it was evident that the two were defying the sophisticated conventions of traditional religion. It was not about “The Father” and “The Son” but instead a new construct of the divine, which was essential to folkloric religion (Toone, 2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service. This new construct of religion taught endurance, love, kinship, and hope between the two as the other survivors resorted to cannibalism of giving up on life.
The novel demonstrates numerous similarities with different accounts presented in the Christian Holy Book, the Bible. For instance, the author described the child using religious implications or symbols. The child is considered divine due to the things he does and says, which is what is done or said by a normal child. The boy is characterized as being kind, innocent, and highly moral. He is also seen as a sense of hope, especially in the post-apocalyptic, dystopian world. The man stated that if the boy was not God’s word, then God never spoke (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). The child was hence considered to be the savior of the world. This could have alluded to Jesus, who Christians consider to be the son of God and the world’s savior. Notably, on one end, there was the sign of hope to the desolate world similarly to Christian’s hope for the second coming of Jesus and irredeemable exhaustion of all beings and meanings. On the other end, the hopeless man and the child were walking through a ravaged landscape, trying to remain alive and be ethical after an unknown catastrophic event destroyed the earth into a barren, sying, futureless wasteland. It was evident that the characters were haunted by the tension arising from the two extremes.
The boy’s function as the hopeful Messianic figure is best comprehended by how he courageously referred to himself and his father’s relationship. When the man told the child that he should not worry about everything, the child responded, “Yes, I am, I am the one” (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). This instance shines for its transparency and the effect of singularity and changes it brings. Undoubtedly, the boy asserts who he is, while in the previous instances, he looked for answers from his father, especially whether the target was the good guys. The boy showed certainty and clarity when he put his own words to himself and contributed to his Messianic role; this line alludes to the Bible, especially when Jesus proclaimed that “I am the way, the truth, and the Life”. Also, this boy referred to himself as the one does churn out the idea that he is indeed the one that the world has been waiting for. Notably, in the whole novel, the child did call his father “Papa” (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). This name demonstrated the essential nature of the relationship between the father and the son. The relationship survived through the extensive turmoil they were going through due to the world’s devastating nature. The term “Papa” also was an affectionate term compared to the formal term “Father,” hence indicating a severe and intimate nature of the relationship between the two. The boy had a constant burgeoning ability to name his father “Papa, his capacity to read and write despite growing in a culture that did not support nor nurture the activities. This was a child-like Jesus who was known to do extraordinary things, which the Christian community believe that no human being can actually. The child’s abilities suggested that even without his father could go further and even beyond the end of the novel to write a new story of the new world.
Despite the father believing in God and even though the child, there is an ambiguity concerning God’s subject (Wielenberg, 2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). The man did have questions about God, and since he never got any clear-cut answers, he harbored doubts about God’s existence. The initial words that he spoke aloud were that if he is not God’s word, then God never spoke (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). However, the man never declared his son to be the word of God, but rather the spoken words were naturally hypothetical. He declared that his son was the word of God, or God never spoke. The first book in the Bible, Genesis, talks of how God created through speech. Therefore a God who cannot speak cannot create (Kunsa, 2009). Therefore, the man declared that either his son was God’s word or, practically, the world did not have any God.
Other scenarios that demonstrate the two extremes of God existing or not existing include the pattern of near demise, trailed by an unexpected rescue who was repetitive in the whole story. The man and his son reached the point of starvation when they discovered an underground bunker full of food (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). When they were almost dying from starvation, the son spotted a house at a distance that turned out to have food in it. The man also found a flare gun in an isolated sailboat that was needed in a later encounter. After the man’s death, the boy faced a shotgun-toting veteran where the gun came in handy to protect himself (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). There is a question of whether these “miracles” were God’s doing to protect the child or were just causes of good fortune. There are still uncertainties on the answers to this question (McCarthy, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). They are suggestions of divine activity, but they do offer any further substantially. For example, the abandoned sailboat was named Pajaro de Esperanza, which meant bird of hope. In Christianity, the bird of hope was the dove (Wielenberg, 2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). In the Old Testament, the dove carried an olive leaf to Noah to signal that the floodwaters were receding. However, the sailboat in the novel brought a message of despair as it originated from Tenerife, a Spanish island on the African coast (Wielenberg, 2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). This brought the message that the whole world had been affected by the catastrophe.
God’s ambiguity is also illustrated in the encounter which the father and son had with the old man who may have been named Ely. The character resembled the Old Testament prophet Elijah in several ways (Kunsa, 2009). Elijah had predicted drought, while Ely stated that he knew the catastrophe or something similar was coming. Ely always wondered about being the last individual left on earth. Elijah told God that the Israelites had forsaken his covenant among atrocious things; hence he chose to wander into the wilderness and was fed by God through ravens (Kunsa, 2009). Despite the stark similarities, Ely constantly denies God’s existence and declares himself to be a prophet in a simple paradoxical sentence, “There is no God, and we are his prophets ‘. Different aspects presented by Elie Pointed towards Good never speaking. He stated that he survived through random chance and not divine assistance. He asserted that he and other survivors were prophets of atheism and were witnesses to God’s absence from the universe.
Conclusion
Religion has played a fundamental role in the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy as different characters asserted the presence and absence of God’s existence. There were notable similarities with the Bible, and also, the religious aspect raised considerable concerns on whether God was involved in everything that was happening. Nonetheless, the religious belief helped the man and the son to survive through the desolate state of the world.

References
Kunsa, A. (2009). “Maps of the World in Its Becoming”: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Journal of Modern Literature, 33(1), 57-74.
McCarthy, C. (2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). The Road. Pan Macmillan.Retrieved by http://www.sturgeonenglish.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/13602064/cormac_mccarthy_-_the_road.pdf
Toone, M. M. (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). The Folks of the Postapocalypse: The Road, Religion, and Folklore Studies.
Trotignon, B. (2014: 2024 – Essay Writing Service | Write My Essay For Me Without Delay). The Persisting Relic of Prayer in The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Revue francaise detudes americaines, (4), 197-209.
Wells, P. J., Preda, C., & Popa, V. (2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). UNESCO-CEPES.
Wielenberg, E. J. (2010 – Essay Writing Service: Write My Essay by Top-Notch Writer). God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy’s” The Road.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 8(1), 1-19.

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