Soto 8
Things Learned From the Road of Life
Jacqueline Soto
6th Hour Senior English
Mr. Tillotson
6 March 2014
Introduction
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again." - Cormac McCarthy
Today in life many things are taken for granted, even if things may seem simple or not of great value. Once those things are taken away from people, they may come to realize that they had much more value and worth to them than they could ever imagine. The Road is about a journey the father and son must take through a destroyed world to find refuge.
The world they walk through is very different from what it once was; it is now unpredictable and dangerous.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road describes that the things that truly matter in life are taken for granted. McCarthy used things that he experienced in his own life as well as well as major events that happened in America to write his novel. He used the tragic and unforgettable accident of Hurricane Katrina to describe that anything can happen and certain things can be taken away in an instant. His use of the train which was once of worth and value to people now left with no use is an analogy for things being taken for granted.
Literary Criticism
In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses an allusion to enhance the central message of being...