Ideas and Issues Cormac McCarthy Explores in the First 100 Pages of The Road (Book Review Sample)

Name: Professor: Title: Date: Ideas and Issues Cormac McCarthy Explores in the First 100 Pages of The Road The 2006 post-apocalyptic and tragedy novel describes the difficult journey of a young son and his father over several months after a cataclysm that has destroyed almost all life and industrial civilization. The major themes presented in the novel are death & violence, familial love, perseverance and survival. The novel’s tone is largely sad, uneasy and discouraged. Central to these tonal indentations that create the novel’s mood is diction. An example of the novel’s diction (albeit the first hundred pages) is immediately felt in the novel’s second sentence: ‘Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before’ (pg. 1). McCarthy uses dark twice in the sentence. The word gray is used frequently throughout the novel to ensure readers are constantly reminded of the bleak circumstance the father and his son travel. The author’s description of this treacherous journey is, however, filled with portrayals of love and affection between the boy and his son: ‘He kept the boy close to his side. The city was most...