english 110 the road

Essay #4, The Road

Background:

So far this semester you have put in an incredible amount of work breaking down metaphors (in poetry, fiction, and drama) and using your imaginations to find inferred meaning behind the purposeful juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated things, whether concrete or abstract. Additionally, you also encountered the concept of “constructive ambiguity,” a particular tactic some authors use to paradoxically create more meaning while providing fewer details. For this last essay, you will be using all of the skills you’ve learned so far in order to analyze a novel, The Road. You’ll soon find that The Road is full of metaphors that elucidate the deepest implications about human nature, especially in light of how the main characters are faced with such an extreme post-apocalyptic environment. For this last essay for the semester, you will analyze one of the central themes of the book through the lens of one of its most dominant symbols or metaphors.

Task:

Answer only ONE of the following four prompts:

  • The setting of The Road is obviously extreme. The father is often haunted by both memories and dreams of the disappeared world. They represent the degree to which the man struggles to come to terms with his reality and its ever-present danger. What role do memories and dreams play in communicating one central theme of The Road? How do they offer new insight about the characters, setting, and plot? For this essay, it is vital that you establish which theme of the book you’ll be investigating as early as possible (there are many possible themes to analyze!). This essay prompt will likely put you in the most direct contact with the book’s most significant metaphors.
  • One of the most dominant symbols of the novel is “carrying the fire.” Actually, both fire and light recur quite often in the novel in both negative and positive ways. However, it is most important as a symbol with regards to the relationship between the father and son. Analyze and elucidate one of the novel’s central themes using the reoccurring symbol of “carrying the fire.” Again, even though you’re focusing on the “carrying the fire” symbol, this essay prompt requires that you also discuss how fire, in general, relates to one of the central themes of the book and how it has shaped the characters’ reality.
  • The boy demonstrates over and over again that it is fundamentally important he and his father remain “good guys” and that they continue “carrying the fire.” Indeed, the “bad guys” are quite terrifying, engaging in the enslaving of others, cannibalism, or even the harvesting of women for their babies. Yeah, pretty ugly stuff. However, there are several times when the otherwise clear boundary between good guys and bad guys seems blurred, but the boy is always there to re-establish that boundary. How is the boy essentially acting as the father’s moral compass? The dialogue on page 259 between the father and son is critical for your analysis, “You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.” What window into the boy’s burden do we learn here? How does it change what we know about the relationship between the father and son and their goals?
  • One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire novel is the flashback of the night the boy’s mother leaves them to commit suicide. It’s the first time in the novel where we finally get a vivid sense of just how dim the characters’ prospects are. In this world, there are most definitely worse fates than death. The mother faces inviting imminent death in a hopeless world whereas the father faces struggling indefinitely to survive in an unknown but extremely dangerous future. Whose acts demonstrate more courage or bravery, the mother or the father? If you’re going to write about this topic, you MUST do a full nuanced breakdown of both characters and the decisions they’ve made. How do they each act brave and cowardly? What are their biggest fears and how are they each ruled by those fears? How do they each conquer their fears? At all costs, avoid simply writing an essay that is based on the unconditional opinion that “suicide is bad.” (Another option is to consider the boy to be the most courageous and brave.)

Minimum Labor Requirements:

  • Your piece should have an introduction that presents your argument (thesis) and provides context for your discussion of the essay topic. You should introduce what central theme you’re going to discuss in your essay. This is very important… it should be extremely obvious what essay prompt you are answering hallway through your intro. (Keep in mind, too, that you should NOT simply announce which prompt you are answering, as in “For this essay I am discussing prompt #4.” Instead, it must be implied strongly enough for the reader.)
  • Your body paragraphs should develop smoothly from one paragraph to the next (and may vary in structure).
  • Your essay should correctly quote and analyze at least two metaphors from the novel. Remember that the novel’s metaphors are direct windows into the its central themes. For this reason it’s absolutely essential for you to be able to discuss a couple of them at length.
  • Your piece should have a conclusion that clarifies and discusses the significance of your overall argument and does not simply restate or summarize what you have previous written. What is some final remark you’d like to give to your reader? How can you relate to the stories? How can you relate to having a lack of information?
  • Your piece should be at least 5-7 pages long (between 1700-2400 words) and formatted in MLA style.
  • All Work/Labor and writing needs to meet the following conditions (quoted from our Grading Contract):
    • Complete and On Time. You agree to turn in on time and in the appropriate manner complete essays, writing, or other labor assigned that meet all of our agreed upon expectations. (See Late/Incomplete Work for details on late assignments). This means you’ll be honest about completing labor that asks particular time commitments of you (for example, “write for 20 minutes,” etc.).
    • Copy Editing. When the job is for the final publication of a draft, your work must be well copy edited—that is, you must spend significant time in your labor process to look just at spelling and grammar. It’s fine to get help in copy editing. (Copy editing doesn’t count on drafts before the portfolios or first drafts).

Characteristics of a strong paper:

  • Be organized: The paper contains a clear hypothesis and accurate supporting evidence, has a logical flow, includes transitional phrases or transitions, and provides clear topic sentences.
  • Shows originality: The paper is neither formulaic nor perfunctory. It displays some creativity, offers an interesting angle on the question, takes some risks in content or structure, and/or offers new insights.
  • Demonstrates control of language and style: The grammar and vocabulary is appropriate for college writing, the language is descriptive and precise, the sentences are varied in structure, the paper has few errors that interfere with readability, etc. Note: even though I require a high level of expressive language that can communicate nuanced arguments, please feel free to use whatever “language” or “dialect” or “voice” you feel you can best express your ideas.
  • Uses a variety of sentence combining strategies, including the use of coordinators, subordinators, noun-phrase appositives, and relative clauses.

Extra Labor:

  • deep dive into The Road using outside sources. If you really connected with the novel, especially relative to one particular theme we discuss in class, then this option will allow you to do a deeper dive into the book. You will still be answering one of the four possible prompts for the regular-labor essay, but your essay will simply be longer, at least 2,600 words (which is about 7-8 pages). You will also still be doing the regular-labor double-entry journals for the book. However, you will also need to do extra reading in the form of 2-3 additional sources about the novel or Cormac McCarthy you will find on the library’s article databases. Like I’ve said before, I highly recommend corralling the help from one of our amazing librarians. In the very least, you must be in contact with me regarding your sources. I definitely want to approve the ones you choose. Mainly, I don’t want you to waste time reading something that won’t help you. You must make it clear to your reader that you have incorporated ideas into your essay that you got from outside sources. Be sure to include a Works Cited page. (And again, please limit your extra reading labor to around 10,000-15,000 extra words. Don’t go too crazy!)