Cormac Mccarthy The Road
Labonno
Onnito Labonno!
Mr. Brian Harriman!
ENG4U1-03!
11 April 2014!
Divergent Aftermaths of Unvaried State of Affairs!
!
According to the Dalai Lama “we can live without religion and meditation, but we
cannot survive without human affection.” This statement is most closely related to the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, where a father and son walk across a postapocalyptic Earth where the comfort of religion is absent, in search for a tomorrow that looks like yesterday rather than today. They are desolate for a new day and an array of a hope. So is Camille Preaker, the narrator and protagonist of “Sharp Objects”, a stomach-wrenching account of feminine malevolence, by Gillian Flynn. She is sent back to her hometown, the …show more content…
small town of Wind Gap, Missouri, where she must cover the story of the murder of two little girls whose teeth had been pulled out and nails had been painted, following their strangling. However, it goes beyond the investigation; it gets so personal that Camille goes back to the unstable state of mind with which she had to grow up. Though both novels are based on essentially the same fundamentals, contrasting repercussions can be observed. Escapism and survivalism are inevitable attributes of human beings, which are highlighted and given primary focus with respect to the dark and woeful circumstances created by the best-selling authors.!
!
The father and boy were in an apocalypse, not knowing if the next hour was to be
their last. He “slept little and he slept poorly” (McCarthy, 18). The father needed to know his son was safe. Though the most plausible cause of their death would be eventual
Labonno starvation, he could not help but assume that an abrupt calamity would take his son away from him. He stayed awake to escape the horror and diminish the possibility.
"What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return” (McCarthy, 130).
He states “You forget what you want to
remember and you remember what you want to forget” proving that he is trying to dwell in the past, when he actually lived, rather than simply surviving. The father would gladly switch places with Camille Preaker, the protagonist of “Sharp Objects”.!
!
Camille needed to get away from reality. For her, reality was far worse than her
darkest imaginations. Life itself was her worst nightmare. She “was desperate to remain asleep, but the day kept bobbing through” (Flyyn, 40). She too would gladly switch places with the father. She “drank more vodka” and wanted nothing “more than be unconscious again, … gone away” (Flynn, 41). When she goes to meet with her highschool friends, she realizes “how much” she “didn’t want to be there” (Flynn, 130). Had she been in an apocalypse, with absolutely no one to talk to, no reason to live and no practical hope for a future, would she feel the same? Probably. She would probably prefer living in a void rather than “A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated everyday” (Flynn, 74). She is a “cutter, you see. Also, a
slicer, a
carver, a jabber” (Flynn, 60). She explicitly states that “Instead I drink so I don 't think too much… most of the time I’m awake, I want to cut” (Flynn, 62-3) Escapism is therefore present in variant forms in both novels.!
!
We see characters in both pieces of fiction exposed to severe trauma and
dwelling in hostile environments, both literally and figuratively.
The conversation “If they find us they’ll kill us, wont they Papa. … Shh. Yes. Yes they will” between the father and
Labonno son provide readers with the essence of danger as well as the an illustration of the caring relationship the two share (McCarthy, 115). They had to encounter things such as
"A corpse in a doorway dried to leather" (McCarthy, 12) and what this only did was intensify their relationship further. The father "held the pistol at his waist and held the boy by the hand." (McCarthy, 131) depicting the war-like situation they were in. A warlike scenario is created in Preaker’s mother’s home, where it takes on a figurative as well as literal facets. However, the distress yields completely different outcomes than the one depicted in “The Road.”!
!
Flynn exhibits a chain reaction of violence, caught up in a vicious cycle of
infectious women. Camille’s mother, Adora, states explicitly that "You remind me of my mother, Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me. … I won’t love you… you were punishing me for being born.” (Flynn, 148-9). Instead of giving her child what she herself never got, she turns on the children and creates a vicious cycle
of alleged revenge. In the process, Camille’s step-sister Amma becomes a depraved monster and callous murderer. She has accepted the complex philosophy that
"Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them… Then you have the control" (Flynn, 182). At age thirteen, she is already following the principles of
“Machiavelli”, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is surely peculiar (Flynn, 183).
Camille remembers “trying out Dad once when” she “was little, and the shock on his
[Alan, her step-father] face was enough to scotch any further attempts…. Adora prefers” them “to feel like strangers” (Flynn, 76). Growing up with a mother who says “The only place you have left… Someday I’ll carve my name there” circling a spot that had no
Labonno scars, Camille gave in to alcoholism and celibacy, primarily from the damaged selfesteem. !
!
An essence of survivalism is present in both parents. Adora needs her
daughter(s) to need her whereas the father straightforwardly needs the child as an incentive to carry on. The father "knew only the child was his warrant" (McCarthy, 5). He could not bear the thought of his boy dying. He explicitly states that “If you [the boy] died" he "would want to die too" (McCarthy, 11). It is natural instinct for man to thrive for as long as he can bear, but this attribute of human beings in the father would have diminished had the child not been there to give him reason to keep putting up with the virulent situation. The extent of inter-dependence present, gives the father-son relationship an entirely separate dimension, deepening it to the core. He says "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” (McCarthy, 49).!
!
“Munchausen by Proxy” is the condition Adora suffers from where “the caregiver,
usually the mother, almost always the mother, makes her child ill to get attention for herself… you make your child sick to show what kind of a doting mommy you are" (Flynn, 228). She had suffered from insufficient care and attention from her own mother and therefore counted on her own offsprings to need her as means of being noticed. “Adora hated little girls who didn’t capitulate to her peculiar strain of mothering” (Flynn, 221). This feeling of being wanted and needed had not existed for
Adora and therefore, now she has to stand out by hook or by crook. She, much like the
Labonno father, needed to live, rather than simply exist. She tells Camille “when I had you inside of me, … I thought you’d save me. I thought you’d love me” (Flynn, 149). This expectation had turned things bitter for them as Adora explains in her personal memoir
“I’ve decided today to stop caring for Camille and focus on Marian. Camille has never become a good patient - being sick only makes her angry and spiteful. She doesn’t like me to touch her. …She has Joya’s spite. I hate her. Marian is such a doll when she’s ill, she dotes on me terribly and wants me with her all the time. I love wiping her tears away” (Flynn, 242). Upbringing and surrounding environments therefore play an influential role in the development of opinion. !
!
Contexts of war and hostility will prevail homogeneously, but with the exception
of heterogenous ramifications. The father and Preaker are both escapists in their own ways, torquing their way through the sable platform of insanity and the corresponding hallmarks of life. He and Preaker’s mother share a crucial characteristic; dependence on their kids for survival. However, the most striking divergence can be seen from the effects of misery; the Wind Gap mothers and daughters resent the other woefully whereas the father in “The Road” would do anything to keep his son alive. Opinions and attitude, as evidenced above, can be derived from personal experiences in extremely different ways, even if the underlying situations are somewhat similar. !
!
!
!
!
!
Labonno
Bibliography!
!
!
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Print.!
!
Flynn, Gillian. Sharp Objects: a novel. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006. Print.!
!
!
!
Onnito Labonno!
Mr. Brian Harriman!
ENG4U1-03!
11 April 2014!
Divergent Aftermaths of Unvaried State of Affairs!
!
According to the Dalai Lama “we can live without religion and meditation, but we
cannot survive without human affection.” This statement is most closely related to the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, where a father and son walk across a postapocalyptic Earth where the comfort of religion is absent, in search for a tomorrow that looks like yesterday rather than today. They are desolate for a new day and an array of a hope. So is Camille Preaker, the narrator and protagonist of “Sharp Objects”, a stomach-wrenching account of feminine malevolence, by Gillian Flynn. She is sent back to her hometown, the …show more content…
small town of Wind Gap, Missouri, where she must cover the story of the murder of two little girls whose teeth had been pulled out and nails had been painted, following their strangling. However, it goes beyond the investigation; it gets so personal that Camille goes back to the unstable state of mind with which she had to grow up. Though both novels are based on essentially the same fundamentals, contrasting repercussions can be observed. Escapism and survivalism are inevitable attributes of human beings, which are highlighted and given primary focus with respect to the dark and woeful circumstances created by the best-selling authors.!
!
The father and boy were in an apocalypse, not knowing if the next hour was to be
their last. He “slept little and he slept poorly” (McCarthy, 18). The father needed to know his son was safe. Though the most plausible cause of their death would be eventual
Labonno starvation, he could not help but assume that an abrupt calamity would take his son away from him. He stayed awake to escape the horror and diminish the possibility.
"What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return” (McCarthy, 130).
He states “You forget what you want to
remember and you remember what you want to forget” proving that he is trying to dwell in the past, when he actually lived, rather than simply surviving. The father would gladly switch places with Camille Preaker, the protagonist of “Sharp Objects”.!
!
Camille needed to get away from reality. For her, reality was far worse than her
darkest imaginations. Life itself was her worst nightmare. She “was desperate to remain asleep, but the day kept bobbing through” (Flyyn, 40). She too would gladly switch places with the father. She “drank more vodka” and wanted nothing “more than be unconscious again, … gone away” (Flynn, 41). When she goes to meet with her highschool friends, she realizes “how much” she “didn’t want to be there” (Flynn, 130). Had she been in an apocalypse, with absolutely no one to talk to, no reason to live and no practical hope for a future, would she feel the same? Probably. She would probably prefer living in a void rather than “A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated everyday” (Flynn, 74). She is a “cutter, you see. Also, a
slicer, a
carver, a jabber” (Flynn, 60). She explicitly states that “Instead I drink so I don 't think too much… most of the time I’m awake, I want to cut” (Flynn, 62-3) Escapism is therefore present in variant forms in both novels.!
!
We see characters in both pieces of fiction exposed to severe trauma and
dwelling in hostile environments, both literally and figuratively.
The conversation “If they find us they’ll kill us, wont they Papa. … Shh. Yes. Yes they will” between the father and
Labonno son provide readers with the essence of danger as well as the an illustration of the caring relationship the two share (McCarthy, 115). They had to encounter things such as
"A corpse in a doorway dried to leather" (McCarthy, 12) and what this only did was intensify their relationship further. The father "held the pistol at his waist and held the boy by the hand." (McCarthy, 131) depicting the war-like situation they were in. A warlike scenario is created in Preaker’s mother’s home, where it takes on a figurative as well as literal facets. However, the distress yields completely different outcomes than the one depicted in “The Road.”!
!
Flynn exhibits a chain reaction of violence, caught up in a vicious cycle of
infectious women. Camille’s mother, Adora, states explicitly that "You remind me of my mother, Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me. … I won’t love you… you were punishing me for being born.” (Flynn, 148-9). Instead of giving her child what she herself never got, she turns on the children and creates a vicious cycle
of alleged revenge. In the process, Camille’s step-sister Amma becomes a depraved monster and callous murderer. She has accepted the complex philosophy that
"Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them… Then you have the control" (Flynn, 182). At age thirteen, she is already following the principles of
“Machiavelli”, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is surely peculiar (Flynn, 183).
Camille remembers “trying out Dad once when” she “was little, and the shock on his
[Alan, her step-father] face was enough to scotch any further attempts…. Adora prefers” them “to feel like strangers” (Flynn, 76). Growing up with a mother who says “The only place you have left… Someday I’ll carve my name there” circling a spot that had no
Labonno scars, Camille gave in to alcoholism and celibacy, primarily from the damaged selfesteem. !
!
An essence of survivalism is present in both parents. Adora needs her
daughter(s) to need her whereas the father straightforwardly needs the child as an incentive to carry on. The father "knew only the child was his warrant" (McCarthy, 5). He could not bear the thought of his boy dying. He explicitly states that “If you [the boy] died" he "would want to die too" (McCarthy, 11). It is natural instinct for man to thrive for as long as he can bear, but this attribute of human beings in the father would have diminished had the child not been there to give him reason to keep putting up with the virulent situation. The extent of inter-dependence present, gives the father-son relationship an entirely separate dimension, deepening it to the core. He says "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” (McCarthy, 49).!
!
“Munchausen by Proxy” is the condition Adora suffers from where “the caregiver,
usually the mother, almost always the mother, makes her child ill to get attention for herself… you make your child sick to show what kind of a doting mommy you are" (Flynn, 228). She had suffered from insufficient care and attention from her own mother and therefore counted on her own offsprings to need her as means of being noticed. “Adora hated little girls who didn’t capitulate to her peculiar strain of mothering” (Flynn, 221). This feeling of being wanted and needed had not existed for
Adora and therefore, now she has to stand out by hook or by crook. She, much like the
Labonno father, needed to live, rather than simply exist. She tells Camille “when I had you inside of me, … I thought you’d save me. I thought you’d love me” (Flynn, 149). This expectation had turned things bitter for them as Adora explains in her personal memoir
“I’ve decided today to stop caring for Camille and focus on Marian. Camille has never become a good patient - being sick only makes her angry and spiteful. She doesn’t like me to touch her. …She has Joya’s spite. I hate her. Marian is such a doll when she’s ill, she dotes on me terribly and wants me with her all the time. I love wiping her tears away” (Flynn, 242). Upbringing and surrounding environments therefore play an influential role in the development of opinion. !
!
Contexts of war and hostility will prevail homogeneously, but with the exception
of heterogenous ramifications. The father and Preaker are both escapists in their own ways, torquing their way through the sable platform of insanity and the corresponding hallmarks of life. He and Preaker’s mother share a crucial characteristic; dependence on their kids for survival. However, the most striking divergence can be seen from the effects of misery; the Wind Gap mothers and daughters resent the other woefully whereas the father in “The Road” would do anything to keep his son alive. Opinions and attitude, as evidenced above, can be derived from personal experiences in extremely different ways, even if the underlying situations are somewhat similar. !
!
!
!
!
!
Labonno
Bibliography!
!
!
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Print.!
!
Flynn, Gillian. Sharp Objects: a novel. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006. Print.!
!
!
!