Free The Road By Cormac Mccarthy Critical Thinking Sample

English

I have chosen the dream that takes place in the beginning of the novel. In this dream, the son takes his father into a cave. Both of them are surrounded by a bright light. They arrive at a corner in the cave which has a very old black lake. At the other side of the lake, they see a big monster with scary white eyes. The creature then feels the presence of the man and the boy and feels disturbed so it lures back into the dark and becomes sightless. The creature probably did not want to have an encounter with humans, therefore, he moves away from them in order to avoid any danger that can be caused by being around them. The memory I have selected is the one in which the father spends time with his uncle at the lake.
Holding onto the past will never help us move forward in life because what has been done is done and cannot be changed at any cost. If we think about the sad moments of our past, it will only upset us. But if we think about a happy moment in the past, it would make us happy. However, this is temporary because if we keep holding onto that moment, we would not move towards the future and we will become stagnant and would not be able to accept change. Therefore, to a certain level, it is okay to recollect past events.
The novel is set in a post- apocalyptic period probably in the United States of America because the father mentions walking on the “state roads”. The setting is totally ruined with revealing artefacts. There are old newspapers everywhere, things such as cold drink bottles covered with nothing but dust and there are even sights of corpses in their final positions.
Physical deterioration around us upsets us as it makes us think of the past and how beautiful the physical surrounding really was. It makes us realise how things change and sometimes, take a very wrong turn. And from the story, we also realise that when things turn the wrong way, it only leads to ruination and nothing else.