TEAR Essay

Select a primary character from your novel and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a character’s demise helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.

                Cormac McCarthy’s fictional novel “The Road” uses a delicate tone throughout the entire novel to show the bond between the father and the son before the father’s death.  While on the road the little boy keeps asking his father if they are going to die and how the father tries to keep the boys mind off of death. “You think we’re going to die, don’t you?” the quote shows how the father wants to see if his son trusts him when he says that they are not going to die but at the same time the father knows that they will not make it very far. The way that the son doubts his father’s word every time that the father says they won’t die even though it seems like the son knows that they will not make it very far without food. “How long do you think people can go without food?” This shows that the boy himself is well aware of what might happen to them if they don’t have food, it gives the reader a sense that the boy is more like the grown up then the father is showing that he is willing to grow up at a young age. Throughout the novel the father grows weaker which later comes to his death and leading to the boy leaving his father. “He cried for a longtime. I’ll talk to you every day, he whispered. And I won’t forget. No matter what. The he rose and turned and walked back out to the road.” The quote shows how the son is facing the fact of either staying with his father and dying or leaving with the man and surviving. This shows how the son and father had a very strong bond that the father wanted the son to leave and be able to live and see a better day then dying due to the fact that he is now weak.