The Road Literary Analysis
The Road Literary Analysis (Option 3)
Perseverance, courage, and hope are incredibly important to have. The characters in The Road and The Odyssey benefitted from these many times throughout their journeys. There is much to learn about perseverance, courage, and hope from the characters in The Road and The Odyssey as they can greatly help almost everybody throughout their life and the heros in these stories wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without them.
Perseverance is carrying on no matter what, even when things are at their worst. It is fighting to achieve your goals, even when they seem impossible. In The Road strong perseverance was the difference between living and dying at times. The man had especially strong perseverance. Throughout their journey, there were many times that the boy wanted to stop but the man knew that if they stopped they might get found. The man was becoming sicker and sicker throughout their journey but he literally never let them stop moving forward until he died. They faced many challenges on their way south but they always persevered and overcame them. One example was toward the end when they left the pistol somewhere along the beach. They knew that they would have to go through a lot to find it and then return to their campsite but they still did it. They knew that they needed it so they pushed through the darkness and the rain and eventually managed to get it back. Odysseus also showed strong perseverance in The Odyssey. He had to complete a ten year journey home after a ten year war. He had to overcome many challenges and he lost many crew members along the way but he still managed to stay strong and make it home. In both of these stories, the main characters probably would have ended up dead very quickly if they didn’t have such strong perseverance. In The Road this is because the world they live in is very harsh and hostile and will not have mercy on someone who needs to rest.
Hope is having faith in the darkest situations. It is always knowing that things may get better even when it seems like they can’t get any worse. In a way, perseverance and hope go hand in hand. Having strong perseverance can come from having hope in something. In The Road, hope probably played a bigger part in the man and the boy’s success than perseverance did. Some people consider the tone of The Road to be dark or depressing but others might consider this a hopeful story. Even though the world the man and the boy were living in was dark and ruined, they always kept going. They knew that if they could just make it to the ocean there would be something there that could help them and make life better than it currently was. During one of the man’s flashbacks, his wife has given up and is leaving the man and the boy alone. At this point, the man was clearly angry and depressed but there must have been some spark of hope inside of him that made him know that he could give himself and the boy a better life than his wife thought possible. If they didn’t have hope in what could be, there would be no point in continuing their journey. If they didn’t believe that things could change, they would simply be surviving pointlessly in a dark world. In The Odyssey, Odysseus’ hope did not stand out as much. Even so, it is clearly there. If he did not believe that he would make it home to his family again, he would have never been able to endure a ten year journey with everything going wrong that possibly could. In most cases, having hope is much more important than having strong perseverance.
Courage is bravery. It is the ability to do what frightens you. In both The Road and The Odyssey, courage is one of the easiest things to see in the main characters. Even though perseverance and hope are incredibly important, without courage it would be basically impossible to complete any goal in life. In The Road the man had to be courageous all of the time. It took a lot of bravery to open the door to the bunker that ended up providing them with food and shelter that kept them alive for days even after finding the basement full of people at the previous house they stopped at. Another good example of the man’s strong courage is toward the end when they tracked down the old man that stole their cart along with all of their possessions. They had no idea who they were going to find when they caught up to him but they had to take the chance to save themselves. In their case, it would take a great amount of courage to simply get up each morning and face the world another time. Odysseus also showed an incredible amount of courage. Around every corner he faced a new problem. He got stuck in many challenging situations but he always managed to come up with a plan that would get him out. Another example is when they first arrived on Circe’s island. When his crew members were turned into pigs the easy thing to do would be to get out of there right away to save himself. Instead, he went back and risked himself to save them. Having too much courage can be dangerous if you don’t know how to be smart with it. You need to be able to face your fears but you can’t start to get reckless with it.
Perseverance, hope and courage are all very important. All three of these things can help someone get through almost any situation. The man, the boy, and Odysseus all showed much perseverance, hope, and courage throughout their journeys. Their journeys probably wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. They are seen in most hero stories but are present in real life too.
The Road: Text Rendering
Passage from the text (single spaced):
“When they set out again he was very weak and for all his speeches he’d become more faint of heart than he had been in years. Filthy with diarrhea, leaning on the bar handle of the shopping cart. He looked at the boy out of his sunken haggard eyes. Some new distance between them. He could feel it. In two day’s time they came upon a country where firestorms had passed leaving mile on mile of burn. A cake of ash in the roadway inches deep and hard going with the cart. The blacktop underneath had buckled in the heat and then set back again. He leaned on the handle and looked down the long straight of way. The thin trees down. The waterways a gray sludge. A blackened jackstraw land.” (190)
Your text rendering (double-spaced):
This section of the book really stood out to me. In this section we really see just how bad things are going for the man and the boy. I think that this is very straight forward in showing us how bad things are going for them like no other single section has so far. One word that I think is very important to the passage and the story is “haggard”. I think that this could describe their whole situation. In this section, things seem to be going worse than ever and I think that this one word does a good job of describing the pain, suffering, fatigue, and illness that they are dealing with right now. One sentence that stands out from this passage is “When they set out again he was very weak and for all his speeches he’d become more faint of heart than he had been in years.” This shows the man feeling more tired and hopeless than he has ever before. This is important because the man is always trying to be at least somewhat positive and encourage the boy to keep going. If the man loses hope, then they may not be able to make it much farther. A phrase that I think is important is “The thin trees down. The waterways a gray sludge. A blackened jackstraw land.” This phrase really stood out to me because it describes the landscape of the world that they are living in. It points out a few specific things that are wrong with the landscape but more importantly, it talks about the earth’s burnt and blackened features that we keep hearing about and pretty much sums up what the world looks like. I think this passage could mark a change in the direction of their journey. Things are looking lower than ever before and their journey might end soon unless they can turn things around.
“When they set out again he was very weak and for all his speeches he’d become more faint of heart than he had been in years. Filthy with diarrhea, leaning on the bar handle of the shopping cart. He looked at the boy out of his sunken haggard eyes. Some new distance between them. He could feel it. In two day’s time they came upon a country where firestorms had passed leaving mile on mile of burn. A cake of ash in the roadway inches deep and hard going with the cart. The blacktop underneath had buckled in the heat and then set back again. He leaned on the handle and looked down the long straight of way. The thin trees down. The waterways a gray sludge. A blackened jackstraw land.” (190)
Your text rendering (double-spaced):
This section of the book really stood out to me. In this section we really see just how bad things are going for the man and the boy. I think that this is very straight forward in showing us how bad things are going for them like no other single section has so far. One word that I think is very important to the passage and the story is “haggard”. I think that this could describe their whole situation. In this section, things seem to be going worse than ever and I think that this one word does a good job of describing the pain, suffering, fatigue, and illness that they are dealing with right now. One sentence that stands out from this passage is “When they set out again he was very weak and for all his speeches he’d become more faint of heart than he had been in years.” This shows the man feeling more tired and hopeless than he has ever before. This is important because the man is always trying to be at least somewhat positive and encourage the boy to keep going. If the man loses hope, then they may not be able to make it much farther. A phrase that I think is important is “The thin trees down. The waterways a gray sludge. A blackened jackstraw land.” This phrase really stood out to me because it describes the landscape of the world that they are living in. It points out a few specific things that are wrong with the landscape but more importantly, it talks about the earth’s burnt and blackened features that we keep hearing about and pretty much sums up what the world looks like. I think this passage could mark a change in the direction of their journey. Things are looking lower than ever before and their journey might end soon unless they can turn things around.
The Odyssey and The Hero Cycle
This Prezi describes how some of the main events in the Odyssey fit into the hero cycle. Not all of the steps of the hero cycle were used, only the ones that clearly matched up with an event in the Odyssey. This presentation is a brief summary of Odysseus' journey home with the help of the hero cycle.