CQ's Boulevard of Broken Themes

Hello all! In today’s edition of CQ’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams we will discuss why Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road. As awful as this book seems, there is some legit reasoning behind a lot of the text. The motifs, the role God plays, and the gruesome detail, all add to the meaning of the work as a whole. Humanity, our benevolence towards one another of our species, has been tested multiple times throughout history. There have been times where we question our humanity, such as the forces migration of hundreds of Native Americans down the Trail of Tears, or the Holocaust, where Nazi Germany systematically exterminated thousands of Jews and other people considered to be “inferior.” The Road shows the dark side of humanity too, in the art of actually eating one another. As if we have traveled back in time to our caveman days, and become completely uncivilized. The father and son represent the good side of humanity. Their righteous morals stuck with them all throughout the book, and tha...

Hello friends and enemies, in tonight's edition of CQ's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I am going to share something with you. As horribly gruesome, wickedly twisted, and structurally confusing the book may seem, I believe The Road is a great choice for an AP Literature class. Before you all decide to to rage-quit on my blog, let me just say that this book has all the qualities that the typical AP or honors literature book would have. Motifs, symbolism, graphic imagery, figurative language, allusions, IT'S ALL THERE! Often I would think that the reader would get lost in the horror of this book to actually realize these significant literary devices McCarthy throws into the pages. I will now explain myself and show you that The Road is more than just asphalt and cannibals. It is common for well written novels to have underlying meanings that can be hard to pick up on. A motif, is an  a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition  The motif of...

Hey guys, it's me again. In this edition of CQ's Boulevard of Broken Dreams (where I keep you updated on Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road) we will take a look at McCarthy's writing style he uses throughout the novel. Throughout the first half of the novel, McCarthy constructs a pattern to his writing that is unique to anything I've ever read. There are two characters in the story: the boy and the man. Each of them has their own unique structure of writing that only applies to them. For example, the speaker only reveals the thoughts of the man: "He'd been visited in a dream by creatures of a kind he'd never seen before." (153) We can see the man's complex thoughts such as his dreams. It is common for McCarthy to list tasks being done by the man, with short sentences without the use of commas. "The ashes were cold. Some blackened pots stood about. He squatted on his heels and picked one up and smelled it and put it back. He stood and...

Hey guys, here I am checking in for the first of many times.  As many of you might remember, I'm reading the book that all of you were afraid of: The Road.  You very well might have thought "I'm never reading such a horrible sounding book!" That's going to be a real let down because thanks to me, all of you will have to experience this book too, through my over-detailed, word for word, almost sickening blogs. By my final blog, the very word 'Road' will give you shivers down your spine. This trigger will only make you more of a burden on society as you will be forced to shiver every time you use a GPS. Nothing will ever be the same. (prepare for a slight shift in tone) But there is a chance you might actually like what I post, and find yourself wanting to hear more. This book sounded a little freaky to me at first, and I was hesitant to pick up such a thriller. Yet, as I read through the first 74 pages of The Road I was pulled into the novel, drowning i...