The Road Less Traveled

Alright, last blog about The Road, three on the same topic surprisingly enough...let's do this. So one of the most important elements in The Road that i noticed was the importance of the father's interaction with his son. The father grew up in a world before what is probably the apocalypse happened. His son though seemingly never knew of this world. Several times in the novel the father dreams of the world as it was before it ended. He remembers what it was like before it was all ashy and grey and tries to explain to his son what the world was like. Another example of this is when they stop at a supermarket and they father finds a Coca-Cola for his son and the son has never seen this or tasted it before. The father gives it to his son and lets him have it all because he had enough of it in the old world to know what it is like, but his son does not because he grew up in this harsh new world and has never seen a Coke before. This exchange shows how father is still trying to raise his son right in a world that is literally Hell on Earth.

The Road-Traveled Again

Okay, intro down now for the actual book. The Road centers around an unnamed father and his son in a post-apocalyptic world. It is never truly stated what happened to the world but it is described as being scorched and covered in ash so my guess is some kind of nuclear fallout. This would also help to explain why the days and nights are so bitterly cold, nuclear fallout bringing about nuclear winter. There are several reasons i like the story. The first of which is that it moves along quickly. Each new paragraph is basically a new part in the story so it is always moving forward. Another reason i really like story is because of how it paints the landscape that it is very vivid despite how dull it is. Your told how the world is dusty and covered in ash and the garages and homes that they come across are dilapidated but other than that it is all up to imagination.The last thing i like about the book is how it creates feelings of sadness in the reader. The simple conversations between the father and the son evoke basic feelings of sadness and this is something that a book does not commonly do.

The Road-an intro

So once again i started a new book. This time i went into a bit of obscurity from what i normally read.I decided to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Normally, i'm not too big a fan of McCarthy for one simple reason: his writing style. He uses a very odd writing style in that he does not use punctuation of any kind really. Meaning that he does not use comma's, quotation marks, or semi-colons/colons. This can lead to very confusing paragraphs and conversations including more than two people. My first experience with this odd writing style was with his novel, All the Pretty Horses. From what i got through it was a good book but the lack of punctuation is what led me to stop reading it. The Road is different though. His sentence structure is simple in the story and the lack of punctuation is not a main problem. As for conversations it is very simple to follow because the majority of them are between the father and his son and you can always tell which of the two is talking.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

What is the purpose of the fight scenes?

The purpose of the fight scenes is to do two things. The first is to add action to the movie so that the audiences attention can be held. The movie is rather dull and the outrageous fight scenes are the only thing capable of keeping the viewers attention span past three minutes. The second reason for the fight scenes is to relay emotion that otherwise couldn't be expressed. The old saying actions speak louder than words is of particular importance to the fight scenes. There are several scenes in the movie that show emotions such as anger, the courtyard fight, or complete complacency, the bar fight. For these two reasons it can be seen why fight scenes are critical to the movie.