Compare the Devices Used to Depict the Futuristic Dystopias in the Road by Cormac Mccarthy and 1984 by George Orwell.
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Compare the devices used to depict the futuristic dystopias in The Road by Cormac McCarthy and 1984 by George Orwell.
In both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and 1984 by George Orwell, the writers use aspects of the societies they live (or lived) in to create a dystopian future - a place where the state of life is particularly bad, in which people are often forced to live in fear, as a result of deprivation or tyranny. These elements are used extensively in both novels. Orwell’s themes are based upon political injustice, and how man’s own power and authority has the possibility to grow so overwhelming that freedom could become non-existent. McCarthy, however, appears to direct his warning at mankind itself, using the future shown in The Road as a look at where carelessness towards the preservation of Earth could lead us. What both writers also show us is the way a typical man in such a situation could react, representing mankind’s determination to fight against the hardship of modern life and move forward. This is reflected through the central characters in each novel, which are used as devices to show the effect the state of the world has had on mankind.
Both authors present their protagonist as someone that is experiencing the difficulties of their dystopias first-hand, and in this sense we as the reader feel sorry for them because it is perhaps a situation that we could not imagine ourselves in because it is so far removed from what we know. This could be one of the reasons that both novels are written in the form of a third-person narrative, because the authors as humans in their contemporary day could not imagine themselves in such situations, so instead create a character that is unlike them in order to adapt the said character to the situation more freely.
While both characters are similar in that they struggle because of the hardships of the world that they live in, the authors use them to portray the novel’s setting in very different ways. While the...
In both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and 1984 by George Orwell, the writers use aspects of the societies they live (or lived) in to create a dystopian future - a place where the state of life is particularly bad, in which people are often forced to live in fear, as a result of deprivation or tyranny. These elements are used extensively in both novels. Orwell’s themes are based upon political injustice, and how man’s own power and authority has the possibility to grow so overwhelming that freedom could become non-existent. McCarthy, however, appears to direct his warning at mankind itself, using the future shown in The Road as a look at where carelessness towards the preservation of Earth could lead us. What both writers also show us is the way a typical man in such a situation could react, representing mankind’s determination to fight against the hardship of modern life and move forward. This is reflected through the central characters in each novel, which are used as devices to show the effect the state of the world has had on mankind.
Both authors present their protagonist as someone that is experiencing the difficulties of their dystopias first-hand, and in this sense we as the reader feel sorry for them because it is perhaps a situation that we could not imagine ourselves in because it is so far removed from what we know. This could be one of the reasons that both novels are written in the form of a third-person narrative, because the authors as humans in their contemporary day could not imagine themselves in such situations, so instead create a character that is unlike them in order to adapt the said character to the situation more freely.
While both characters are similar in that they struggle because of the hardships of the world that they live in, the authors use them to portray the novel’s setting in very different ways. While the...