An Archetypal Analysis Of The Road

Cormac McCarthy (1933—) is one of America’s outstanding writers. The Road isthe tenth novel of McCarthy, which is regarded as one of McCarthy’s best novels andwas awarded the2007Pulitzer Prize. Since the publication of the novel, it has arousedwide concern in the academic circle at home and abroad. This novel has been analyzedfrom such perspectives as theology, ethic, and post-colonialism.This thesis aims at analyzing the archetypes including the archetypal narrative,images and themes in The Road to probe the significance of the novel by ArchetypalCriticism theories. The thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter One introduces McCarthy’s life and main works and The Road briefly. Itfocuses on theoretical foundation of archetypal criticism and the academic achievementsof The Road at home and abroad and elaborates the significant meaning of the study.Chapter Two explores the archetypal biblical narratives on the structure of The Road,including the U-shaped apocalyptic narrative and grail legend narrative. They play animportant role in making the fragmentary plots form an integrative structure.Chapter Three focuses on the archetypal biblical images in The Road whichincludes the images of beast, fire and fish. The image of beast represents the death ofGod and the evil in human beings hearts. The image of fire represents death and life. Theimage of fish represents the identification of God and the paradise world. Each of them isan independent unit, but they have their relevance with each other. These images are thededuction of human’s civilization from helplessness to hopefulness.Chapter Four discusses two typical themes, journey and goodness. As for thejourney, it is obvious that the South is not the Promised Land for the migrants, so thisjourney is failure in geography, but the main characters of the novel finish a journey ofspirit that is from Christian to saint. As for the goodness of humanity, the relentlessexposure of evil loses its dominating position; on the contrary, the goodness and hope inthe desperate world are the eternal themes of humanity.The last chapter is conclusion. The thesis focuses on the study of archetypal literarycriticism in The Road to have a better understanding of the novel. The archetypes playvital roles in the novel. The seemingly fragmentary and causal archetypes form astructural relevance, which determines the interior consistence of the theme of The Roadand the distinctive aesthetic values. No matter how difficult it is, people should keep optimistic and goodness of humanity, bravely face multifold difficulties all the time.