A Study Of Cormac Mccarthy's The Road From The Perspective Of Bildungsroman

Cormac McCarthy is named as one of the four major American novelists of his time by literary critic Harold Bloom and an "outstanding inheritor of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner".His masterpieces include Blood Meridian(1985),No Country for Old Man(2005)and The Road(2006)and so on.By focusing on desolate frontier,dark doom days and violence,McCarthy ponders on life and death,virtue and vice,and further probes into the mystery and darkness of humanity.The Road,as McCarthy's latest novel,is deemed as a "cruel poetics" and"post-apocalyptic" novel,in which an unnamed father and his young son march towards south in desperate environment after an unspecified disaster.On their way,the father and son overcome hunger,coldness and chase and witness Satan-like vices in a Godless world.And their striving for survival presents the hope and warmth after the Doom's day and constructs standard of "good guys" in dehumanized world and achieves growth and transcendence in physical and spiritual space.This thesis endeavors to interpret The Road from the perspective of Bildungsroman.Based on domestic and overseas researches on The Road,the thesis explores elements of initiation entailed in The Road and illustrates that it is justifiable to interpret The Road from the perspective of Bildungsroman.The thesis interprets the struggling survival of the father and son after the Doom's Day from physical and spiritual dimensions.As each other's guide,they support each other and gain maturity while marching towards south.Confronting the formidable natural and living conditions,the father,as a survival guide,cherishes hope in the inner mind and guides the boy to gain survival skills and adapt himself to the post-disaster environment.Meanwhile,the son,as a spiritual guide,aids the father in constructing morality and reminding him of being a "good guy" in a dehumanized world.The growth of the father and son brings hope for post-apocalyptic world.In a broader context,initiation stories are closely connected with history and national spirit of a country.Disaster and Doom's Day presented in The Road contain symbolic meanings with post-9.11 context.The criterion of "good guys"in The Road not only symbolizes growth and transcendence of individual initiation but delivers hope for reconstructing post-disaster society.