| Cormac McCarthy(1933-),a promising candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature,is highly regarded as one of the greatest contemporary novelists in American literature.His latest novel,The Road,which published in 2006,helped him win the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.Corresponding to his own mobile experiences from Rhode Island to New Mexico,McCarthy not only shows a special interest in journey narrative,for all of his works seem to be attached to journey,but is skilled in making use of journey narrative to elevate the themes of his fiction to an in-depth level with his own innovation in Western tradition of journey narrative.The road is usually taken to be his fiction's "chronotope".All of McCarthy's works seem to be closely associated with journey,which is thematic focus,even story pattern.In The Road,the author depicts a post-apocalyptic world,where all highly developed technology and civilization disappear.Few survivors have to struggle on the verge of survival and suffer loss of identity and orientation.What is worse,some of them even lose their bottom line of morality and degenerate into ruthless cannibals.Stuck in the dire straits,the father decides to take a journey with his son to the South and seeks a touch of hope for survival.Born in the post-apocalyptic world,the boy grows up on the lengthy journey.He stands for a new man who redeems the world by light of goodness and spreads a spark of hope for the future on the road.Therefore,as regards the spirit,their journey should be regarded as a quest for redemption.As one of the classic patterns in literature,journey narrative has developed for centuries,whether it is in the ancient Holy Bible or the Homer Epic,presenting the significance of human beings' persistent pursuit.Within the framework of traditional journey narrative,McCarthy's latest novel,The Road,is infused with lots of new connotations in modern times.In the novel,McCarthy endows the classic journey narrative with new theme and meaning,which are suitable for the contemporary world and era.The analysis of the journey narrative in The Road not only offers a better understanding of McCarthy's deep concern about the future of human beings,but also is beneficial to discover the significance and truth for our living world.In this thesis,the part of introduction talks about McCarthy and his traveling complex briefly,then introduces researches about McCarthy at home and abroad.Besides,the framework of the current thesis is discussed.Chapter one traces the tradition of the journey narrative in Western literature and its development in American literature as well as its traditional structure.Meanwhile,the uncertainty in contemporary journey is also talked about in this chapter.Chapter two explores the quest and redemption in The Road,and tries to explore the major characters'quest for survival and their redemption in the post-apocalyptic world.Besides,the conflicts between goodness and evilness as well as the significance of the son as a new man are analyzed.Then Chapter three discusses McCarthy's innovation in journey narrative in The Road—postmodernist journey narrative in order to develop conventional pattern.In the end,the thesis concludes that McCarthy's taking of the journey narrative in The Road is to present his opinions that the journey of individual could reveal the relations between the individual and the world,the individual and nature as well as individual themselves.In a post-apocalyptic world,embarking on a journey is the only way to seek hope for survival and redemption of souls.Different destinies of people from all levels of society are interwoven on the road.The range of the road is expanded to the way of the whole human beings.It implies McCarthy's concern over the ultimate destiny of the humankind. |
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