A Biblical Mirror

Cormac McCarthy is considered as one of the four major contemporary American novelists by literary critic Harold Bloom.His works concentrate on American south and western frontier with the style of desolation,violence,bloodiness and horror.Besides writing about violence and horror,The Road,as his latest novel,discusses the warmth and love in the dark doomsday with the meaning of redemption.The novel depicts an unnamed father and the boy who begin their journey of survival after a terrible catastrophe.On the road they witness nightmarish slaughter and shocking violence and overcome coldness and hunger.However,they insist to be "good guys"and show courage and dignity,and cling to faith and hope on the verge of desperation by struggling in the hard times.The novel absorbs a great wealth of biblical elements.The thesis analyzes the biblical archetypes in The Road with Northrop Frye's theory of archetypal criticism.The Bible,as the source of the archetype in western literature and "synthesis" of later literary generations,includes such ideas as Christian eschatology and moral principles.The connection of the Bible and modern human society is of great significance for soul redemption.This thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter one illustrates themes of biblical archetypes such as Holy Grail,journey and love and redemption.Because of the world of wasteland,the father and boy start to search for the Holy Grail.In the journey,they achieve self-growth in physical and spiritual space.Finally,the love and redemption help to construct morality in a dehumanized world.Those themes mean the process from death to a new life,delivering hope for post-apocalyptic world.Chapter two explicates narrative structures of biblical archetypes including U-shaped narrative of the Bible and the Exodus narrative.The novel adopts this kind of U-shaped structure,that is,"paradise-sin-punishment-confession-redemption".The Exodus follows the structure of "exile-redemption".They help to make the fragmentary plots form an integrative structure,which is suggestive of the development of the story.Chapter three analyzes characters of biblical archetypes.After a detailed analysis of the father,the boy and Ely,including their personalities,behaviors and experiences,it can be concluded that Moses is the archetype of the father,Messiah is the boy,while Elijah is Ely.Those characters' experiences in the Bible enlighten human beings and are of great significance for the existential predicament in the modern society.Chapter four explores images of biblical archetypes which include beast,fire and fish.Those apocalyptic and demonic images represent hopefulness in the paradise and helplessness in the hell.The Road contains significant implications of the existential anxiety and predicament for the modern society,which is considered as the prophecy of doomsday and imagination of human society and future.McCarthy has a deep grasp of and concern about many aspects such as humanity and psychology,and expresses the hope for the harmony of human society.This thesis holds that by analyzing the biblical archetypes it can be drawn that human beings should insist on the moral standard of"good guys" and face the perils squarely in a dehumanized world.