All The Tropes

The Road: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

The Road (view source)

Revision as of 23:48, 10 February 2016

2,836 bytes removed ,  8 years ago
no edit summary
VisualWikitext
(tropelist)
No edit summary
Line 1:
{{work}}
[[File:The-road.jpg|thumb|230px]]
In 2006, prominent American novelist [[Cormac McCarthy]] published ''[[The Road]]'', a post-apocalyptic novel which garnered critical praise in America and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book is notable for a stark, minimalist style interspersed with occasional [[Purple Prose|purple metaphors]]. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing. ▼
 
Depending on whom you ask, ''The Road'' is either a melancholic but stirringly beautiful story about the goodness of humanity in a hopeless world, or a hellish nightmare so dark that no sane person would read it. [[Take a Third Option|Or, it's just boring, repetitive, unpleasant, pretentious, and grammatically nonsensical]]. And if you enjoy breathing, never point out that this book, despite its premise, is not to be found in the [[Sci Fi Ghetto|science fiction section of the bookstore]]: McCarthy fans will get upset at the implication that High Literature would be grouped with Genre Fiction, and Genre fans will be upset because The Road is pretty tame when compared to the Post-Apocalyptic genre, as a whole.▼
 
▲In 2006, prominent American novelist [[Cormac McCarthy]] published ''[['The Road]]''', a post-apocalyptic novel which garnered critical praise in America and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book is notable for a stark, minimalist style interspersed with occasional [[Purple Prose|purple metaphors]]. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing.
Set after an unspecified global disaster, ''[[The Road]]'' follows two survivors, a man and his young son, who journey south through the smoking ashes of the United States, toward what they hope is a less dangerous country somewhere near the East Coast. During their ordeal, the man and the boy have only the rags on their backs and a cart of scavenged food. And one another. As they travel, they (and the audience) bear witness to a dead world, where nothing moves but the ashes in the breeze, nothing grows, and the sun is blacked out by a layer of poisonous ash. The only living beings except for them are the starving bands of men that stalk the road. ▼
 
▲Set after an unspecified global disaster, ''[['The Road]]''' follows two survivors, a man and his young son, who journey south through the smoking ashes of the United States, toward what they hope is a less dangerous country somewhere near the East Coast. During their ordeal, the man and the boy have only the rags on their backs and a cart of scavenged food. And one another. As they travel, they (and the audience) bear witness to a dead world, where nothing moves but the ashes in the breeze, nothing grows, and the sun is blacked out by a layer of poisonous ash. The only living beings except for them are the starving bands of men that stalk the road.
Like most of McCarthy's books, it was optioned for a film, and [[The Film of the Book]] ''[[The Road]]'' was released on November 25, 2009. It was directed by John Hillcoat, the director of ''[[The Proposition]]'', and scored by [[Nick Cave]] and Warren Ellis (no, not ''that'' [[Warren Ellis]]), who had previously collaborated on the score for ''[[The Proposition]]''.
 
▲Depending on whom you ask, '''The Road''' is either a melancholic but stirringly beautiful story about the goodness of humanity in a hopeless world, or a hellish nightmare so dark that no sane person would read it. [[Take a Third Option|Or, it's just boring, repetitive, unpleasant, pretentious, and grammatically nonsensical]]. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing. And if you enjoy breathing, never point out that this book, despite its premise, is not to be found in the [[Sci Fi Ghetto|science fiction section of the bookstore]]: McCarthy fans will get upset at the implication that High Literature would be grouped with Genre Fiction, and Genre fans will be upset because The Road is pretty tame when compared to the Post-Apocalyptic genre, as a whole.
 
Like most of McCarthy's books, it was optioned for [[The Road (2009 film)|a film]], released on November 25, 2009.
 
----
{{tropelist}}
* [[After the End]]: One of the best and most harrowing post-apocalyptic novels ever written. One of the great things about this book is that it is one of the few such novels to actually have the stones to make it look like mankind is on its way out. Not just scraping by, but dying.
Line 42 ⟶ 44:
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: The father forces the thief who stole their gear to strip at gunpoint, then leaves him helpless beside the road. He will almost assuredly die painfully as a result. The boy lampshades this.
* [[Yank the Dog's Chain]]: See [[Hope Spot]], above. Also, {{spoiler|they eventually reach the coast. There's nothing for them there}}.
 
----
=== [[The Film of the Book]] also provides examples of: ===
 
* [[Actor Allusion]]: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook on [[Viggo Mortensen]]'s bookshelf may be reference to [[The Film of the Book]] ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.
* [[Arc Words]]: "Why are you following us?" or some variant thereof by various characters.
* [[Flash Back]]: How [[Charlize Theron]] is able to be in this movie.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: [[The Lord of the Rings|Aragorn fighting flesh-eaters in the woods? We've seen that before.]] And look, he's mugging [[The Wire|Omar Little!]]
* [[It's All About Me]]: The mother.
* [[Jerkass]]: Arguably, the mother.
* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: See also [[Flash Back]], above.
* [[Nick Cave]]: Composed the soundtrack.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Some see the mother as this, since she preferred to die rather than struggle in this ruined world.
* [[Ragnarok Proofing]]: [[Survivalist Stash|The only intact bunker]] the pair find also happens to have the only functioning lights they come across... for a few seconds.
** Since its about 10 years (more or less) [[After the End]], a lot of stuff has long since broken down. Though there's still plenty of ammo lying around...
*** [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Bullets last for a remarkably long time.]]
** The house in the flashbacks, if you notice closely, gradually decays as time passes, from more-or-less pristine to a dilapidated shell of its former self. It also helps that some form of EMP shut down just about everything electronic from day one.
* '''[[Real Is Brown]]''': Combined with relentless [[Scenery Gorn]] like woah. Much of the movie was filmed in an abandoned strip-mine, which is about as close as you can get to a [[Real Life]] post-apocalyptic wasteland.
* [[Screams Like a Little Girl]]: The boy
* [[Shout-Out]]: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook. Australia and New Zealand are set up as possible safe havens in numerous post-apocalyptic works, including ''On The Beach'' and ''The Chrysalids''. In addition, [[The Film of the Book]] ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' was filmed there. See also [[Actor Allusion]].
* [[Thousand-Yard Stare]]: Ye Gods.
* [[Throw the Dog a Bone]]: On top of {{spoiler|the boy finding a new family in the end like in the book, birds and animals can be heard during the credits, assuring us that the world isn't completely dead and life will go on.}}
** On top of that,{{spoiler|it was mentioned in the beginning of the movie that every animal died.But they find a beetle towards the end.Not to forget,the family in the end has a rather healthy dog.}}
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Lit Fic]]
[[Category:Films of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Small Genres and Unclassified Literature]]
[[Category:The Road]]
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1365175"