Study Questions

Study Questions, LONG by

Lesson One and Two

Much Ado Lesson 1 & 2 by

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

My re-write of what we did in class today..

The Road- The Names Within the Road Are Symbolic

Why did Cormac McCarthy write The Road in the style he did?

Cormac McCarthy

PERSONAL LIFE
Cormac McCarthy was born in Providence in 1933, Rhode Island and was one of six children within the family. McCarthy studied at the University of Tennessee from 1951-52 and 1957-59 but never graduated from his course.

After marrying a fellow student on his course Lee Holleman in 1961, he and she 'moved to a shack with no heat and running water in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains outside Knoxville' They had a son, Cullen, in 1962. This son would become influential throughout The Road.

INTERVIEWS WITH McCARTHY

In one of his few interviews with The New York Times,McCarthy reveals that he is 'not a fan of authors who do not deal with issues of life and death'. He continued to say 'To me that is not literature . A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange'.

In 2006, McCarthy made his first appearance on television with an interview with Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show.  During the interview he related several stories illustrating the degree of outright poverty he endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his now-eight-year-old son was the inspiration for The Road. McCarthy told Oprah that he prefers "simple declarative sentences" and that he uses capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but "never a semicolon." He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks."

FAMILY
Children

• Cullen McCarthy (Model for The Road)
• John Francis McCarthy

Marriages

• Lee Holleman (1961) Divorced
• Annie De Lisle (1967 Divorced 1981)
• Jennifer Winkley (2007 -

Novels

• The Orchard Keeper (1965)
• Outer Dark (1968)
• Child of God (1973)
• Suttree (1979)
• Blood Meridian of the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
• All the Pretty Horses (1992)
  1st Part in trilogy
• The Crossing (1994)
  2nd part in trilogy
• Cities of the Plain (1998)
  3rd part in trilogy
• No Country for Old Men (2005)
• The Road (2006)
• The Passenger (forthcoming)

Short Fiction

• Wake for Susan (1959)
• A Drowning Incident (1960)

Screen Plays

• The Gardener's Son (1976)
• The Counsellor (2013)

WHY WOULD THIS HELP ME?
Looking back on McCarthy's life, we can view which moments in his life helped to shape The Road; his son was the model for The Boy in The Road; the lack of punctuation comes from his son who stated there is 'no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks.'

• According to Mr Smith, the contextual evidence of McCarthy IS ASSESSED IN QUESTION 1B,

Part One --> Page 1 - 69

>> Establishment of setting.

>> Slight references to mother/family.

>> Gas station - try's to call home.

>> Road rat gets killed - flash back to wife at gun shot (when she leaves them).

Part Two --> Page 69 - 122

>> Running away from the cannibals.

>> Theatre (brief) light goes out while wife is pregnant. Turns quite dramatic - as he's running.

>> Straight to a calm scene abruptly.

>> Cannibals cellar.

>> Running away.

>> Scene ends outside the house on the floor.

>> The door of the house creeks (someones coming) - screams can be heard.

Part Three --> Page 122 - End

>> Starts in the dark outside the house, man wakes child - cuts to them walking down the road in darkness.

>> follows people, find baby on a spit 

>> the man gets shot with an arrow

>> the stuff gets stolen from the beech

>> the man dies

>> the boy goes with the other family

>> picturesque scene at the end

We have to have a fire

I'm scared

I know. But I'll just be a Little ways and ill be able to hear you so if you get scared you call me and I'll come right away.

I'm really scared

The sooner I go the sooner ill be back and we will have a fire and then you won't be scared anymore. Don't lie down. If you lie down you will fall asleep and then if I call you you won't answer and I won't be able to find you. Do you understand?

(Silence)

(Shakes head)

Okay. Okay. 

(The man stumbles up the bank and into the wood with his hands held out like a blind man  he starts kicking around putting them into a pile)

 

Voice and Point of View (I think)

Page 306:

‘Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing

In the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of

moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.’

I felt that this paragraph was a nice finish to a gruesome story It was a picturesque image of what they have longed for throughout the novel, as it is a slight referencing to what the man has been dreaming of, however he would never get to see his final dream. I feel that the paragraph is filmic; as you can imagine a film running as someone is narrating it. However, there are many different possibilities of who the narrator could be, as different people have had the chance of following them, such as the family, or the boy, etc. I think that the paragraph is very different to the rest of the novel, as it shows a proper image in full description of something beautiful. However, with the language used, I think that it is exactly the same as the rest of the novel as it still uses the repetition of ‘and’, also the lists, and the short sentences.

What does this extract do to me?

This extract confuses me, as the picturesque images are not what I would of expected at the end of the novel, as throughout the novel McCarthy portrays the image of desolation and death, but at the end there is a beautiful scene, I just don’t understand what McCarthy was thinking when he put this in the novel. However, I think that McCarthy purposely attempts to confuse the reader as he always wants them to link any mentioning of an apocalypse to the road, in a way which would impact them greatly, as they would just picture cannibals, death, and a grey landscape. However, I also think that this extract affected me in a way of Realisation, as McCarthy is very specific in making sure that the reader thinks that there is no beauty or life in the world anymore, but this paragraph helps to realise that there will always be a hint of beauty in the novel, no matter what.