In The Road by Cormac McCarthy endless reports of building campfires, preparing food, ransacking desolate buildings, and fixing various objects set the tempo of the narrative. Yet for all its descriptions revolving around the tedious practicalities of securing subsistence in the post-apocalyptic world, The Road is perceptibly engaged with the symbolic and the mythic. It is quite reasonable since, as David Eder put it, “ mankind has invariably found it helpful to find a refuge in myths to relieve its perplexity and to mitigate its unhappiness ” (81). This paper is concerned with the myths of Prometheus, the frontier, and progress that permeate the tissue of McCarthy’s work. These myths are additionally approached from the ecocritical perspective. Fire occurs continuously in the novel both physically and metaphorically. It is depicted in a conflicting way: there is an ominous fire that has burned down the biosphere and polluted it with smoke and ash; but there is also a fire that brin...
recenzje książek, prywatne przemyślenia