The Post-Apocalyptic World

Commentary on Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

The Road is a novel written by American writer Cormac McCarthy, that describes the journey of an unnamed father and his son along a vacant road. It is set in a post apocalyptic world, where all civilization and landscape has been destroyed due to a unexplained cataclysm. However, the constant remainder between the father and the son that they are the ‘good guys’ that ‘carry the fire’ is a testament to McCarthy’s faith and hope in humanity among the present’s fears: terrorism, epidemia, genocide and weapons of mass destruction.

McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic world is vividly portrayed by his repetitive use of adjectives and nouns with very dull connotations in very simple sentences. Words such as dark, night, cold and grey, can be seen throughout the novel as a reminder to the readers to visualize a world practically dominated by these colours; no brightness, joy, warmth. But pure death. In the first few pages, McCarthy’s develops this dark atmosphere which he is able to portray until the end. His descriptions kept reminding me of Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’; work he finalized in 1937 as a response to the German bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica. As one can see from the picture, Picasso’s painting is dominated by monotonous colours; black, white, greyish tones, etc, as well as McCarthy’s description of the landscape. The dying people in Picasso’s canvas can be compared to the cannibals that McCarthy describes later on. This is the picture McCarthy painted on my mind. 

Guernica - Pablo Picasso 

As mentioned previously, the first few pages of the novel are key for McCarthy in conveying this deadly landscape to the reader; preparing them for the darkness ahead. His writing is quite simple; very short sentences, which although lack complexity are filled with powerful diction and imagery. The repetition of the words night, dark, grey and cold throughout the first paragraph is evident, and reinforces the idea of this dull, obscure and dead landscape and civilization. An example I particularly like is ‘Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world’. The fact that McCarthy has used the word beyond and more emphasizes the fact that the light and goodness the father and son might have is hopeless and futile when battleing against the landscape among them. The idea is further emphasized by the simile; the verb dimming describes the lack of clarity due to the darkness, thus the creating the idea that there is also no clarity to where the father and son are or are going, again describing the futility of their journey and maybe lives. In contrast, there is also a constant reference to light and life, conveying the idea that there is still seomthing good. Whenever the child or the father are described, their movements are accompanied by words such as ‘softly’ and ‘precious’, depicting the fragileness and importance of their lives. In the second paragraph, McCarthy writes the following: “ With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping”. What I found very interesting of this sentence was how McCarthy describes the light as gray, as if not even the light had life; it’s just gray, like everything else. 

McCarthy is able to illustrate such a dark and lifeless atmosphere with the repetitive use of certain words throughout the text, thus enabling the reader to visualize quickly the landscape he is trying to portray. And although the novel itself describes this post apocalyptic world, in which almost everything seems futile and hopeless, there still remains some faith in humanity. 

How Fiction Works

In literature, third person omniscience and first person narrator, are the most common and better options when it comes to narration, since they best resemble it, while others become closer to what we know as poetry or prose poetry. In ‘How Fiction Works’, James Wood describes the reliability of these two different types of narration, finally suggesting that first person narration is more reliable than third person omniscient narration.

Wood suggests that the unreliability of first-person narrators is actually quite reliable, setting as an example the respective narrators of Jane Eyre and The Remains of the Day. In both cases, there is a process of ‘authorial flagging’, where the novel teaches the reader how to read its narrator. However, first person narration is actually quite biased (thus unreliable). It only conveys one character’s point of view throughout the novel, which in some cases, although rare, can be very unreliable ‘genuinely mysterious bottomless characters’. For example the unknowable narrator of Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’, or the psychoanalysed life Zeno Cosini narrates. First person narration does not offer the reader the range of thought the third person narration does. With third person omniscient, the author enables the reader to understand several characters. Wood argues against the benefits of omniscient narration by suggesting that it is an ‘authorial style’ where the writer tries to almost impress his readers with ‘exquisite sentences and details, which are nothing less than God’s showy signatures on every page’.

Wood continues this chapter by commenting on ‘free indirect style’, term used to describe the omniscience of a narrator, and how the narrative ‘floats away from the novelist and takes on the properties of the cahracter, who now seems to own the words’. With Free Indirect Style, we the readers, are able to see and understand things through the character’s eyes and language, and at the same time that of the author’s.

In ‘The Road’, Cormac McCarthy uses free indirect speech, as well as an undefined third person omniscient narrator. The third person narration and the free indirect style applied in ‘The Road’ allows the creation of an even darker atmosphere from that already existent. The destruction and misery of the character’s lives can be experienced and seen by both of them, father and son,  also providing a detailed account of the setting from the author. This allows the reader to have a vast comprehension of the apocalyptic nature of the world created by McCarthy. 

The Beauty Myth

In ‘The Beauty Myth’, Naomi Wolf describes how nowadays women are specially tormented by personal and physical beauty, and the beauty ideals created by men as a way to expend women’s power, weakening them not only physically, but psychologically and emotionally. The Beauty Myth is social control, and a modern backlash against feminism, in which female beauty act as ‘political weapons against women’s advancement’. The ideas presented in Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’ can be closely related and compared to those exposed in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood.

Our present Beauty Myth is based completely on aesthetics and women’s beauty. A successful professional career, family, and emotional balance, are not enough compared to the power that beauty might bring. As Wolf states in this passage, “Thirty three thousand American women would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal”. Regardless how trivial these concerns might seem and how much they matter, they are destroying women’s freedom and control. Women are tormented by their physical appearance. Wolf describes beauty as a quality that “women must want to embody, and men must want women to embody”. Although women had gained what they were struggling for; legal and reproductive rights, higher education, profession and opportunities, and a social role, consumerism and advertisement made beauty a “currency system”, creating a certain ideal to it that women desire to achieve. During the past decade, eating disorders raised, cosmetic surgery increased and markets that were as influential as they used to, become extremely powerful, becoming able to manipulate their consumers. Once women were stronger materially and more powerful, society aimed to weaken them psychologically.

Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, describes a similar setting, in which women living in the totalitarian state of Gilead are controlled by men with the sole purpose of providing the ‘divine womb’. It is interesting to see how Naomi Wolf also describes this as once being part of the ‘Beauty Myth’; religions that dominated the Mediterranean from 25000 B.C.E to about 700 B.C.E, Goddesses such as Ishtar, Venus, Cybele and Isis would only serve for the ‘divine womb’.

When reading this passage, one can identify similar ideas from Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. As Naomi Wolf claims that in our society, men impose their own rules and ideals in order for them to take most of the power, leaving women as an inferior being. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the state of Gilead is doing exactly the same. In Gilead, men have created and imposed the different roles in society, the handmaids, Marthas, Wives, and Econowives, in order to break women apart. It is very explicit in ‘The Handmaids Tale’ that these social rules have torn women into very distinctive and opposing groups, where they hate each other mutually, thus resulting in them never getting together to form a greater power, but leaving them with a lack of not only power, but freedom. This manipulation of the psyche is key as a way to maintain and even increase power.

Another idea that struck me while reading ‘The Beauty Myth’ is how men try to undermine women’s power in society by creating harmless ways to express their creativity and passion. Take needlepoint and lace making as examples; these Victorian inventions were made in order to keep women occupied from doing anything else. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, it is this kind of activities that are allowed for women to perform, showing once again how men are constantly trying to take control of our society. 

Commentary on extract from The Handmaid's Tale

This extract from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ describes Offred’s memories and thoughts about love. It portrays her confusion and insecurity both towards love and life as a Handmaid through the use of structure, tone and diction. Structure and Tone depict her different attitudes towards love, while diction is specifically selected in order to create different tones throughout the extract thus emphasizing Offred’s confusion.

The structure of this extract is important for the understanding of Offred’s ambivalence towards love and life as a Handmaid. The principal characteristics of structure in this extract are the variety of sentence lengths and the manner in which the paragraphs are arranged. Margaret Atwood makes these differences so clear, enabling the readers to understand easily Offred’s confusion. Firstly, at the beginning of the extract, sentences are quite short, but as the reading continues they become longer and more intricate. Short sentences convey Offred’s fragmented ideas and her indecision, also creating a tone of denial. Offred starts the narration of this extract with short sentences; for example, “I don’t want to be telling this story. I don’t have to tell it” and “I could withdraw”. These sentences are very simple and short, as well as repetitive (applies only to the first example). It makes the reader feel as though the speaker were trying to make a point against an argument, thus also portraying her emotions, such as anger, and confusion. A transition is marked in the first half of the passage with the sentence “That will never do”. When looking at the passage aesthetically, the way this sentence is placed, isolated from the rest of the paragraphs, one can understand that Offred’s thoughts are taking another direction, and probably a change in tone of the passage as well.

The changes in tone throughout this extract also portray Offred’s change of thoughts. With tone, also comes the importance of diction; by choosing specific words, Atwood is able to create those contrasting tones. As mentioned previously, at the beginning of the extract, Atwood creates a tone of denial and almost desperation. The repetition of the words “I don’t have to” throughout the first sentences is key in conveying tone, since it shows that Offred doesn’t want to accept and is confused about whatever she is about to say, and feels that must not be obliged to do so. Another key word in creating tone at the beginning of the extract is “withdraw”, since it hints the idea that if she could, Offred would try to retreat from talking and communicating or maybe even escape, thus portraying her desperation in living the way she does.

However, as the passage continues, Atwood creates a melancholic and romantic tone with which the reader can realize that Offred, as well as many of the other Handmaids perhaps, long for loving a man again and being free. Diction is again very important in creating this, as well as imagery. Offred describes love as a “downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely”. This simile depicts very precisely how love is experienced by women; lovely and flying convey the romance and the passion that go with love, whereas dire, extreme and unlikely, portray the nerveracking feelings of love and its unfortunate events. The repetitive use of the word falling when refering to love also gives the reader the idea of the heavenly nature of love. Other key words that portray this tone are wonder, abstract and amazing, giving the idea that love is sublime. At this point, the structure of the passage has also changed. Sentences are longer in order to narrate the complexity of love. 

Nevertheless, the passage ends with a series of rhetorical questions, “Who know what they do, on their own with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? Who can tell what they really are?... What if he doesn’t love me?”. The fact that the extract ends with the speaker wondering about these ideas, allows the reader to finally see that the dominating feeling she has is confusion and instability.

The Struggle for Equality - Feminism

In ‘Blame it on Feminism’, Susan Faludi discusses how in their struggle for equality and freedom, women have actually found misery and unhapiness.

Our society is constantly reminding us that being a woman now, or over the past decades, is ‘good fortune’; we have opportunities women did not have 100 years ago.  We can study, we can work, join law firms, apply for credit at any bank. Any bank!. Nevertheless, there is the other side of the coin. Women have never been more miserable. Faludi says that “professional women are suffering an infertility epidemic, single women are grieving from a man shortage, and unwed women are hysterical and crumbling under a profound crisis of confidence”.  Women’s freedom and power, is the cause of their misery. “Women are enslaved by their own liberation”. So, why is only half of the truth portrayed? To some extent, that might be what men want to show, what they want our society and women to think. To believe women have made it, that we have won the ‘fight for equality’.

Susan Faludi’s ‘Blame it on Feminism’ conveys several ideas that can be closely linked to Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, dystopian novel that describes life in the fundamentalist Republic of Gilead, where women are valued only if their ovaries are viable. In Atwood’s novel, women are strictly monitored by men, and have no property of their own, since it was taken away from them.

My interpretation of the novel runs parallel with Faludi’s article, since she suggests that “women’s distress was an unfortunate consequence of feminism”.

Although in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ it is not quite explicit, one can understand that before the Republic of Gilead was created, women’s power and role in society was increasing. Take the main character, Offred, as an example. She had a job and a bank account that were both suddenly taken away from her. Women’s role in society was becoming so strong, that people began to feel the need of reducing it, or even going to the extreme and taking it all away. Thus the suffering of women.

Moreover, towards the end of article, Faludi describes a backlash on feminism during the 1980’s, period characterized for the government of American President Ronald Reagan. In her article, Faludi describes the existence of a younger ‘postfeminist generation’ that was against the women’s movement. By the 1980’s fundamentalist ideologies in American government led to a resistance to women’s rights, accepted politically and socially, finally passing on to ‘the popular culture. It is during this period of American history that the ‘backlash’ struck feminist ideals. This backlash is also portrayed in Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by the quick change in the mentality of the Aunts. These characters are supposed to train and monitor the Handmaid’s.

When comparing ‘Blame it on Feminism’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, one can see the background of the novel and how Margaret Atwood was criticizing American society when writing her novel. From my point of view, the ‘Postfeminist generation’ must have wanted to create a sort of dystopia for those women who were trying to achieve their equality of gender and freedom, since their ideals were inmediately argued and contradicted by the government. 

"Barbie, real life stories."

Both Gilman and Higginbotham’s texts discuss the modern portrayal of women and society. Barbies and Teen Mags, as Higginbotham calls them, create girls “fantasy life and extend their ambitions”, making them aspire to an ideal, which is somehow false.

Barbie dolls have formed part of girls childhood since the late 1950’s; a very westernized toy that ‘human beings actively try to mimic’, making it not only a children’s doll, but ‘an adult cult and an aesthetic obsession’. As Gilman says, Barbies portray this perfect woman with ‘white blond hair, burnt orange Malibu skin, unblinking turquoise eyes and hot pink convertibles; completely stupid, perfect, and of course false. I remember discussing with my parents about Barbies, and asking them why they did not buy me these popular and beautiful dolls; ‘I don’t like the image they show’, would say my dad. I thought it was crazy; Barbies were perfect and I envied my friends that would own tons of Barbies, hundreds of different outfits, the mansions, the convertibles, the jeeps, and of course the guy. I can now understand what my dad was trying to say, and I agree on what Gilman says; Barbies create a stereotype of the perfect woman, an impossible model for a girl to reach.

Because of this image girls no longer feel content with who they are or what they have. I quote Gilman here”if you didn’t look like a Barbie, you didn’t fit in. Your status was diminished. You were less beautiful, less valuable, less worthy”.

What about the other side of Barbie? Gilman gives a list of Barbies she would like to see in the market: Dinner Roll Barbie, Bisexual Barbie, Birkenstock Barbie, , Body Piercings Barbie, and so on and so on. Barbies that show what life really is about, that being different isn’t bad, but good, being smart, being voluptuous, dressing in your own style, not the pink girly way Barbie is, is something to be proud of and that makes each and anyone of us special. Not only that but that we can’t be perfect. A friend actually conveyed this idea through art, using a Barbie Doll. She called it ‘BARBIE, real life cases’. In her pictures she shows alcoholic, menopausic and single mom Barbies. 

It’s not only Barbies that portray a false perfect image to girls, but also Teen Magazines. These magazines also tend to create an ideal of a woman, where she gets the boys, is popular, thin and dresses well. Magazines like YM, Seventeen, Sassy, Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle in some way restrict girls to grow into their what THEY want, in order for them to sell. Thin girls that follow their restricted ‘seven day diets’, follow their advices after Love Crisis’, etc. What struck me the most is how these magazines contradict themselves. Higginbotham explains how teen magazines ‘tend to encourage girls to love their bodies, no matter what they look like’, however they only show ‘stick thin, flawless faced white models in expensive outfits’. Higginbotham’s title resumes everything ‘Teen Mags: How to get a guy, drop 20 pounds, and lose your self-esteem’. Because in this transformation and aspirations to be ‘perfect’, we lose our true identity, trying to become someone we are not but someone that society wants us to be. 

What happens if we don’t want to be like Barbie or the skinny girl in the front cover of Seventeen Magazine? These magazines should start featuring what’s really happening in the world, ‘show the whole spectrum’; not discriminate against any racial, physical or sexual differences, and admit that being who we are, we are just as perfect. No need to get the perfect guy, drop 20 pounds. Just be ourselves.

Articles:

‘Klaus barbie, and other dolls I’d like to see’ by Susan Jane Gilman

‘Teen Mags: How to get a guy, drop 20 pounds, and lose your self esteem’ by Anastasia Higginbotham

Picture:

Anais Freitas - 'Barbie, casos de la vida real'