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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Ashes:
Ash gets woven into the very fabric of the novel, where it blankets the surroundings and settles over acres of burnt forest. Ash is referenced so frequently in the novel that it becomes part of the reality the man and the boy must inhabit; it is as inevitable and ever-present as the hunger that drives them into deserted houses and broken gas stations. Ash even seeps into the water, which the man and son must filter before drinking. “Everything covered with ash,” the novel observes when the man briefly revisits his old childhood bedroom.
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Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—The Cart:
In its association with supermarkets or shopping malls, the cart makes for an ironic motif in The Road. Pushed along the road during the man and boy’s journey, it imports connotations of commercialism into a setting that couldn’t be further removed from either. The world around them is a wasteland, not a department store, and their use of the cart repurposes a symbol of abundance into a token of survival’s difficult terms. The cart holds all that the father-son pair owns, implicitly embodying the meagerness of their new lives. Much of the story involves a detailed accounting of just barest necessities—food, tarps, and toys that the man and boy place into their cart. During their stay in the underground bunker, they spend nearly a day restocking their cart.
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Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Food:
Food—or the lack thereof—drives the novel’s plot, and in doing so calls attention to the basic, material necessities of survival. Apart from their plans to head south, the man and boy must organize their journey by searches for their next meal. Food is simply a fundamental requirement of life, without which people “fall over dead.” In its total scarcity, food forces the man and boy to rummage through turd-filled bags of cornmeal and explains the novel’s obsessive catalogues of each meal. The man and boy narrowly escape starvation, thanks to a motley diet of morel mushrooms, pickled vegetables, and gambreled ham.
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Pages 1-29
Explanation and Analysis—Planets and Stars:
As a novel that captures a world turned upside down, The Road fittingly turns to cosmic motifs in search of spiritual answers. McCarthy describes the “starless dark,” and the dull track of the sun under the ashy haze. Its cosmic references frequently appeal to an idea of God, linking the astronomical to the religious as the world dissolves into chaos. As he lies awake one night, the man’s thoughts wander to the skies above:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.
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Pages 60-91
Explanation and Analysis—Maps:
The Road fashions the map as a kind of memory, elusive and delicate though it may be. The man’s “oilcompany roadmap” guides him and the boy through the web of roads in this post-apocalyptic landscape. The “states” depicted by the tattered map no longer exist, but the roads do. By helping them navigate one of the only remaining features of the former world, maps connect the pair to the past. But this memory itself is fragile: the roadmap is “sorted into leaves,” threatening to scatter itself if not for the crayon marks that indicate their “assembly.” The map is a tenuous bond that keeps the man and boy linked to history and to time.
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Pages 156-189
Explanation and Analysis—Planets and Stars:
As a novel that captures a world turned upside down, The Road fittingly turns to cosmic motifs in search of spiritual answers. McCarthy describes the “starless dark,” and the dull track of the sun under the ashy haze. Its cosmic references frequently appeal to an idea of God, linking the astronomical to the religious as the world dissolves into chaos. As he lies awake one night, the man’s thoughts wander to the skies above:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.
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