Cormac McCarthy

The Road

Name:

English

The Road Unit Goals

1. You will know what the designated literary terms mean, and you will be able to spot them in a work on literature.

1. You will study character motivations and examine the reasons why characters make the choices that they do.

1. You will be familiar with the process of inferring, summarising and responding to a work of literature.

1. You will understand and interpret McCarthys treatment of traditional novel structure and language style.

How you will show that you have met the goals

41

1. Daily reading and annotation homework

1. Reading checks and quizzes

1. Participation in pairs, small groups or the whole class.

1. Creative writing

1. Persuasive Essay

Before we start. . .

What can you infer about this novel just by looking at the cover?

Symbolism

In this stark futuristic world, there are few possessions worth much importance. Determine the significance or symbolic meaning of the following items the boy and the man carry. Think about the places they travel as well.

Object

Significance/Symbolism

Place

Significance/Symbolism

The Journey Use the map below to visualize the man and the boys journey. Find details within the story that clue you in to where they are. Write those details below including page number. Plot their course.

Discussion

Pages 3 - 38

1. Cormac McCarthy immediately plunges the reader into a vaguely referenced time and place. Highlight and label details in the text which hint to specific clues about the novels setting. List page numbers in the box.

a. What can you understand about the man and boys situation from these details?

2. This novel also immediately immerses the reader into a very terrible predicament for its two chief characters. First highlight and label details in the text that hint at the serious and dangerous situation its characters are immersed. List page numbers in the box.

3. Briefly define the literary terms of imagery and tone. Next, highlight and label several aspects of McCarthys imagery that promote a tone or atmosphere of gloom. Be sure to also provide the page number location of those details in the box below.

Imagery:

Tone:

4. Finally, Cormac McCarthy uses a very unique writing style in The Road. Again, highlight & label instances within the text of his curious bare bones style. List page numbers in the box.

a. What impact does this deconstructed writing style have on the reader?

5. In your opinion, what occurred prior to the novels start that created the current setting and situation? Provide support reasoning with a properly formatted quote..

6. The man and the boy are always looking for things to aid in their survival. Describe the places the man and the boy go and what they find in those places. Write or draw what they find inside the image. Also, explain why or how the items they find help them.

7. On page 29, the man thinks the following, He said that everything depended on reaching the coast, yet waking in the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it. There was a good chance they would die in the mountains and that would be that, (McCarthy 29). In light of his thoughts on their survival, explain why he continues on with the boy. What drives them forward?

8. Re-read the flashback beginning at the bottom of page 32 to the top of page 33. What happened to humanity after the disaster?

9. On page 34 the boy gets mad at his father for not taking any hot cocoa for himself. The boy says, If you break little promises youll break big ones. Thats what you said. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain.

Making Inferences

Art is so much more interesting if everything isnt in the picture. And so it is with inferring.

~ Cris Tovani, author of I Read It But I Dont Get It

Background: An inference is a new idea that happens when a reader thinks about something that is probably true about a story. A reader can decide what is probably true because of what it says or shows in the book and what he or she already knows from his or her own life. Understand that many of the most intriguing questions posed by a book are not answered explicitly in the text, but are left to the reader's interpretation.

Example: When our protagonists encounter the burned man on the road, the son asks what happened to him. The father considers the storm that had just gone through the forest, and he infers that the man had been struck by lightning. This is likely, but could the man have also been burned by the forest fire? Yes. Like life , you are not always told explicit truths; more often, one must infer truths.

Directions: Read the following passages from our novel and make logical inferences based on what is present in the text, and perhaps what you have experienced in your life.

1. There were fires still burning high in the mountains and at night they could see the light from them deep orange in the sootfallHe woke toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road. Everything was alight. As if the lost sun were returning at last. The snow orange and quivering. A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights (31).

Which of the following inferences is the most probable cause of this forest fire?

A. A bloodcult knows they are in the forest and they are smoking the protagonists out of their hiding place.

B. Someones abandoned-but-still-burning campfire spread and started the forest fire.

C. Whatever had burned the world a decade ago flared up again, lighting this particular forest aflame.

D. The son is a mischievous little pyromaniac who just cant help himself when it comes to starting fires.

2. The truck had been there for years, the tires flat and crumpled under the rims. The front of the tractor was jammed against the railing of the bridge and the trailer had sheared forward off the top plate and jammed up against the back of the cab. The rear of the trailer had swung out and buckled the rail on the other side of the bridge and it hung several feet over the river gorge (44-45).

Infer what happened to the truck years ago. How did it end up like this?

3. He shielded the glare of it with his hand and when he did he could see almost to the rear of the box. Human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their clothes. The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out (47).

Infer what happened to these people. Why were they in the back of this semi-truck?

4. Clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror that he used to watch the road behind them (6). Infer what made the father think of clamping this mirror to the grocery cart.

5. In the livingroom the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile. Possible a cat. A glass tumbler by the door (26). [A tumbler is a drinking glass with a thick, flat bottom]

Infer what events led this animal to its present state. What happened to kitty?!

6. Already it was hard going and he stopped often to rest. Slogging to the edge of the road with his back to the child where he stood bent with his hands on his knees, coughing. He raised up and stood with weeping eyes. On the gray snow a fine mist of blood (30).

Infer what is happening to the fathers health. What is the most likely cause?

7. Later he woke in the dark and he thought that hed heard bulldrums beating somewhere in the low dark hills (17).

Make an inference about who is beating the drums in the forest.

Also, what can you infer about these peoples society?

8. He turned and swam out to the falls and let the water beat upon him. The boy was standing in the pool to his waist, holding his shoulders and hopping up and down. The man went back and got him. He held him and floated him about, the boy gasping and chopping at the water. Youre doing good, the man said. Youre doing good, (39).

What inference can you make about the boy based on this passage?

Pages 38-51

1. Why does the boy feel that the waterfall is a good place?

2. When the man and boy are scavenging through the tractor-trailer truck what do they discover? What could be an explanation for what the man sees in the trailer?

3. Re-read pages 49-50. Contrast the feelings the boy and the father have towards the burnt man. Are there any similarities between them?

Boy

Man

McCarthy uses very descriptive words to conjure an image in the mind of the reader. Draw one such picture in the space below. Include the page number(s) ___________________.

Highlight and label the imagery and literary devices used to form this picture.

The Road pages 38-79 Vocabulary and C&E

The following six words are used during the course of chapter one. For each, the page number is listed. Your job is to complete the chart without benefit of a dictionary.

Page

Vocabulary Term

Context Quote

Context code[footnoteRef:1] [1: (A) Antonym or Contrast Clue, (D) Definition or Example Clue, (L) Logic/ General Knowledge, (S) Synonym/ Restatement]

Definition

38

laved

59

rank

61

bracken

63

rachitic

66

gore

79

commune

Now, pretend you are going to use this chapter to teach the same lesson to a