So, I have been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it has deep apocalyptic themes. By saying that, I just want to laugh at the statement because if one has read it, by saying it has "deep apocalyptic themes", it is the understatement of the century. It is one of the darkest, most sordid and dismal and bleak things I have ever read. Granted, I am not finished with it, and I don't know the outcome, but it cannot possibly end well, and what I have read so far has made me want to cry, to vomit, to throw the book down in disgust - but I just can't stop reading. Oh, and they're making a film out of it, by the way. Can't wait to go to that one! It makes me want to commit suicide just reading it; I don't know how I'll react when I actually watch it.
Anyway, the term "apocalypse" was mentioned in class made me think of this book. And the literal meaning of apocalypse is "the removal of the veil." Dr. Sexson mentioned that everything is indeed an illusion. The world that has ended in the apocalypse is the world that we thought was real, when in all actuality, the curtain has been drawn, and we see now what was underneath - what has always been there but we have failed to see. McCarthy's world is terrifying; it leaves his readers desperate to see this man and his child live to see the next day - a day with no sunlight, with ash falling from the sky, with no food, no shelter, no hope. Is this how he sees our world now? Is McCarthy capable of removing the veil to see all of the ugliness underneath the facade we have created that is our world? I think he views the human race as we are, not as what we perceive ourselves to be. It is all about illusion, isn't it? Without illusion, we would see what is really there, and no one wants that - no one wants to see the truth. It's all a front - it's just an illusion...
"By an apocalypse I mean primarily the imaginative conception of the whole of nature as the content of an infinite and external living body which, if not human, is closer to being human than to being inanimate." -Frye
Here is an excerpt from the book (READ IT - YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED):
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