Select a primary character from your novel and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a character’s demise helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.

    Cormac McCarthy’s fictional novel “The Road” uses a nostalgic tone at the end after the father dies to give a sense of hope to both the characters and the reader that that little boy will be ok. After the boy's father dies, a new man enters the novel. “He just stood in the road…the pistol in his hand.” He now carry’s the gun just as his father used to. It’s the only piece of him he has left, and he keeps it close to him. The novel's final paragraph begins in storytelling form: "Once there were . . .” Represents the man's thoughts about storytelling and about the death that was going to put an end to his story. This paragraph shows that while the old world remains a story, there is a future ; and the boy is a part of it.  “Is it real the fire? Where is it? ‘It’s inside of you. It was always there.’” This has to be the most inspirational set of lines in the story. Not only can you tell the father knows he is dying, he knows the boy will be ok. The boy continues to carry the fire of his father and a new fire that lives within him and that he will spread over time.

Ysatis Amour
7th Period