1. An author study by Jess Hickok
Cormac McCarthy
An author study by Jess Hickok

3. “The Road”
“The Road” is a gripping novel by Cormac McCarthy that deals with a boy and his father struggling to stay alive in post-apocalyptic America.
The way McCarthy writes in this book is vivid and compelling but most of all McCarthy takes on a lot in this book and paints a much bigger picture than any of us expected.

5. “You forget what you want to remember and remember what you want to forget.”
McCarthy’s words have a much deeper meaning than what you see here.
In a world where you have almost nothing, it’s still hard to forget the hardships the father has faced and how he wants them to be gone.
The main one is that wife commits suicide leaving the boy and the father alone. As much as the father wants to forget her, he can’t because he loved her so much.

6. “There is no god and we are his prophets.”
Wow. Sometimes McCarthy’s words are just too much to digest at once.
In an empty world, the father believes it’s up to them to carry the fire.

7. “No Country For Old Men”
“No Country For Old Men” is a novel written by McCarthy that deals with a sociopathic serial killer and a westerner with luck that finds him a bag of money.
The book deals with violence and evil as do all of McCarthy’s books.

9. “Every step you take is forever. You can’t make it go away. None of it
This quote is from No Country For Old Men and basically means that no matter what you do, you can’t take it away. You can always take a step back but in the end you still took that step. It’s never going away.
McCarthy relates this to Llewellyn Moss, the westerner who finds a bag of money. He chooses to keep the money instead of leaving it where he finds it thus creating a huge dilemma for himself that actually ends up taking his life.

10. “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from”
Llewellyn Moss says this in the book in reference to that sometimes fate ends up giving you bad luck. But what if there was worse luck out there that your bad luck saved you from? That’s the way Llewellyn justifies it.

11. Additional Work
Kennedy reviewed one of McCarthy’s book “The Road” and perhaps said it best in that “The overarching theme in McCarthy’s work has been the face-off of good and evil with evil invariably triumphant through the bloodiest possible slaughter.”

12. McCarthy’s words live
The most noticeable thing about McCarthy’s novels is how he has a much deeper meaning in everything he says. It’s like a microscope. On the outside it might look simple but when looked closely it’s intricate and detailed.

13. Works Cited
Kennedy, William. "Left Behind." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Oct Web. 29 Apr
McCarthy, Cormac. No Country For Old Men. New York: Knopf, Print.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Print.