This essay studies Cormac McCarthy´s The Road from a critical feminist perspective in order to suggest a new theoretical interpretation for this widely discussed novel. The essay analyses the way language in the novel reflects existing Western phallocentric thought, and its possible fall as the world in the novel has disappeared simultaneously giving emergence to a different kind of logos. By applying Luce Irigaray´s and Hélène Cixous´ critical feminist theories it can be argued that there is a development from a patriarchal Western logocentric tradition with its masculine world order and logos that slowly disappear towards another kind of order. There is an allusion to a new language. In the novel world has gone under due to some kind of ecological disaster, a couple, the father and the son are struggling through the devastated landscape. The mother in the story has committed suicide and even the language is disappearing and since all its referents are gone. Since the world and the language are gone together with them the Western logocentric tradition is abolished. The boy in the story has been born after the devastation, he is free from the old civilization and with the appearance of the new family and mother there is a possibility for renewal in “a world in it beginning” as the last poetic lines of the novel read.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-42147 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Hänninen, Helena |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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