The Woman: 

Pg 17: The man doesn't want to remember the past because he is aware of the need of accepting the present, "Now call down your cold and be damned." could be the thoughts of his wife. There was a time of fondness and warmth in his relationship but he realises that that time is spent, now he must return to the cold dark and wake from his dream. The man realises the danger of dreams and optimism throughout the novel, "from daydreams on the road there is no escaping"  this can be read as meaning that once you start dreaming on the road you are in a sense trapped in a false reality, there is no place for hope in the new world.
McCarthy's use of colour in this section provides a counterpoint to the grey landscape of the road, he also highlights the temptation of dreams on the road through the colour and warmth the analepsis creates. The temptation of dreams is in parallel with the woman's ability to tempt the man within the flashback.

Pg 54: This scene provides information that the child was born after the end of the world, this could possibly dispel myths throughout the novel that the boy is in a sense the second coming of christ, why would christ come to earth after the end of the world? In this section the woman doesn't possess the same survival instinct as the man and questions the man pouring a bath. In this scene unlike the last it is the woman seeking comfort from the man, not the other way around. This illustrates the difference between the survivors and the people of the old world. 

Pg 56-57: The man doesn't want the boy to linger on past memories either, "I wish I was with my mom." Despite the fact she is often critically described in the man's memories this shows that she was still a loving figure for the boy and her the boy's need for his mother shows that there may have been a tenderness in the boy's life despite the fact he was born after the apocalypse. A key reason the man doesn't want the boy to grasp at the memories of his mother is because the man doesn't want the boy to commit suicide.

Pg 57-59: The woman wanted to distance herself from the man to make her subsequent death less painful for him. She also feels guilt for bringing a child into a dead world, this is the guilt that has caused her suicidal thoughts, she also feels guilt for the fact that the boy and the man aren't enough incentive for her to choose life. The woman however would not describe it as a choice between life and death but as a choice between death and life in death. McCarthy also uses the woman to create an allusion to Dawn of the Dead, "we're the walking dead in a horror film." This creates a postmodern element to the style of the novel. The woman describes death as a "lover" which indicates the temptation of death as a form of relief in this new world, The Road is set in a world in which dreams and death are both as tempting and potentially noxious as the man's wife.

Pg 60: "She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift." The coldness is proleptic of the coldness to come, after all this is a novel which is "cold and getting colder". This scene proves to be disturbing in its juxtaposition of new life with death. Almost as if the seasons themselves have merged to one cold month of despair.  The child's seemingly emotionless response of "she's gone isn't she?" both shows the lacking humanity in the child and also that the woman succeeded in making her death as painless as possible. The loss of a mother figure in the novel is highly symbolic, the world is now in a sense without a mother. With nothing to nurture or educate humanity undergoes a moral descent and nature dies. 

A Limited Palette: 

McCarthy utilises a limited palette of vocabulary throughout the majority of the novel, this acts as a counterpoint to the rich lyricism also prevalent in The Road and creates several effects. The occasional complex vocabulary can help characterise the man, little is known of his past so the rich vocabulary along with certain other clues (the bath and his knowledge of the brain) indicate that the man is an intelligent character. Arguably by keeping vocabulary simple, avoiding emotional language and reducing rhetoric to a minimum McCarthy makes the narrative itself all the more emotionally engaging. Too much emotional language can result in the reader losing immersion in the text, instead a limited vocabulary makes the novel seem more realistic and allows for a deeper reading experience. The lack of hyperbolic language could also be a result of the man's attempted conditioning of his boy.

Examples of rich lyricism: 

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery" - p 307 - key quote regardless

"Old dreams encroached upon the waking world." - p 299

"Perhaps in the world's destruction it will be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counter spectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence." p 293 - key quote regardless

"He thought the iron armatures had softened in the heat" p 291

"Then they set out upon the road again, slumped and cowled and shivering in their rags like mendicant friars sent forth to find their keep."  p 133

"A single bit of sediment coiling in the jar on some slow hydraulic axis." p 130

"The tank beneath was filled with charcoal, pieces burned out of whole sticks and limbs in carbon effigies of the trees themselves." p 129

"He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of pursuable entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have though. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever." p 93 key quote regardless

The above quote describes the opposite of genesis. In genesis God made the world through words, in The Road the names of things are disappearing until everything follows into oblivion- this is another reason why in many parts McCarthy uses a limited palette, he wants to show that the earth is dying and so is everything else with it.

"The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom." pg 15 key quote regardless.

Big Compare Question: How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?

Repetition is an important narrative device incorporated throughout the three texts, and is also used to a great extent to add and consolidate meaning within the texts.

F.Scott Fitzgerald uses repetition subtly in The Great Gatsby to link otherwise unrelated characters, events and settings and this can create an otherwise hidden meaning within the novel. The buchanan mansion is linked to the valley of ashes through repetition, “The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile,” links to “the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile,” through repetition of “quarter of a mile.” The seemingly factual phrase acts as a bond between the two settings and creates an underside to the buchanan mansion. This creates meaning by linking the mansion to ash, an important symbol throughout the novel. The ash in the valley of ashes is necessary for the expansion and growth of New York, it is the waste product of development and labour, the buchanan mansion through this link is therefore built upon this ash adding the meaning that the Buchanan’s house and wealth is built upon other peoples hard labour and work. It highlights the injustice in the American Dream, the only way to achieve the dream in The Great Gatsby is to use others, Fitzgerald also suggests that wealth as a whole in America is entirely dependant upon the labour of the working class, this subverts the traditional American belief that the USA is a country lacking an aristocracy.

Fitzgerald also includes heavy repetition throughout the novel of the colour gold/yellow, he describes the “pale gold odour” of flowers, the “toilet set of pure dull gold”, Gatsby’s car is a rich cream colour later described as yellow, Daisy is the “golden girl”, Myrtle Wilson’s house and many other occasions. The reason Fitzgerald repeats the colour so often is to subvert common association of gold with wealth and of wealth with greatness. Instead gold in The Great Gatsby represents amorality, corruption and death. Gatsby’s car results in Myrtle’s death, Gatsby himself attained his wealth through corruption and “the golden girl” shows signs of amorality throughout the novel. During the roaring twenties wealth was seen as something profoundly good and as something essential to the American Dream, Fitzgerald wants gold to have a different meaning in Gatsby to decouple wealth and greatness. Fitzgerald wrote in a 1931 essay “echoes of the jazz age” that the roaring twenties “was an age of miracles” but he wants the reader to be aware of the miracle creating power of gold. 

In The Great Gatsby the visual field is often described with noise and the auditory field is described with colour. The repetition of visual and auditory coupling functions in The Great Gatsby as thematic coupling. When Nick first sees Daisy and Jordan in the novel he describes the “whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.” This coupling of a visual image with noise helps to intensify a neutral image, this gives this specific section a great thematic weight and when joined with Tom’s “boom” and “the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor” it can be seen as an allegory for the entire novel. The repletion of visual with noise is specific to Nick and Gatsby, this repetition allows Fitzgerald to create tension by removing sound from description. One key moment of tension in the novel utilises this effect when “no telephone message arrived” the silence of the telephone creates a strictly visual scene it is because of this sudden lack of sound that the “rose becomes grotesque” the noise had been a part of the way Gatsby viewed the world, suddenly stripped away from him. Fitzgerald would not be able to create this level of meaning without repetition of the cross linking of the visual field with the auditory. 

Cormac McCarthy uses repetition of a limited vocabulary to create a sparse style that compliments the sparsity of the end of the world. Words like grey are often repeated throughout the novel creating a dark mood and displaying the menial lives that the man and boy live without leisure in the novel. This repetition is used to create meaning when McCarthy connects it to “the world shrinking down about a raw core of pursuable entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true.” This quote acts as a subversion of the book of genesis, the repetition of the words emphasises the undoing of the actions of God. This creates meaning in the text in the sense that the whole end of the world is the undoing of God’s creation of the world at the hands of man. A reading of the text in this way also gives evidence that the end of the world in The Road is man made, possibly through nuclear war or climate change.

A recurring theme throughout The Road is that of good vs. evil, this is shown by the repetition of the boy describing people as “good guys”  the repetition of this creates meaning in the novel by making the reader constantly question the meaning of goodness. Goodness in the world of The Road is far from what a 21st century audience perceives goodness to be, this also links to a key theme in The Road, whether or not goodness and morality is an inherent part of humanity or whether it is something that is taught.  The boy’s obsession and repetition goodness is surprising considering the man is deliberately trying to distance himself from the boy to make his inevitable death less of an ordeal to the boy. So goodness could be an intrinsic element of nature that the boy  naturally has, it is through the repetition of the good vs evil binary that McCarthy creates meaning.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge consistently uses repetition to add meaning to the ballad, Coleridge refers to the death of the albatross at the ends of parts: 1,2,3 and 5. This repetition acts as a constant reminder to the reader of the didactic purpose of the ballad, the Mariner is being punished for his transgression and for not respecting or loving nature. This enforcing of the didactic purpose makes the poem a more authentic lyrical epic ballad, an aspect of an epic ballad is its ability to be passed in the oral tradition, its message is supposed to be its defining element. By repeating references to the mariner’s transgression at the end of parts, Coleridge makes the ballad more authentic and therefore allows the reader to be more immersed and creates a sense of the story being “ancient” making its overall message more understandable.

Coleridge also uses repetition in part II, in stanza 2 of that part the shipmates view of the mariner’s transgression is “ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow!” this changes in 1 stanzas time “ ’twas right, said they, such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist.” Through this repetition Coleridge emphasises the fickle nature of the both the shipmates and of humanity itself, it is also proleptic of the judgement and punishment the sailors face for making “themselves accomplices in the crime”. This repetition allows Coleridge to communicate that it is often through humanity’s fickle nature that we condemn ourselves.

Coleridge also repeats a heavy amount of religious symbolism and imagery throughout the ballad. This can allow differing interpretations of the ballad, the first being that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a christian allegory, the other being that it is a pantheistic text. Evidence for the christian allegorical reading comes from repetition of christian imagery such as “christian soul” the importance of the “kirk” and the structure of the ballad being reminiscent of the stages of prayer. The mariner’s punishment and the idea of a bird sent to a ship also evoke biblical imagery. The pantheistic argument comes from the repetition of nature and the preternatural acting as God themselves, Coleridge suggests throughout that by praising nature mankind can receive the same relief as prayer to a theistic God. 

1B - How far do you agree that the Patriot and the Pied Piper are Heroes?

Both The Patriot and The Pied Piper contain characters that do not represent the conventional literary values of a “hero.” Despite their unconventional portrayal a close reading of the two dramatic monologues can reveal heroic actions in the face of corruption and betrayal.

The Pied Piper can be considered a hero because after ridding the town Hamelin of its “vermin” he his humiliated and betrayed by the corrupted corporation. A more political reading of the poem can allow the piper to be seen as the common man betrayed and abused by a corrupt authority, this can make his questionable actions seem less villainous and more as a justified course of revenge. The dramatic monologue can also be seen as an allegory of institutionalised racism, the corporation refuse to pay a man that wears “a gipsy coat of red and yellow” This could bring a further didactic purpose to the dramatic monologue, Browning could be warning that this level of discrimination could lead to revenge like the piper’s. Therefore the Piper is a hero in the sense that he stands in the face of adversity. 

Another heroic aspect to the Pied Piper is that he originally used his gift with good intent. He used his “secret charm” to remove the “vermin” from the people of Hamelin, his actions ended the villagers suffering and this demonstrates the Piper has some aspects of morals traditionally associated with heroism.

The Patriot is betrayed in a similar way to the Pied Piper, his “misdeeds” are hidden from the reader but he is implied to be a war criminal. The Patriot is however firm in his belief that whatever he did was done in the best interests of his country, hence the title “The Patriot”. The Patriot “leaped at the sun” for his country, this allusion to the story of Icarus is not a story of hubris, Browning uses this allusion to suggest that the patriot burnt his wings and fell not for his own pride but for his country. The Patriot is used by Browning to warn of the potential dangers of patriotism in the sense that it can lead people to commit atrocities, but the fact the Patriot committed his “misdeeds” in a selfless way does invoke pity and sympathy from the reader and selflessness can be considered an important aspect of heroism.

It is important to consider the subtitle in The Patriot, “AN OLD STORY” Browning suggests that characters like the Patriot always will be and always have been. This type of antihero is often misrepresented in literature and Browning seeks to present both the Patriot and the Pied Piper in a light that criticises but also respects that heroes do not need to conform to literary stereotypes, the Pied Piper and the Patriot are heroes in their own rights even if their heroism cannot be observed on a surface level. 

How Does McCarthy Tell the Story in The Road from page 1-28?

McCarthy starts the story in media res with the man checking his child's breathing, the morning after the man proceeds to check the surroundings and then the man and the boy enter the road. During the day's journey the man reflects on childhood memories, the man finds some food in a smokehouse and also gives the boy his first can of coca cola. The man and boy visit the house the man grew up in and the man contemplates whether or not he is capable of killing himself and the boy to end the suffering.

The Road is told from the narrative perspective of a detached third person narrator, this voice allows McCarthy to indulge in a more lyrical style and allows more descriptive language. The voice also creates a mythical tone, making the story appear timeless. This timelessness and mythological sense can help the novel as a whole to be read with a didactic purpose warning mankind of the dangers of modern American society. 

In this section of The Road McCarthy uses repetition in order to replicate the bleakness of the post apocalyptic world he has created, words that are foregrounded through this repetition include "gray" and "ash" this lack of colour in the description of the world The Road is set in is crucial to the storytelling in this part. It is important that readers begin to connote the lack of colour to the present day setting and warmth and colour in language with the old world. In the present setting of the road the man is "sat by a gray window in the gray light" whereas in his childhood memory he is surrounded by "evergreens" and "yellow leaves." This makes it clear to the reader that the story is set in a version of earth that has decayed and died. 

McCarthy provides The Road with an ambiguous setting in order to illustrate that although this novel is set in America, it could be set anywhere, this forces the reader to make bonds and attachments to characters in The Road as they know that it could be any one of them. The Road is set in what appears to be the wake of nuclear war, the earth is covered in ash and nearly all life has died. McCarthy is deliberately ambiguous about the time setting of the novel, the man is unsure of the month but "he thought the month was October" by not revealing the actual time setting McCarthy shows that this post nuclear world has existed for a relatively long period of time and that timekeeping is not important in a universe where mankind has no significance. This lack of significance is presumed to come from the godlessness of the world in which The Road is set. The man describes this new scorched earth as "barren, silent, godless." McCarthy uses setting to exemplify the theme of godlessness that continues throughout the novel.

McCarthy uses a skeletal form of language that manages to incorporate both very limited, minimalistic punctuation and an incredibly detailed poetic prose style. The minimalism used in his punctuation could represent the decay of societal structure or maybe even be critical of of the excesses present within modern society. McCarthy could be highlighting the absurdity of things that are not necessary, this links to the theme throughout the novel of man's significance in a godless universe.

McCarthy uses this opening section of The Road to give the reader an insight into the story of the rest of the novel, he describes the darkness "like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world." McCarthy uses the word  "glaucoma" to describe the dimming of the landscape, it could also be representative of the gradual loss of morals in humanity throughout the novel. Morality proves itself to be a vital element of the novel and questions whether or not morality is inherent in humanity (the boy appears at many times to have a higher moral understanding than the man.) The Road seems to question the morality of present day America by including things already prevalent in today's society, references to grocery carts and cans of coca cola could indicate that the moral decline described was itself inherent in mankind. The word choice also makes the reader aware of the gradual decline and depression of the plot.

A key event used in the storytelling of this episode is the sight of the first snowflake. This snowflake has a narrative purpose in the sense that it emphasises the reason the man and boy are moving south, because the world is "cold and getting colder." McCarthy foregrounds this moment when the boy "caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom." McCarthy suggests that christianity, arguably the foundation of American morality, has dissipated at the world's end. With this section McCarthy furthers the storytelling by ingraining in the reader the existential question at the core of the novel, why live in a dead world?