The Crisis of Modern Society and the Value of Narratives for the Redemption-Cormac McCarthy's The Road

This article is to look at literature or narratives as a useful tool for recognizing the hidden crises of modern society by taking The Road as an example. Unlike Max Weber or Anthony Giddens who asserted that modern societys complexity itself would ensure the stability of the social system, Ulrich Beck once paradoxically predicted that the more complicated a society becomes, the more dangers it inevitably contains due to the increasing unpredictability in it. It is often said unpredictability and universality are the two most marked features of modern crises. Risk never sleeps in every modern society and the possibility that well pay for everything cant be extirpated after all. Here the merit of narratives as a powerful environmental metaphor for deterring the grim catastrophe gets highlighted. The role of narratives as an ethic parable can not be neglected at all. To convert someones stories into the stories of myself, the internalization through emotional synchronism ought to be an imperative. Cormac McCarthys The Road is characterized by ample allusions from various sources and concise literary style harboring its beauty at the same time. It can deeply engrave both the environmental message and family bond upon the reader by picturing a father and a son struggling to survive after the Apocalypse. The extremely minimal style can be seen as a representation of the devastated world as the setting of this novel in some way and the desert can become a foundation for the discovery of a new world as well as a deserta (absence) where all the material, spiritual, ethical values are dried up. Futhermore, the meaning of the place in this novel is seriously impaired. The self-destructive consumerism symbolized by shopping cart is distorted into horrible cannibalism in an extremity. The most fundamental truth dying father in this story strives to tell his son who carries the fire must be the possibility the continuance of life may bring someday and the courage to live. Like Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights, the story of a father and a son who ascertain each others existence by exchanging continual talks now gains much acceptance as more powerful environmental book ever written than any scientific and rational persuasion