Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

American novelist Cormac McCarthy is a contemporary writer with notable works like Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Man and in particular his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road which was published in 2006. The critical reception of The Road has often tended to identify the novel as a post-apocalyptic, namely, it depicts a man and a boy in a bleak, desperate, catastrophic atmosphere, in a land deprived of civilization and culture. In addition to building up effects of post-apocalyptic fiction, the novel also has some features that could be attributed to postmodernism. Postmodernism is a late twentieth century movement characterized by skepticism, paradox, paranoia, irony and a general suspicion of reason as post war period makes it hard to allow any single defining source for truth and reality in an already fallen world. Accordingly McCarthy portrays such a world that values like humanity, morality gain paradoxical dimensions. In a desolate world where it is hard to attribute meaning to life itself, the man and the boy’s strife to hold on to life through a metaphor of fire and belief in God equals to postmodernism’s critical usage of irony in some conventions. Looking through such a perspective, McCarthy’s work could be analyzed within the framework of the postmodern textual and stylistic features employed in the novel, exploring the ways in which the writer puts less reliance on traditional narrative form through narrative strategies such as fragmentation, mingling of the past and present by means of recollected memories and dreams and in doing so, raises questions on the issue of truth and existence in a dead world engulfed by constant state of paranoia and suspicion.

Uçar Sakine

Papers

‘The Man’ and ‘The Boy’ on the Road: A postmodern reading of The Road by Cormac Mccarty