Absurd Life Simulated Upon the Blank Canvas of the World: How Cormac McCarthy’s The Road alongside Baudrillard and Camus

William Dwyer

doi:10.7557/13.7852

Authors

William Dwyer Trondheim International School

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.7852

Keywords:

Cormac McCarthy, Jean Baudrillard, The Road, simulacra, Albert Camus

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) and Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), grapple with the choice of suicide versus struggle when meaning is exposed as socially fabricated. McCarthy declares, “there is no god and we are his prophets”, a dismal idea if one is searching for external meaning but conversely an empowering permission to create. McCarthy juxtaposes a father who chooses to produce absurd meaning with a mother who rationally commits suicide. Using Jean Baudrillard’s philosophical lens to read The Road, forces the reader to walk through a world of simulacra where floating signifiers are detached from meaning. Combining The Road, Simulacra and Simulation, and The Myth of Sisyphus, exposes that living is irrational because the simulation we have incarcerated ourselves within is absurd; however, McCarthy shows that in embracing the artistic struggle of creating a personal construct we feel most alive.

References

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