Mid Sweden University

Cormac McCarthy's The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they seek to survive in what remains of the world after some unspecified cataclysmic event. There is almost nothing left: no society, no food, no animals, no hope. Many readers will feel that the question the novel poses is why anyone would wish to continue living under such circumstances. But although that question might be more urgent post-apocalypse, it is in fact one that can always be asked: what, if anything, makes human life valuable and worthwhile? The novel provides answers to these questions, but these answers are contradictory. The reader is left with a choice between powerful arguments for both faith and despair. In The Road, hope is associated with Christianity and hopelessness with an atheistic understanding of the world. Nonetheless, the novel makes it clear that faith is no easy option. This article will begin by discussing the importance of Christian imagery in the novel, focusing on the key symbolic dimensions of fire and darkness, before going on to show how both Christian and atheistic readings are not only made possible, but actively put forward by the text. It will be argued that the novel presents a powerful challenge to both Christian and atheistic views of the world, without ever actually rejecting either.

Shakespeare’s Henry V and Richard III both practise mendacity, but while Henry V celebrates Henry’s capacity for deceit, the king’s lies are condemned in Richard III. The plays show how similar patterns of behaviour in early modern England could be represented as either virtuous or evil by means of rhetoric, while the similar behaviour of the two kings suggests a broad awareness of the necessity of deceit as a political skill. These two plays also draw attention to their own rhetorical distortions in ways which have appeared troubling to many modern critics, but which exemplify humanist ideas about education through rhetorical ‘lies’.