Writting comparison and contrast - Essay Example

"The Path to Rome" by Hillarie Belloc and The Road" by Cormac McCarthy: Comparison and Contrast. "The Path to Rome" by Belloc and "The Road" by McCarthy are written in two drastically different chronological milieu. Belloc's work came out in 1902, while McCarthy's work saw the light of day in 2006."The Path to Rome" is the product of robust optimism of early 1900s when the devastating magnitude of modern warfare had only a fictional existence. Belloc himself a war veteran had not experienced the nuclear holocaust. McCarthy is the representative of mankind who sits on a volcano refusing to believe that it might erupt anytime. A rough conservative estimate of the number of atomic weapons in the hands of members of the atomic club is anything around 10000. The pre-lapserian innocence is an affordable luxury for Belloc and his contemporaries, but to the generation of McCarthy there is no reason to be incurably optimistic; this is perhaps the most visible of contrasts between the two writers. The locale of the "The Path to Rome" is more or less homogenous topography of Europe that is connected by climate, by the predominant European ethnicity and the Christian religion in different form. In contrast, McCarthy's "The Road" has the whole world for its locale. The world of the "The Road" is varied in climate, barren by the work of man himself and had been home to divergent ethnicity and religious faith. Though both McCarthy and Belloc share the same Catholic heritage, the traces of the former's Catholic loyalty are hardly visible while that of the latter stands out as a champion of Catholicism. There is convergence in the attitudes of both writers that the ultimate solutions to the problems of the world would come through man's faith in God. The faith in God, which Mathew Arnold lamented in the "Dover Beach" as an eroding phenomenon, is perhaps the only sustaining power in a world is the key point iterated by Belloc and McCarthy. Though both works, by their title might evoke a feeling of a travelogue through the roads, Belloc's work is the recapture of a genuine journey that he made to Rome. " The Path to Rome" is the story of the pilgrimage made on foot to fulfill a vow he made "to see all Europe which the Christian faith has saved" In Christian tradition such pilgrimages were not adventure trips but exercises in faith. The path to Rome that too on foot, in a spirit of contemplation and prayer made Belloc see the Europe that Christian faith had made. There is a quality of innocence in his musings and the language is naturally poetic as he makes his ruminations of the places that he saw and the experiences that he relished. "Beneath the bridge there tumbled and swelled and ran fast a great confusion of yellow water: it was Tiber. Far on the right were white barracks of huge and hideous appearance; over these the Dome of St.Peter's rose and looked like something newly built. It was a delicate blue, but made a metallic contrast against the sky". In contrast to this McCarthy's "The Road" is not the literary production of a man of faith or that of the zealot of Catholicism. If the vignettes painted by Eliot in "Wasteland" shocked and disturbed the sensibilities, "The Road" of McCarthy gave the apocalyptic vision of the final days. While, Belloc glorified the achievements of Christendom in a narrow region of the world, McCarthy's arena is the whole would at the final days of man's existence. Belloc's colorful vision of the Europe as it unfolded before him made him poetic, McCarthy also makes brilliant poetry out of material that are grim, gruesome and bizarre. Though he has never celebrated the sunny side of life in his fiction, in "The Road", he crafts the delineation of hell on earth and by the use of his brilliant prose he makes the grim material models of enduring poetry. Unlike, the journey of Belloc through snow covered mountain passes, fringed by the vineyards of Italy, where hospitable rustic flock greeted him, gave him warmth of human company, freshly baked bread, the wine to cheer his soul and the spiritual experience of the daily celebration of the Eucharist in an abbey or church, McCarthy's stage for "The Road", is set after a nuclear explosion. The post-apocalyptic scenario that has reduced to rubble the whole edifice of human culture and achievement is the milieu for the nightmarish journey for a man who was transporting his son to safety. The total destruction of all vegetation and the unavaiblity of other forms of meat have made the universe the theater for the starving stragglers and cannibals. This definitely is not the pleasant journey of a European pilgrim to the Eternal City, Rome. If the old man and his son have not stepped down to cannibalism it is because they have still a streak of humanity left in them. The picture painted by McCarthy is depressing unlike the delineation of Europe by Belloc. Belloc's protestation about Europe is: "Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe". While the Europe of Belloc is a highly romanticized one springing from the smug satisfaction of a man who has not seen the two world wars, McCarthy oppressing and dispiriting world is the definitive vision of the word after the nuclear war. The present relentless gunshots heard in many parts of the world might any time trigger a military operation of global scale. Looking back on the Europe, Belloc's vision seems to be too nave and a product of rather myopic vision of the Europe. It is baffling that a writer of his magnitude could be so optimistic about Europe, while the First World War was already a stone's throw from the path to Rome. Belloc's "Europe of faith" can only elicit horror and derision from a modern reader. In contrast to the Europe of faith, McCarthy's world is the world where man has not only raised to ashes his works of a million years making, he has also retrogressed into a savage, clutching between his teeth human flesh to abate his hunger. It is amidst this background McCarthy delineates his image of a man of faith. Stealthily moving across this horrific landscape we see a man who has no name and his shrunken son. The old man and his son keep faith some how. The deep love of the father for the son has not degraded him to seek the easy path of catabolism to ensure the survival. While Belloc's work might help a European to bask in the past glory of Europe, McCarthy's work sends out a stiff warning to humanity. ======== Read More