Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid Tale’ and Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ are both set in a dystopian future United States. The Handmaid Tale focuses on on a United States run by a conservative religious faction that has overthrown the government and the constitution, replacing it with a totalitarian christian theocracy known as the republic of Gilead. When the novel was written in 1985, Ronald Reagan had just won his second term in office and the growth of the religious right in America was nurturing a renewed fundamental Christian rhetoric into politics, often in a direct backlash to a second wave feminism. The backlash fuelled part of the gems that are in the novel, as well and the struggle of women for equality still rampant in society then and still now. In an 1998 interview Margret Atwood stated “this is a book about what happened when certain casually held attitudes about women are taken to the their logical conclusions”
Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ is set in a post apocalyptic world, location unnamed, though the reader can assume its the United States due to the characters referencing the “State Road”. McCarthy chooses not to use quotation marks with the dialogue and for some contractions, he leaves out apostrophes. McCarthy also portrays isolation just within his recurring descriptions of darkness, silence, death and nothingness. (all associated with the end of life) ‘There was nothing.’ – Page 8: this quote, as it is by itself in a sentence, emphasises the nothingness in the world they live in, and nothingness is reflective of isolation. McCarthy makes the audience feel, every human (except the protagonists) and every object, is just a shape and an empty shell. Stylistically, the writing is very fragmented and sparse from the novels beginning, which reflects the Barron and bleak landscape throughout which adds to the isolated feel of the main characters.The theme of isolation for the two main characters in The Road is pretty extreme. God has ostensibly forsook them, and they have consummately lost contact with other decent people. For The Man, isolation compounds into something resembling alienation. His recollection of an younger (and better) world makes the one he's in seem all the more desolate. However, McCarthy tempers the isolation of his novel with an endearing father-son relationship. For most of the novel, the two have each other – and that makes the isolation shared, at least. Isolation is portrayed with symbolic imagery, the most important being the Flare Pistol. The flare pistol ‘…broke somewhere out over the water in a clouded light and hung there’, so we can infer from the imagery that not only is there isolation from people; but also from God. From the dialogue in which The Boy questions whether God could see the flare, McCarthy makes it clear that he wants the audience to feel both tragedy (nothing is more sympathetic than a flare of hope being shot, when there isn’t even hope anyone will see it let alone help them) and Hope. ( Because the Boy has realised whom God is, even though he is born into a destroyed world) McCarthy makes the audience feel like even God has isolated the world, and left it to its own indecent devices.
Repetition has been used within ‘The Road’ to emphasise the darkness; like the protagonists are in a morbid circle and will only see darkness for the rest of the journey. McCarthy also uses the isolation of dialogue, especially in the word ‘Okay’ to emphasise the distance in which the protagonists are from being ‘Okay.’ The lack of conversation and punctuation shows abandonment from the lack of social conversation to have, and the word ‘Okay’ itself is representative that nothing is a certain Yes or No, as their life is unpredictable. McCarthy often alienates the Man as he has experienced a life before the post-apocalyptic one. He does this in flashbacks and versions of reality before, to show the isolation the man has from not only his previous life, but from the world and sometimes his Son. The fact that there are no chapters within the whole novel is purposely representative of the protagonists having no life planned out for them to record in chapters. Because the characters are so isolated, like the structure itself, it emphasises that there is literally no future planned out from God, and there is no hope either. Isolated to the extremes; even nature seems like it is waiting for the protagonists to give up and so is death itself. The lack of punctuation is actually powerful in emphasises sentences of isolation as they are usually short sentences that draw the reader in. ‘…he picked up one of the heavy leaves and crushed it in his hand to powder and let the powder sift through his fingers,’ – Page 209: emphasises how this is what God may have done, and how the world has now been crushed to isolated grains of ash and that is all that is left. The structure in general and of dialogue in particular, is unpredictable and unconnected just like the setting of the novel and the protagonists’ lives.
In comparison to this the One of the most consequential themes of The Handmaid's Tale is the presence and manipulation of potency and the way it engenders the sense of isolations for the characters. On the one hand, Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship, so power is imposed entirely from the top. There is no possibility of appeal, no method of licitly forfending oneself from the regime, and no hope that an outside power will intervene. One of the characteristics of this kind of puissance is that it is profoundly visible. Power imposed from one direction must always be exhibited. Unlike a democratic society, where the people consent to be governed and consequently have an interest in maintaining the structures of society, in Gilead, the regime must cover the streets and even individual homes with sentinels and guns
The similarities in the texts highlights the auditors opinions on the human race and the global structure that we are confined to. It evident from the novels that Cormac Mccarthy and Margaret Atwood highlights what they believes is humanities future. The representation of isolation is a fundamental part of the novels as it is not only a personfication of what the authors both believe but also the idea that they are trying to manifest in the readers mind.
Isolation and death are prominent themes in The Road. Most life has been wiped out by some unnamed apocalyptic event. Cities are ravaged; plant life is gone; animals have vanished. Civilisation has broken down, and chaos reigns in its place. No matter where the man and the boy go, houses have no roofs and are rotting from the rain and wind. The natural cycle of seasons has been ravaged: it seems to be perpetually winter. Even the stability of the earth is off-kilter. McCarthy is again highlighting a possible future for humanity; In a review written by Janet Maslin for the New York Times the representation of isolation is described as “pure misery” and “Much of its impact comes from the absolute lawlessness and the effect it has on the characters isolation”. As far as isolation goes, McCarthy takes the idea to its bitter conclusion. In fact, he doesn't just talk about isolation, he talks about possible obliteration. A few scattered apples versus none left in the entire world. What happens to the idea of apples at that point? This is what he means by the phrase "the last instance of a thing takes the class with it." As people dwindle and become isolated, there's the risk that no one will be left at all. Then, even the idea of humans will have vanished.
the theme of isolation in the handmaid tale is expressed obviously but instead through layers of political messages that invoke the isolation. While Atwood is widely viewed as a feminist inditer, The Handmaid's Tale presents an intricate view of feminism and the way it invokes sense of isolation for the characters. Atwood has expressed in interviews that the extreme nature of Gilead is a result of the conservative and feminist viewpoints simultaneously being espoused during the time that she released the novel. Moira is the novel's mouthpiece for many of these conceptions, and when Offred recollects the arguments they had, she is reiterating many of the conceptions that influenced the novel. The most consequential conception was Moira's credence that living solely with women would solve many of the quandaries women were currently facing. In many ways, the incipient gregarious order in Gilead is supposed to provide for a society of women. Most women have very little contact with men this in turn creates a isolated lifestyle for the female characters. Margret Atwood is referencing the second wave of feminism, 1985 was a time for bringing awareness to women rights. Therefore it can be suggested that the theme of isolations stems from Atwood’s own sense of isolation in her country and she uses her novel to express her beliefs freely.
The theme of isolation is extended through fear in ‘the road’ as Cormac McCarthy tries to explore the human side the follows the basic instinct of survival In the post apocalyptic time, when there is no food or resources left and everything has been looted and there are not many people alive, humans have taken up the barbaric means of survival, i.e, of killing each other and sometimes, eating each other as food. However, this cannibalism is only a speculation made by the protagonist. The fear of an attack kept them moving all the time, even when they had found a nice place with a lot of food; just because of the fear of being found. The father always kept a gun at his side and when he was not around, he asked his son to hold it. In the later part of the novel, the father is shot by a person in his leg due to the precise reason of fear and skepticism. Everyone is afraid of the other and hence, try to remain isolated from each other. The symbolism of grey colour and ash have worked as a reminder to the reader of the apocalypse which has left the land burning. With almost no resources available and people fighting over them, an indirect effort has been made to bring forth a possible situation that may arise due to a global war that we are always at the brink of due to unstable international politics. Cormac McCarthy, in his previous works, tried to bring forth a notion of alienation from his protagonist, where he is burdened with his past and crawls to his future. In The Road as well, the author has not left this tone of his and has, through the story of the man, put forth the very complexities that govern us and the very decisions we make in turn creating the sense of isolation not only physically but also mentally. The representation of isolation is important for the McCarthy to manipulate the audience into sympathy within the novel. Isolation constantly is repeated with tragedy, lack of hope and loneliness, which always receives a reaction from an audience. However, he counter-balances the sympathy from the audience (from isolation) with the paternal love relationship with the Man and the Son. This has a powerful reaction from the audience because we see the novel in the eyes of the characters, although the narrator is omniscient, therefore we empathise with their situation. This helps the audience to understand the deep idea of parental love still over-powering isolation, in a post-apocalyptic situation. The love relationship is also endearing and relatable to parents like McCarthy himself, who related the situation to his own son John and his goodness.