Split And Fusion

Cormac Mc Carthy(1933-)is a well-known contemporary American writer,and his tenth novel The Road(2006)was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007,which has been researched extensively by scholars at home and abroad.It delineates an inexplicable catastrophe that befalls human society and puts it into deadly destruction in an instant,and the two survivors,a father and his son,have to move towards the south coast of the country,seeking possible chance to survive.What causes human destruction and what guarantees human survival are major concerns of this novel.The Road is a profound work of Mc Carthy reflecting on these problems,and he probes deeply into the relationship between science and humanity.This thesis takes C.P.Snow’s views on the “two cultures” and George Sarton’s New Humanism as the theoretical perspective,aiming to interpret the theme of the split and fusion of science and humanity in The Road.By closely reading the novel,it is pointed out that the serious split between science and humanity has led to the scenes of doomsday to be seen everywhere and the depravity of humans in the severe environment.It also shows Mc Carthy’s expectation of the bright human future to fuse science and humanity with ecology as the core.This thesis is divided into five parts including introduction and conclusion.The introduction briefly introduces Mc Carthy and The Road,then reviews the relative research on his major works at home and abroad,especially The Road,lastly emphatically introduces the core ideas about science and humanity of C.P.Snow and George Sarton,which serve as the theoretical basis of the thesis.The main body is divided into three chapters.Chapter one probes into the doomsday scenes under the split between science and humanity in The Road.The dilapidated material world and the destroyed nature demonstrate that the excessive and irrational development of science and technology has endangered the ecological environment on which human beings depend for survival.Chapter two focuses on the underlying depravity of humans in the severe environment caused by the split between science and humanity.The civilized society has faded away and replaced by an alienated human society,in which violent struggle for survival is fierce while cannibalism emerges and there is a serious spiritual and moral collapse of mankind.Chapter three mainly explores the fusion of science and humanity in The Road.Although the world has reduced into a wasteland,the significance that science brings to human beings and the inheritance of scientific rationality and scientific spirits can still be identified.In the meantime,the preciousness of humanity still exists.The son has the preservation of goodness and morality,while the father embodies the persistence of love and responsibility.The father has been teaching his son to carry the fire in the heart and go forward.The fire represents the hope and salvation of the human race.The Road presents the serious consequences of the split between science and humanity,aiming to express Mc Carthy’s good vision of the future for human beings with ecology as the core to fuse science and humanity.In the end,this thesis concludes that The Road reveals Mc Carthy’s reflection on the split between science and humanity in the way of writing a post-apocalyptic novel,which shows his expectation for the fusion of science and humanity.It has profound realistic significance for the modern world as scientific and technological civilization is developing at an excessively fast speed.