Writting comparison and contrast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Writting comparison and contrast - Essay Example 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