The Role Of Volcanoes In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road
Climate Pandemonium
In late 2003, San Diego County was hit by a catastrophic firestorm created by several different large fires that formed together raging throughout the southern part of the state. The fires were fueled by the hot air of the Santa Ana winds; generating a towering wall of flames. Consequently, when firestorms roll through our neighborhoods it destroys everything in its path. The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, shows the dramatic evidence of powerful forces at work with the eruption of volcanic ash, gas, and hot lava causing subsequent firestorms resulting in the depletion of all the fresh water essentially divesting the world; showing us that our very own species is absolutely not immune to this end of the world possibilities. …show more content…
Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the upper atmosphere. Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines (Pfeiffer). For Example, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near the Bay of Naples in Italy, is hundreds of thousands of years old and has erupted more than 50 times. It’s most famous eruption took place in the year 79 A.D., when the volcano buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of volcanic ash. The dust “poured across the land” like a flood, one witness wrote, and shrouded the city in “a darkness…like the black of closed and unlighted rooms” (Staff). To give an illustration of the conditions the survivors, a man and his young son, must face on a daily basis McCarty states, “nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before” (McCarthy, Page 3). This suggests that air is only getting heavier with pollutions, as each day passes, and the air quality is extremely
In late 2003, San Diego County was hit by a catastrophic firestorm created by several different large fires that formed together raging throughout the southern part of the state. The fires were fueled by the hot air of the Santa Ana winds; generating a towering wall of flames. Consequently, when firestorms roll through our neighborhoods it destroys everything in its path. The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, shows the dramatic evidence of powerful forces at work with the eruption of volcanic ash, gas, and hot lava causing subsequent firestorms resulting in the depletion of all the fresh water essentially divesting the world; showing us that our very own species is absolutely not immune to this end of the world possibilities. …show more content…
Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the upper atmosphere. Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines (Pfeiffer). For Example, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near the Bay of Naples in Italy, is hundreds of thousands of years old and has erupted more than 50 times. It’s most famous eruption took place in the year 79 A.D., when the volcano buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of volcanic ash. The dust “poured across the land” like a flood, one witness wrote, and shrouded the city in “a darkness…like the black of closed and unlighted rooms” (Staff). To give an illustration of the conditions the survivors, a man and his young son, must face on a daily basis McCarty states, “nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before” (McCarthy, Page 3). This suggests that air is only getting heavier with pollutions, as each day passes, and the air quality is extremely