#and then blame us despite ethical consumption in American being impossible

[adonis-koo]

Does Twitter ever get tired of being mad???

[sherristockman]

‘What the Health’ — Where This Vegan PR Film Went Wrong Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola According to the sugar industry, sugar is harmless and may even be an important part of a healthy diet. Industry recommendations suggest getting 25 percent of your daily calories from sugar. This, despite research1 showing people who get 25 percent or more of their calories from sugar triple their risk of death from heart disease compared to those who get 7 percent or less of their calories from the sweet stuff. The sugar industry promotes the myth that saturated fat is to blame for weight gain and ill health, not sugar, along with the thoroughly debunked energy balance theory. Fortunately, some great books have now been written exposing the history and extent of the cover-ups. Two examples are science journalist Gary Taubes’ book, “The Case Against Sugar,” and Marion Nestle’s “Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning).” Which brings us to the topic of today’s article: The documentary “What the Health,”2 which is currently one of the most viewed documentaries on Netflix. Sadly, this film nonchalantly ignores the accumulated evidence against sugar in a misguided effort to promote vegan ideology. What the Health? Funded through an Indiegogo campaign,3 this film is supposed to “expose collusion and corruption in government and big business” that is keeping us sick. In reality, it’s a call to veganism, but some of the arguments are so flawed, it might as well be considered a freebie to the sugar industry. While I agree in principle with recommendations to avoid all processed foods and meats raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), there are nuances with regard to meat consumption that I believe are vitally important if you’re interested in optimal health. According to the film, the focus on sugar as a contributor to obesity, diabetes and ill health has steered people away from the real culprits, which they claim are meat and animal fat. Again, while I often warn against excessive consumption of animal protein, important details are overlooked in this film. Worse, the suggestion that sugar isn’t a problem is counterproductive to the point of rendering the film useless and laughable in terms of helping people take control of their health and well-being. As far as I can tell, most if not all of the medical experts4,5,6,7,8,9 featured in the film are vegans and promote veganism to their patients, although they’re not introduced as such. The directors, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, and the executive producer Joaquin Phoenix are also vegan. As a result, the film presents a profoundly unbalanced view of what makes for an optimal diet. Some of the views presented are so demonstrably wrong, I found it difficult to watch. Sugar Versus Fat — The Devil’s in the Details For example, Dr. Neal Barnard, adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, claims that diabetes is not caused by a high-carb, high-sugar diet. In his view, diabetes is caused by fat buildup caused by a meat-based diet. To treat diabetes, Barnard recommends a low-fat vegetarian diet, free of any and all animal products, without any restrictions on carbohydrates.10 While a high-vegetable diet is certainly beneficial, the low-fat, unrestricted-carb recommendation is upside-down and backward. Time and again, low-carb, high-fat diets have proven superior for controlling insulin resistance, which is the hallmark of obesity and metabolic dysfunction. Yet the film completely ignores the low-carb approach. According to Barnard, the sugar in the cookie is what lures you in, but it’s the butter in the cookie that makes you fat. I believe it must be pointed out that unless you’re baking homemade cookies, cookies are not made with butter. Most cookies sold in grocery stores are made with processed vegetable oils, harmful fats that indeed damage your health and contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and chronic ill health. But to vilify ALL fats is a fatal error. Animal fats from organic, grass fed animals fall into the category of healthy fats, while processed vegetable oils are in the harmful category. Since most cookies are made with vegetable oil, as opposed to real butter, the fat in cookies is indeed part of the problem. But this harmful fat cannot be compared to saturated animal fat such as real butter from organic, grass fed animals, which has many important health benefits. You also cannot overlook the influence of the sugar in the cookie. When it comes to processed foods in general, the combination of sugar and harmful vegetable oils is a lethal combination. Why Does Sugar Get a Free Pass? Dr. Garth Davis, a weight loss surgeon and author of “Proteinaholic,”11 is another vegan doctor who ignores the overwhelming evidence against sugar. “Sugar is not great,” he says, but it “does not cause inflammation … The focus on sugar has taken the focus off meat, dairy [and] eggs …” He goes so far as to say, “carbs cannot make you fat, in and of themselves.” Sugar doesn’t cause inflammation? Carbs are incapable of making you fat? I’m at a loss to explain how any rational unbiased health professional could still hold, let alone promote these views unless they have some hidden agenda or ulterior motive. The medical literature is filled with evidence showing processed sugar is one of the most inflammatory foods there is.12 It’s not the only one, but to give it a free pass is profoundly ignorant considering the evidence. Excessive sugar clearly promotes insulin resistance, and insulin resistance is the fire that feeds chronic inflammation. Insulin resistance also promotes obesity, and fiber-free carbohydrates clearly are the primary culprit when it comes to packing on pounds, with processed fructose being readily converted to body fat. Is Eating Meat a Healthy Choice? An estimated 16 million Americans are vegans, which is typically considered a healthy and environmentally sound choice. However, there are drawbacks of strict veganism that need careful consideration. Mara Kahn’s book, “Vegan Betrayal: Love, Lies, and Hunger in a Plants-Only World,” reveals many oft-ignored facts about this strictly plant-based diet. Part of the confusion is that many vegans appear quite healthy in the earlier stages. This isn’t so surprising when you consider the fact that many switch from processed foods to a mostly raw plant-based diet. The influx of live foods will undoubtedly improve your health. In the long term, however, the absence of all animal-based foods can take a toll, as certain nutrients cannot be obtained from the plant kingdom. Carnosine, carnitine, taurine, vitamin B12 and long-chained omega-3 fats are just a few examples. As noted by Dr. Steven Gundry, author of “The Plant Paradox,” in which he explains the detrimental health impacts of plant-based lectins, his vegan patients tend to be some of the unhealthiest of all. The reason for this is because most vegans are not vegetable eaters but rather grain- and bean-eaters, and grains and beans are very high in inflammatory lectins — plant proteins that cause harm through molecular mimicry. Surprisingly, lectins such as wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), found in wheat and galactans, found in beans, even promote fat storage — despite their source being the plant kingdom. Even more surprising, considering the heart health claims allowed for whole wheat, WGA is one of the most efficient ways to induce heart disease in experimental animals.13 As chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine — a Seventh Day Adventist institution — Gundry also ate a vegetarian diet for about 15 years, and had “never been sicker” in his life. Despite running 30 miles a week and spending an hour in the gym each day, he was severely overweight, had high blood pressure and prediabetes. Does this mean it’s impossible to be healthy on a vegan diet? Absolutely not. But it does mean vegans need to be more mindful of how to avoid the complications associated with an all-plant diet, especially if it’s weighted toward grains and legumes loaded with autoimmune-stimulating lectins. Ethical Protein There’s evidence showing animal proteins contribute to aging, and vegan Seventh Day Adventists are among the longest living humans on the planet. However, if you’re going to live on plants alone, you need to figure out how you’re going to obtain animal-based nutrients. In my view, there’s strong support for including small amounts of healthy animal protein in your diet. Most Americans eat far more protein than required for optimal health, and this excess can trigger ill health by activating the mTOR pathway, which plays an important role in cancer and aging. Replacing carbs with protein is an unwise choice, as high-protein diets tend to have poor health outcomes in the long term. Net carbs need to be replaced with healthy fat, and protein needs to be restricted to what your body needs for growth and repair, which is actually far less than you might think. Estimates suggest you only need about one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Quality is also a determining factor when it comes to the benefits and drawbacks of animal protein. Meat, dairy and eggs from CAFOs are best avoided altogether. Organically-raised, pastured or grass fed animals, on the other hand, offer superior nutrition — and as just mentioned, you don’t need very much. Moreover, surveys show people convert to veganism primarily for ethical reasons, but veganism is not the only ethical diet out there. In fact, organic grass fed animals serve a very important role in regenerative agriculture. Such animals not only contribute to environmental regeneration and ecological balance, but they’re also a very ethical choice in terms of eating, as they’re not abused or maltreated. They live their life as nature intended, roaming freely, eating a species-appropriate diet that supports their health and well-being. And then, at the species-appropriate time, they are humanely slaughtered for food. What’s Wrong With CAFO Beef? There are many troubling practices in mainstream beef production, where animals are raised in CAFOs. For starters, feed additives have a number of problematic aspects, and can contaminate both the food and the environment. Antibiotics are routinely given to factory farmed animals to prevent disease and promote rapid growth, and this is a major driving factor behind antibiotic-resistant disease. Very rarely are antibiotics administered to organic grass fed animals. Moreover, there’s a great deal of research taking place all over the world to determine the best ways to regenerate the environment, and cattle are a key ingredient. According to Richard Teague, Ph.D., who’s been researching the impacts of cattle grazing for decades, careful management of the animals’ movements is essential. Densely congregated animals that are moved frequently is optimal. The goal is to mimic the environmental impact that would be had by herds of wild animals. When you do that, it has dramatically positive impacts for the soil health, the water, the production of the water, and even for climate change. Most people believe that grazing is a negative, but that’s not true. Grazing is actually essential to balanced ecosystem functioning. It stimulates plant growth, and helps press the seeds into the ground. The cattle also deposit urine and dung onto the land, which act as fertilizer. In this way, grazing herds accelerate the building of fertile topsoil. They also affect the water cycle because for every one percentage of organic matter in topsoil, 27,000 additional gallons of water is maintained in that water per acre. Researchers have even found that when you have an intact ecosystem, which includes grazing animals, the soil microbes process large amounts of methane. According to Nicolette Hahn Niman, an environmental lawyer, sustainable rancher and author, Australian researchers found the total methane emitted from cattle in a well-managed system was fully offset by the soil microbes. Is Eating Fish, Dairy and Eggs Safe and Healthy? While the film starts out with a valid premise — the idea that processed meats are bad for your health, as the film progresses, more and more foods are tossed into the proverbial dustbin, until the entire animal food spectrum is covered. According to this film, anything that comes from the animal kingdom promotes obesity, diabetes and chronic ill health. Not a single animal food gets a qualitative or quantitative pass. Personally, I believe most food groups have their problems these days. The key is to understand how quality and quantity influences your health. Clearly, most fish are contaminated with toxins these days, but if you choose wisely, the benefits of fish can still outweigh the hazards. To avoid environmental toxins, select wild-caught fish that are low on the food chain (farmed fish actually contain higher levels of toxins than most wild-caught fish). To get the most nutritional benefits, choose cold water, fatty fish such as sardines, anchovies and herring. These are high in long-chained omega-3 fats, which are actually structural elements that make up your cells. The same thing goes for dairy and eggs. Quality and quantity are key considerations. CAFO milk and eggs have few redeeming qualities and are best avoided. Organic, pastured and grass fed milk and eggs, on the other hand, have a number of benefits. Cholesterol, for example, far from being a villain, plays a key role in regulating protein pathways involved in cell signaling and is needed within your cell membranes. Your body is composed of trillions of cells that need to communicate with each other. Cholesterol is one of the molecules that allow these communications to take place. For example, cholesterol is the precursor to bile acids, so without sufficient amounts of cholesterol, your digestive system can be adversely affected. It also plays an essential role in your brain, which contains about 25 percent of the cholesterol in your body. It is critical for synapse formation, i.e., the connections between your neurons, which allow you to think, learn new things, and form memories. ‘What the Health’ Falls Short By Regurgitating Old Health Fallacies “What the Health” is a success in terms of promoting veganism. Sadly, it relies on outworn myths to deliver its hidden message and ulterior motivations. While the filmmakers and featured experts are all vegan, this is not expressed, leaving the average viewer to conclude that simply by following the trail of evidence, the filmmaker eventually reached the conclusion that a strict plant-based diet is the sanest, safest, healthiest alternative. In reality, the film was undoubtedly created with the intention to promote the vegan lifestyle right from the start. That’s fine, as this is the U.S. and there are still First Amendment freedom of speech privileges. What disturbs me is that they chose to promote the dangerous position that sugar and net carbs have no bearing on health, and that it’s all about animal foods — meats, saturated fats and cholesterol. In summary, the film presents a flat out wrong picture of what’s causing obesity, diabetes and related diseases. This is an absolute travesty, as it’s taken decades to turn the tide against these fallacies. Your body is designed to have the metabolic flexibility to use both fat and glucose for fuel — not just one or the other. The reason conventional dietary advice has failed so miserably is because eating a high-carb diet for a long period of time results in the loss of this metabolic flexibility, making you unable to effectively burn fat for fuel. None of this is addressed in this film, which instead reverts back to demonizing all dietary fats while giving sugar, of all things, a free pass. Additionally, the dangers of lectins from many “healthy” plants is completely ignored. Eat Your Veggies, But Beware of False Sugar Claims I'm not opposed to vegetarianism. I eat very small amounts of animal protein; mostly fish. Occasionally, I'll have some organic American grass fed certified meat. But meats are not a cornerstone staple in my diet, and I believe most people could benefit from lowering their meat consumption. I don’t believe it should be entirely excluded, however, because animal foods do contain very valuable nutrients your body needs for optimal health. Organic pastured eggs and raw butter are another source of incredibly healthy nutrients. If ethics and animal welfare are your concerns, I would encourage you to investigate and educate yourself on humanely-raised animal foods. Yes, the animal will die in the end, but there's a tremendous difference between the life of an animal raised in a CAFO and one raised on pasture that is allowed to live a full, healthy and stress-free life. There's also a big difference in the way they're slaughtered. At the end of the day, it is ultimately your responsibility to choose for yourself and your children between the life of an animal somewhere — even if only a few rodents caught in a harvester — or your own health. A balance must be struck between optimizing your health and causing the least amount of unnecessary suffering. Opportunities to Learn More If you’re interested in learning more about how to use a ketogenic (high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein) diet to optimize health and prevent disease, be sure to attend the ACIM conference in Orlando, Florida, November 2 through 4 at the wonderful Florida Conference and Hotel Center.

[fvisualvomits]

‘We need to consider seriously the fact that even the most dystopic visions of science fiction of the last half century cannot replicate events that have actually taken place, events that we have seen, recorded, and reproduced. We don't need to speculate. We know what the end of the world looks like. We know because we've seen it, and we've seen it because it's happened.’ – (James Berger) Use Berger’s statement as the starting point for an essay in which you discuss representations of apocalyptic reality in the twenty-first century in relation to one of the texts we have studied on this module. (68)

 Berger’s quote is frankly idealistic in analysing dystopian literature. It is not the replication but the representation of a degenerated life that strikes the reader towards negative emotions. Failing to do so, how can a text be ‘dystopic’?  Cormac McCarthy probes the limitations of the dystopian novel with his 2006 work The Road. He uses Foucault’s theory of biopolitics to explore the binaries of man vs. man, weighing the taxonomy of human life in segregated examples of ‘any common migratory killer’[1], the enemy, and ‘they’[2], our protagonists. This is of particular relevance to the present via the Black Lives Matter movement. He also explores man vs. nature in an attempt to explore catalysts of apocalypse and human responsibility. McCarthy contrasts the landscape of his futuristic novel to our own. The implied similarities strike us with fear of the unknown, as terrorism and nuclear warfare advance. Through ‘advancement’, the idea of Dante’s Inferno is introduced, wherein progression forward is actually a regression toward hell. This leads to permeating dystopian thought as the futility and danger of perceived development is unveiled. McCarthy inverts conventional tropes create a dystopian future that warns us towards protecting our present.

The Road is arguably one of the most important biopolitical novels of the twenty-first century in dissecting the man vs. man binary. I use biopolitics to mean ‘a politics… that takes hold of and controls the phenomena of life’[3], focusing on the branch of thanatopolitics[4]. Foucault argues that the mobilisation of the entire population ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity[5]’ became normalised in the 20th century. Instead of politics governing McCarthy’s survivors in a regulated society, a sheer lack of ethical morality allows for Homo sapiens critique. McCarthy’s mysterious apocalyptic event has led to transcendence beyond conceivable notions of barbarity, encompassing graphic cannibalism. A ‘phalanx’[6] of cannibals is eager to hunt fellow survivors, possessing ‘slaves in harness’ and ‘a supplementary consort of calamities’[7]. This imagery provides a colonial portrayal of the cannibal trope unsettled by the setting of the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence states ‘all men are created equal’ yet the ‘land of the free’ has regressed into hellish slavery and rape despite a futuristic, typically progressive, setting.  The modern post-colonial allusion sets the Western World apart from the Other, laws that lay illegality to such actions regulate the current West. McCarthy thus inverts such tropes to unsettle our preconceptions. Western consumerism has surpassed materialism to involve the consumption of fellow humanity. Foucault’s biopolitics is disregarded as ‘purification of the race, especially as it takes place in Nazism’[8] is ignored for mindless slaughter within the concordant race. McCarthy resultantly implies that fatidic events eradicate the possession/preservation of life binary. Foucault states ‘power took possession of life in the nineteenth century’[9] models of power play have been enacted since ancient scenarios such as war[10]. While prior biopolitical warfare was once enacted for land/slave conquests, twenty-first-century terrorism involves gratuitous murder. Fred Dallymayr suggests that:

“This is probably the most disturbing aspect of our age: not only the fact of widespread destruction, but the presence of geopolitical agents and agendas deliberately pursuing the aim of “nihilation ” or the destruction of life”[11]

Dallymayr’s quote captures the fragility of human life in a present day, possessing new methods of human extermination. At least six countries[12] are in possession of ‘the fact’ (nuclear weapons) capable of committing mass slaughter. The simultaneous use of said weapons would render the population of the earth greatly reduced, and the landscape drastically altered akin to McCarthy’s land. I will return to how McCarthy’s landscape bears signs of nuclear winter.

Expanding upon Dallymayr’s citation, we have entered an age wherein the murder of innocent civilians is encouraged by terrorist cells such as ISIS representing ‘geopolitical agents’. However, in McCarthy’s novel, the witnessed ‘nihilation’ reaches new bounds. We observe ‘a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit’[13]. This is a graphic display of abased biopolitics and a contemporary link can be drawn to the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite the conception of the movement in 2013, American history has witnessed a racial divide due to the victimized nature of black civilians. Similarly to the murder of the infant, the movement is based on a young boy, Treyvon Martin, who was contentiously murdered in cold blood. Instead of the preservation of the young, ensuring the continuation of civilisation, the young are being hunted towards extinction.  

The biopolitics in the case of the man/boy is in direct opposition to the majority. This binary involves the protective, nurturing nature of father over son. The man’s purpose in life is the preservation of his son’s existence, to the extent, ‘the boy was all that stood between him and death’[14], and that if his son perished he would ‘want to die too’[15]. This is the inversion of the ‘bad guys’[16], slaughtering all in their path. Instead of prioritising his own life, the man extenuates his role as ‘mother’ to the boy for her departure. This is exemplified by the experience with the ‘big man’[17], stating his consort are eating ‘whatever they can find’[18] before grabbing the boy. Not only does the man kill this predator, he must ‘wash a dead man’s brains out of his [the boy’s] hair. That is my job’[19]. The man is desperate to keep his son both physically and metaphorically ‘clean’, reinforced by his reminder that ‘the things you put into your head are there forever’[20]. He yearns for his son’s mind to remain unpolluted like the landscape, free of defeatist thought as he always takes the ‘positive’ route, ‘it’s all right’ and ‘it’s okay’[21]. Life preservation amongst our protagonists retains similarity as such to our present Western values; to the extent, the man must promise his son ‘we won’t hurt the dog’[22]. McCarthy uses his dystopian text to procure the empathy and instils fear via familiarity. As D.H Lawrence states, ‘society, now and forever must be ruled or governed’[23]. The importance of this biopolitically is apparent through the events of the novel, yet this point raises questions. Who should do the ruling? Who is responsible for the consequences?

Expanding Dallymer’s theory of worldwide ‘nihilation’, we can look at the damage being enacted upon our earth. McCarthy comments upon environmental degradation by focusing upon the scenery of forests and ocean landscapes. Humanity has stripped the land bare of all resources. There are only scenes such as the ‘remains of an orchard’[24] and ‘barren slopes’[25]. These adjectives connote the severity of which the land is devoid of life. The aforementioned ‘bad man’ who attempts to kidnap the son even has ‘a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an ill-formed notion of their appearance’[26]. The insinuation is that the birds have been gone for so long that even an animal so simply shaped cannot be properly replicated. Similarly, the bodies of water they encounter such as the dammed lake to the sea have ‘nothing’[27] left in terms of food.

                              Figure 1:  The Road (2009)                           Figure 2: Amazon Deforestation

 The Road[28] opens with imagery of scourged fields and deteriorated, dead trees in both the novel and the 2009 film adaptation. The similarity of this scene with the reality of a deforestation zone is striking and suggests this is an intentional reproduction. A vital scene appears as two trees fall in succession, ‘there was a sharp crack from somewhere… then another’[29]. These trees serve as a contemporary analogy symbolic for the twin towers as they collapse. Similarly to Ground Zero, all landscapes within the novel have been covered by ‘dust and ash everywhere’[30] in place of life. When they return to the man’s childhood home there are ‘the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile. Possibly a cat.’[31]. The nameless remains echo 9/11 in the impossibility of claiming identity via the destruction enacted upon the body. The man’s claim that ‘all the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later’[32] sounds prophetic in relation to this. Is McCarthy referencing mass deforestation, as ‘the planet has already lost eighty percent of its forest cover to deforestation’[33], or is he hinting at increased nuclear terrorism occurring, felling buildings like trees?

           McCarthy further hints at placing the blame for his dystopian territory upon the twenty-first century via his descriptions of the ‘alien sea’[34]. The sea has transformed, through spoliation into the Other and is thus beyond recognition. In our reality, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached white partially due to ‘global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions’[35]. The sea in our own time has thus adopted an alien-like appearance akin to McCarthy’s text. Thomas Hawkins’ painting of ‘The Great Sea-Dragons as They Lived’ in 1840 is of particular interest in comparison to The Road:

Figure 3: The Great Sea Monsters Book (Cover) – Thomas Hawkins[36]

The man speculates upon ‘great squid propelling themselves over the floor of the sea in cold darkness’[37], while Dave Egger’s The Circle mirrors the sentiment of what is hidden in the ‘darkness’:

‘They were hidden in the dark water, in their black parallel world, and knowing they were there, but not knowing where, or really anything else, felt, at that moment, strangely right.[38]

This quotation lies parallel to McCarthy’s, wherein the man retains hope for what lies beneath the surface, namely for ‘life in the deep’[39]. Egger’s and McCarthy’s quotes lie in continuance with the image depicted by Hawkins, of ‘Great Monsters’ lurking beneath the sea surface, behemoths carrying the eternal ‘fire’[40] of life.  His hope is spurred by his desperate nostalgia and his desire to give his son a somewhat palatable life.

           In the further juxtaposition of Eggers’ The Circle with McCarthy’s The Road, it is important to compare the linear nature of a ‘road’ with a ‘circle’ to Dante’s Inferno. Egger’s novel The Circle examines anti-utopian life through the notion of a disguised dystopia. The scenery is utopian, ‘wild with pacific colour’[41] in contrast with ‘dark beyond darkness’[42]. McCarthy’s world is consumed by ‘grey light’[43] while the landscape is the circle is ‘spotless and blue’[44]. These colour representations are that of heaven vs. hell, yet the worlds bear striking similarities. We thus introduce Dante’s Inferno and the layout of his perceived ‘lower hell’:

                                                              Figure 4: Dante’s illustration of Lower Hell in Inferno

Within both The Circle and The Road, it is completing ‘the circle/the road’ that leads to depravity. In The Circle, increased surveillance leads to ‘a world of perpetual light’[45]. This represents knowledge and illumination of secrecy, whereas our protagonists in The Road aim for the literal meaning of light, breaking past the Beckettian darkness of their surroundings. Foucault’s theory of the panoptical prison[46] is relevant as fear of being ‘watched’ conditions our characters. The completion of the inner circle is delving further into hell, whereas the dashed line can be compared to a ‘road’, also leading to apocalyptic doom. This extends the notion of ‘what lies below’ in metaphysical and mental terms, through ‘the man’s’ death and Mae’s totalitarian dictatorship.

Following Dante’s model, within The Road, our characters witness those ‘violent against their neighbours’ through the phalanx. Those ‘violent against self’ is experienced through the mother’s suicide to escape this damned life. Before descending further toward Geryon[47] and ‘The Great Barrier’, we enter the area reserved for those ‘violent against God, man, and nature’. Enter the scene in which the father and son discover the cannibal’s stores:

‘Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous. Jesus, he whispered’[48].

This passage successfully integrates all three of these aspects. The father takes Jesus’ name in vain whilst the cannibals defy human nature to consume their fellows. This represents both a moral and a physical descent as the father passes down ‘[49]rough wooden steps’ to reach these wretched souls. Through such depravity, the dystopian thought is inevitable, and no one is safe from despair. The repeated connotation of ‘blackened’ recalls the aforementioned baby, and hints further at the issue of Black Lives Matter that has set a ‘mood’ for our generation.

           The pessimism infiltrating The Road is not dissimilar from the twenty-first-century mentality. The wife’s lamentation that ‘they are going to rape us and kill us and eat us’[50] is not foreign in our times. Women walk alone at night similar to our protagonists in the fear of being watched hence a large resurgence in feminist thought. The Black Lives Matter movement is necessary due to the number of innocent people who are being killed by police brutality. While we have not reached the stage where they physically ‘eat us’, the mental panic gnaws at our brains. The world stands as a conglomerate of uncertainties and fears, especially for generation X, as a result. It is estimated that ‘350 million people of all ages’[51] suffer from depression and that ’10 times more people suffer from major depression now than in 1945’[52]. While reasons for this are varied, the reality is impossible to avoid – we are experiencing a ‘mental’ apocalypse. The man struggles with his reality, especially as their bullet supply depletes. At the start of the novel, he questions himself: ‘Can you do it? When the time comes? Can you?[53]. This is a question of life or death – in a perilous scenario, is he going to be capable of murdering his son as an act of mercy? Moreover, what matter is the concept of time when death is inevitable? As Berger states, ‘apocalypse is our history; what difference does a change in the calendar make?’[54]. After all, they will die ‘sometime’, even if it is ‘not now’[55].  Death is not apocalyptic but realistic.

To conclude, I reference a quote by Orwell:

“All of the things you’ve at the back of your mind, the things you’re terrified of, the things that you tell yourself are just a nightmare or only happen in foreign countries… It’s all going to happen.’[56]

Orwell’s quote covers the content of this essay in a prophetic manner. Apocalyptic thought is increasing and the introduction of post 9/11 novels have only set the mood further. The ever-approaching threat of terrorism is not inherent within the human condition, but a primary concern of our century. ‘Abandon all reason, avoid all eye contact, do not react’[57] croons Thom Yorke. Foucault’s panopticon is still enacted today as we shadow our protagonists of The Road, avoiding the gaze of those around us to preserve our own discourses. However, it is impossible to not ‘react’, subjecting to the authority of those who govern our bodies and our planet. This is what gives McCarthy’s text such poignancy. He purposefully keeps the limitations of his landscape vague and we are left pondering the purgatorial event. Has devastation been caused by man, or nature, a nuclear winter or the eruption of Yellowstone Super Volcano?[58] ‘A long shear of light and a series of low concussions’[59] are reminiscent of a nuclear bomb compared to the inescapable ash across the land, evoking volcanic eruption. The blame is vague, but the message is clear: ‘sometime’ is not far off.

 [1] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.197

[2] Ibid, p.190

[3]Jakob Nilsson, Sven-Olov, Foucault, Biopolitics and Governmentality (United States: Södertörn, 2013). p.73

[4] Thanatopolitics is a philosophical term that discusses the politics organizing who should live and who should die (and how) in a given form of society.

[5] Michel Foucault and Robert Hurley, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1 (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1990). p.137

[6] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.96.

[7] Ibid, p.96

[8]Mika Ojakangas, ‘Michel Foucault and the Enigmatic Origins of Bio-Politics and Governmentality’, History of the Human Sciences, 25 (2012), 1–14 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695111426654>. p.4

[9] Michel Foucault and others, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) p.252.

[10] The first war in recorded history took place in Mesopotamia in 2700 BCE between Sumer and Elam.

[11] Fred Dallmayr, Against Apocalypse: Recovering Humanity’s Wholeness (United States: Lexington Books, 2015). p.1.

[12] The countries that have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests at present are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China and India. North Korea claimed in January 2016 they had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb yet this has been disputed.

[13] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.213

[14] Ibid, p.29

[15] Ibid, p.9

[16] Ibid, p.108

[17] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.68

[18] Ibid, p.66

[19] Ibid, p.77

[20] Ibid, p.11

[21] Ibid, p.27

[22] Ibid, p.86

[23] D.H Lawrence, Apocalypse, ed. by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge (Reading: Granada Publishing). p.13

[24] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.94

[25] Ibid, p.33

[26] Ibid, p.65

[27] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.19

[28] John Hillcoat, The Road (USA, 2009).

[29] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.35

[30] Ibid, p.5

[31] Ibid, p.26

[32] Ibid, p.35

[33] Anonymous, ‘Deforestation Statistics’ (The World Preservation Foundation, 2009) <http://www.worldpreservationfoundation.org/blog/news/deforestation-statistics/#.VyoN8aODGko> [accessed 3 May 2016]. 

[34] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.230

[35] Michael Slezak, ‘Great Barrier Reef: 93% of Reefs Hit by Coral Bleaching’, The Guardian (The Guardian, 5 May 2016) <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/19/great-barrier-reef-93-of-reefs-hit-by-coral-bleaching> [accessed 3 May 2016].

[36] John Martin, John Martin: Apocalypse, ed. by Martin Myrone (New York: Distributed in the U.S. by Abrams, 2011). P.50

[37] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.234

[38] Dave Eggers, The Circle: A Novel (United Kingdom: Hamish Hamilton, 2014). P.83

[39] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.234

[40] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009)

[41] Dave Eggers, The Circle: A Novel (United Kingdom: Hamish Hamilton, 2014). p.1

[42] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.1

[43] Ibid, p.2

[44] Dave Eggers, The Circle: A Novel (United Kingdom: Hamish Hamilton, 2014). p.1

[45] Dave Eggers, The Circle: A Novel (United Kingdom: Hamish Hamilton, 2014). p.491

[46] Discipline and punish

[47]Geryon is the Monster of Fraud. He is a winged beast with ‘the face of an honest man, the paws of a lion, the body of a wyvern, and a poisonous sting at the tip of his tail’. He lives between the Seventh and Eighth circles of Hell within Dante’s Inferno.

[48]Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.116

[49] Ibid, p.116

[50] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.58

[51] WHO, ‘Depression’, World Health Organization (World Health Organization, 2016) <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs369/en/> [accessed 1 May 2016].

[52] Mark Tyrrell, ‘Major Depression Facts’ (Clinical Depression.co.uk, 2014) <http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/dlp/depression-information/major-depression-facts/> [accessed 29 April 2016].

[53] [53] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.28

[54] James Berger, ‘Introduction’, Twentieth-Century Literature, 46 (2000), 387–95 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/0041462x-2000-1006>. p.388

[55] [55] Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.58

[56] George Orwell, Coming up for Air, ed. by 1st World Library (Fairfield, IA: 1st World Library - Literary Society, 2004). P.274

[57] Radiohead, Burn the Witch, Burn the Witch, 2016.

[58] BBC, ‘Science & Nature - Supervolcano’, BBC, 2005 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/supervolcano/article.shtml> [accessed 5 May 2016].

[59]Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Pan MacMillan, 2009) p.54