Natural decadence directly influences moral decadence in Cormac McCarthy's The Road and in John Hillcoat's film adaptation of the same title . The end of the world in this story is so bad because of the loss of nature. When humans see the end of their natural environment, something within them changes; by severing their ties to the natural world, they also subsequently lose their ties to humanity. This is seen in the contrast between the man and the boy and the cannibalistic gangs. The writing tool of setting is particularly important to this topic because McCarthy often describes where the man and boy are located in relation to the natural setting. Throughout the novel, we read descriptions of gray skies, fallen trees, and dark oceans, all markers of the Earth's decay. Some scholars have called McCarthy's novel the first to be written from an environmentalist perspective; Although there were other post-apocalyptic novels and films before The Road, McCarthy's is one of the first to include the decline of the earth as well as the decline of humanity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The novel's sparse dialogue is perhaps a visual representation of the dying world; just as the earth has been stripped of its natural beauty and elegance, so has human conversation. The rarity on the page visually represents the rarity of the world. John Hillcoat's film adaptation of the novel also focuses on depicting an ecologically decayed world. Using real devastated locations, Hillcoat depicts the impact on the real environment and nature. The locations on the board are particularly impactful. The visual depiction of American devastation accurately represents McCarthy's novel. On screen we see the destruction of Mount St. Helens in Washington, the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, abandoned highways and old steel mills in Pennsylvania, and run-down neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Abandoned shopping malls, stranded tractor-trailers, and crumbling stadiums all visually represent the impact of human-caused neglect and destruction on our nation. Abandoned ships, bleak landscapes and a lake filled with fallen trees from Mount Saint Helena eerily reveal how natural disasters have destroyed parts of our society. There's even a shot where Hillcoat chose to feature actual footage of the 9/11 smoke cloud. All of these on-screen depictions communicate the devastation that can occur in our world. Additionally, Hillcoat uses dark landscapes and matching lighting. The grays and browns of the landscape correspond to the behavior of the characters; from the clouds in the sky to the scorched trees, Hillcoat ensures that each scene fits the story. Both McCarthy's novel and Hillcoat's adaptation are warnings to their audiences: take care of your families; maintain your morals; value the natural world. Don't let such destruction happen to you. A likely response to this novel and film then would be to spend time with your family as you see families torn apart and a father/son coming closer than ever to survive; explore what it means to be the “good guy” and “carry the fire” in today’s society; and spend time appreciating the value of our natural environment, realizing how vital it is to our survival. By examining the setting of the novel and the direction of the film, we will discover how natural decay leads to decadencemoral. In both the film and the novel, nature is linked in one way or another to morality. When nature degrades and is destroyed, so does our morality. Even though natural disasters are beyond human control, humans continue to suffer. During these natural disasters, human morality is tested; we hear about people stealing and looting, but we also hear about heroic rescues. In The Road, we also see two sides: those who are the "good guys", trying to maintain morality and "carry the fire", and the bad guys, those who have abandoned their morality and turned to violence and cannibalism. . The novel describes many scenes of nature's decay. The second sentence of the novel reads: “Dark nights beyond darkness and days each grayer than what had gone before” (McCarthy 3). From the beginning, our characters Man and Boy are in a very dark, very gloomy world. As we move forward, the signs of destruction multiply: “The city was largely burned. No signs of life” (McCarthy 12). It is important to note that “no signs of life” includes animal and plant life as well as human life. In this post-apocalyptic world, neither animals nor plants have survived. Later in the book, we learn that the boy doesn't believe birds exist in real life; he only saw them in books. The strangest aspect of this world is its sterility; it's completely lifeless. Countless times, as man looks out at the landscape, all he sees is “all fading into darkness” (McCarthy 4). He looks “among the dead trees” hoping to find “something colorful.” Any movement. No trace of stagnant smoke,” but he found nothing (McCarthy 4). The nature of this world is composed of dead trees, cloudy skies and sadness. There is no bright sunlight, only gray and lighter gray. The earth is deteriorating, and as it does so, the humanity of the people still living is deteriorating as well. After starvation and hypothermia, gangs of heartless cannibals are man and boy's worst enemy. They meet them along the road and pass their houses several times in the book. In the middle of the novel it says: "The world will soon be largely populated by men who would eat your children before your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened raiders who dug tunnels among the ruins and crawled out of the ruins. white rubble of teeth. and eyes carrying charred, anonymous cans in nylon nets like shoppers in the police stations of hell” (McCarthy 181). As these people lost touch with the natural world, they also lost interest in any form of morality. Cannibals are seen eating a baby over a fire and spitting in the woods, holding starving naked humans in a basement as a food supply, and stealing from anyone who might benefit from them. These people are ruthless and heartless. They're not the good guys, as the novel depicts, and in fact, there are very few good guys left. The film also takes up these themes. The setting plays a big role in John Hillcoat's adaptation. Design elements, as described in the Looking at Movies text, are very important in this film. In order to communicate the feeling of decadence and despair, Hillcoat ensured that the setting was as dark and bare as possible. One aspect of staging is lighting, and Hillcoat used this to his advantage. In Looking at Movies it is said about lighting: "Often, much of what we remember about a film is its expressive style of lighting faces, characters, surfaces, settings, or.