Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

Throughout the novel McCarthy describes the setting of the world as bleak and dull, Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before (McCarthy, 3 ) The use of theses descriptions hint to the reader, the mood of an apocalyptic world. When introduced to the main characters known as the Boy and the Man the reader is given no names. McCarthy’s use of this shows how the absence of humanity is so extreme that the need for names is pointless when there is no one to tell them to. Due to the absence of people and the want to survive the boy and his father confide in each other, showing a father and son relationship. McCarthy uses this relationship to show how the Man teaches his boy how to survive just like a father would teach his son to throw a ball. Which is the whole point of the Man being present.

Literature is a door that opens to an author’s past experiences and emotions. Every impactful moment that an author experiences will sneak its way into the pages of the texts. In the novel, The Road written by Cormac McCarthy, many of the events taken place correlates with poignant points of his life.

Instead of taking part in those acts of survival, the boy and the man use each other's presence to continue with the grueling journey in search of civilization and humanity. The man and the boy held on to the hope they will travel south and live a normal life, escaping their current state of living. Their ambition and belief allow them to go through every day confident that, things will change for the better. The Man encourages his son through their journey on into the unknown and tells him that for him to survive he must travel south, do what they had done throughout their endeavors, and 'find the good guys'. This is a repetitive phrase throughout that novel that means the boy should meet up without individuals similar to them who haven’t resorted to cannibalism and dehumanization because catastrophe has struck, there is distrust in the natural world, fear, and alienation. But the reassurance the father gives his son to helps him continue the journey and strengthen their bond. The boy also symbolizes strength and dreams, the reason the man is alive is that of the boy. He helps him dream of the future. The boy’s curiosity helps the man remember good memories of his childhood, and he

How does Cormac McCarthy’s Novel The Road, challenge a reader’s ideas, beliefs, experiences and values?

Yet by the time the father is dying, he recognizes that his son is wise and strong enough to survive on his own. Thus, another purpose of surviving for the man was not to survive with the son, but to last long enough to teach his son survival skills before he died. The boy lives and is implied to continue to do so after meeting “good guys” after his father dies. The boy is the most caring person in the book who has too much trust for every human they come in contact with. The boy’s innocence resembles a light in a dark world and the man views his son as a divine character (such as an angel) because of his purity. The man never tells his son that he loves him, but instead shows it through his actions such as leaving the boy his last meal, giving the boy a Coke, or just staring at him in

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy, 5). Throughout The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, the young boy is repeatedly seen as a Christ-like symbol to the man; a sign of hope and good morality. While the man is more occupied with finding food and fending for him and the boy, the boy is much more concerned over other people and their survival. The boy wants to consistently make sure him and his father are still “carrying the fire” and that they’re the “good guys.”

McCarthy writes the boy to be caring and selfless in order to develop a theme of altruism. He does so by using strong imagery. About a man on the road, McCarthy writes, ¨One of his eyes was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull….Can´t we help him?¨(50). This man appears to be helplessly injured, but McCarthy writes the boy to have the desire of helping him, regardless of the fact that helping this man puts his own and his father´s life in danger. McCarthy writes this example of selflessness to support his theme of

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, it is very important to both the man and the boy to distinguish between good and bad people. In this post-apocalyptic world, it is very difficult to survive while continuing to remain a good person. The importance of the separation of good and bad people is shown through a possible theme, the conflict between good and evil. It’s also shown through and example of symbolism, the fire that the boy says they must continue to carry. Finally, dark imagery shows that it is difficult for the man and the boy to remain the good guys. With these three literary elements, McCarthy shows that it is important to the man and the boy to keep a distinction between good and bad people so that they can keep hope in their world.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a father and his son trying to survive in a post- apocalyptic world. In the book, McCarthy sets up different themes and he constructs them through his choices in The Road. One theme McCarthy shows is that in a world of despair, we must choose to focus on the good things, we can focus on these good things only if we let ourselves do so.

Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” reveals a constructed world as utterly hopeless to live within. The author presents dark and grotesque themes and unimaginable realities that position humans and their condition to its limits. Immersed in a burnt and dead world, following a nuclear explosion, the world hosts cannibalistic blood cults and road rats that would kill, rape and eat innocent children. The novelist emphasises that the very idea of living in such circumstances seems utterly hopeless. “The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth, darkness implacable” is revealed as a place of agonies in which one can either turn to suicide or become the ‘bad guy’.

(McCarthy 72) This is the father’s way of connecting with his son and family and creating an unbreakable family bond. Although it is obvious that the father loves his son it is also apparent that the father fears losing his son and family so he attempts to invoke conservative ideology. As Bryan M. Satin examines, “The Road dramatically augments the fear and uncertainty as well as the family loyalty with the United States after the attacks. In many ways, the father is an allegorical figure for the neoconservative response to this kind of post-9/11 world.”

Colorless, alarming, and cannibalistic. This is the life in which a father and his son have to live through each and every day. They only have each other, family, to make life worth living for. In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road family is the most important thing in one’s life. For example, the father’s capability to do anything to protect his son, giving his son the gun to end his life from any further suffering, and always putting his son’s life first before anything else.

McCarthy portrays him as a good character, who sticks to his morals and is always willing to help other people, even though this is dangerous. Being full of goodness himself, he naively looks past the evil in the world, and sees the good in people. McCarthy uses religious symbolism in descriptions of him – in the opening scene in the novel, the man says about the boy ‘If he is not the word of God God never spoke.’ This shows us that the boy is McCarthy’s return to God. He portrays the boy as a Christ figure, good and virtuous. He is the remnant of a God in a Godless society. The son believes that he and his father are ‘carrying the fire’ and that they are ‘the good guys’ – this shows that he still has faith in the world and considers himself and his father to be good and moral. Whilst his father refuses to help others, the boy strongly feels that it is the right thing to do. McCarthy writes the dialogue between the father and son: ‘[father] He’s been struck by lightning. [Son] Can we help him? Papa? [Father] No. We can’t help him… they went on. The boy was crying.’ We can see how strongly the boy feels about this, and how it brings him pain to watch others suffer. The character of the boy confronts us with a vast contrast to that of any other characters in the book. Even though he is essentially only human, his empathy and morality challenge us as readers to alter our ideas on nihilism. Although this world is seemingly

McCarthy also tends to avoid any assignment of speech; one does not know who is speaking because McCarthy has explicitly written that The Boy or The Man has said it, if the reader cannot understand who is saying what then the writer has not done their job. He sees no need for complex and elaborate constructions of literature when words on their own can be simple yet profound in delivery in messages. I specifically chose to read this book because McCarthy is the opposite of myself. I thoroughly respect this ability in him. While I might find other authors like Poe who do the (stark) opposite to be more entertaining, I cannot deny that there is something so remarkable about an author who can manage something so beautiful and direct - naked writing. It demonstrates the depth of thought and careful consideration that went into each word.

Throughout the novel, the characters go to varying extremes to survive. Some characters aim to survive while still keeping their morals intact while others abandon all human decency and do absolutely anything that is required for their survival. The father and the son are the characters who survive while not doing anything that they feel will diminish or jeopardize their goodness. Many times in the novel, the father and son come across supplies that seemingly do not belong to anyone anymore. However, each time of their fortuitous fortune, the boy always needs reassurance that whoever the supplies had belonged to will not need them again. Also, when the father and son come across a supply-deficient old man traveling on the road, the son begs his father to share some of their supplies with him. Because of their own dismal supplies and the ongoing uncertainty of acquiring new ones,