Difference Between Good And Evil In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

In Cormac McCarthy’s the road, the author conveys that although there can be despair and bloodshed in the world, love overcomes al l with a little faith. The man views the boy as a symbol for hope and provides the man with game a purpose in life, to protect the boy above all. Violence is the antagonist in the novel because the people are driven into thievery, murder, and cannibalism because of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Food is scarce and people are starving, and consequently, people turn to thievery as a way to fend for themselves. At this point in time, stealing is not a crime anymore. There is no government, there are no regulations, and all is fair. When the man says that he will protect the boy at any cost, it is not an understatement. When a member of a blood cult posed a threat to the boy, the man did not so much as fidget to reach the safety of his weapon. Without overthinking, the man shot the degenerated dead before his son. The aftermath resulted in the man soothing the boy by claiming that his job is to take care of him and that he was “appointed to do that by god.” And even states he would, “kill anyone who touches the boy” (77). He tells the boy that even if they had killed someone it would not be a

In the road, Ely has obviously given up on life, and people in general. “Things will be better when everybody’s gone… when we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too.” While Ely is not hateful or evil towards human beings like the bad guys, neither does he feel any inclination to help others. If he ever had a purpose in life, it would have been religion based, as he says “When I saw that boy, I thought that I had died,” and to the man’s question, “What if I said that he’s a god?” he replies, “I’m past all that now. Have been for years. Where men cant live gods fare no better.” The phrase “where men cant live gods fare no better” can be interpreted to mean that men carry their gods within them. When men get broken by suffering, their gods also disappear. McCarthy seems to be implies that religion centered purposes are also selfish and self-centered and that it is one’s own happiness and comfort that allows one’s god to exist. The Man is similarly selfish in purpose, which centers around the one boy, his son, who he deems his salvation. The man is able to kill other people with no hesitation when it comes to protecting the Boy and similarly shows no inclination to help others. Only because of the Boy’s begging and the recent replenishment of their food supply, does the Man allow the old man to share a meal with them.

Other than the boy the father has hope in very few things. But one thing which is shown throughout The Road is the father’s sense of morals. The father always reassures the boy and himself that they are the good guys which gives them the hope to keep persevere because they are, to the father, keeping goodness in the world alive, “carrying the flame.” Cormac McCarthy presents the cannibals as a lost hope in The Road. They are almost only referred to as the “bad guys” and are described as if they are animals with no hope other than to survive.

The ability to differentiate between good and evil is equally present in life now as it was in life in the 1890’s. In his novel, Erik Larson juxtaposes characters in effort to show the resemblance as well as the antithetical traits of the two. When the reader only hears about how a character behaves, the impression is less significant than if the reader can actually observe the characters’ actions contrasting with one another. The ability to see what sort of relationships each character was involved in gives the reader an opportunity to see the characters disposition. Using characterization and giving the reader an opportunity throughout the novel to analyze the characters initiates continuous thought regarding the characters actions as the novel progresses. The Devil in the White City exemplifies the unavoidable conflict between good and evil through different types of direct and indirect characterization.

In each novel of his personal literary journey, Cormac McCarthy examines death and God in different ways. Edwin T. Arnold, who wrote his essay “Blood and Grace: The Fiction of Cormac McCarthy” before The Road, examines how “McCarthy’s protagonists are most often those who, in their travels, are bereft of the voice of God and yet yearn to hear him speak” (14). In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the father explicitly describes his son as god; however, by juxtaposing the father and the son and examining their divine resemblances, it is not the boy but the man who embodies God, supporting Ely’s claim that this post-apocalyptic world is too harsh for God to exist.

As one is put through times of strife and struggle, an individual begins to lose their sense of human moral and switch into survival mode. Their main focus is their own survival, not of another's. In the post-apocalyptic novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a father and son travel along the road towards the coast, while battling to survive the harsh weather and scarce food supply, as well as avoid any threats that could do them harm. Throughout their journey along the road, the father and son are exposed to the horrid remnants of humanity. As a result, the father and son constantly refer to themselves as “the good guys” and that they “carry the fire”, meaning they carry the last existing spark of humanity within themselves. By the acts of compassion

Every author creates some type of conflict to have the reader sitting on the edge of their seats whether the conflict be man versus man, man versus self, or man versus nature. The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy wrote a story about both a man and a boy who have particularly conflicting characteristics when it comes to decision making. The boy in the story is very optimistic about everything and the man can be pessimistic when either deciding on what to do or when thinking about life or the future. In addition, both characters have different outlooks and personalities that can sometimes collide.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road portrays a gripping tale of survival of a father and son across a post-apocalyptic world that is devoured by marauders and cannibals who have abandoned all of their beliefs, morals and values and do anything to survive. In contrast, the two protagonists are portrayed as the ‘good guys’ who carry the ‘fire’, and try to survive in the obliterated world. They are challenged to maintain their own beliefs, morals and values as they enter their quest. As a young adolescent who has witnessed the harsh environments of a war torn country such as Afghanistan, and has prior experiences of being a refugee. The novel effectively

We often consider the world to be filled with core truths, such as how people should act or what constitutes a good or bad action. In The Road, McCarthy directly challenges those preconceptions by making us question the actions of the characters and injecting a healthy dose of uncertainty into the heroes’ situation. From the very beginning, the characters and their location remain ambiguous. This is done so that the characters are purposely anonymous, amorphously adopting all people. While on the road, the order of the day is unpredictability; whether they find a horde of road-savages or supplies necessary for his son’s survival is impossible to foretell. While traveling, the boy frequently asks “are we the good guy” and the father always replies with “yes” or “of course,” but as the story progresses this comes into question.

People preach peace and love around the whole world, but at the same time practice the opposite of what they believe, and such behaviors cause the Road happened. It will eventually even become a cycle: the more people hurt each other, the less they believe in God and social morality, and the more they become soulless, the more likely people will express irrigation with violence. With enhancing wars and revenges on earth, it gradually turns to the world described in the Road: “No sign of life. Cars in the street caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust. Fossil tracks in the dried sludge. A corpse in a doorway dried to leather” (McCarthy). In the Road, the world lacking of food and materials is not created by people with belief and faith; instead, faithless politicians and authorities who preach the gospel of power compete against each other and, disregarding the death of thousands and the significance of natural balance, converse the world into a miserable circumstance, which leads to the extermination of belief of those who are still alive.

For ages, people have been debating the idea of human morality and whether or not at its core humanity is good or bad. This philosophy is explored in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road. The road is the story of a man and boy living in a post-apocalyptic world. Some cataclysmic event has crippled Earth’s natural ecosystem, leaving the skies engulfed in ash and the ground devoid of much life. The duo aim to journey south as a way to escape being frozen to death in the oncoming winter. During their journey, the boy and man come across different people and places that give them a better understand of what humanity has become and where they stand on that spectrum. Throughout The Road, McCarthy revisits the idea of being the “good guy” when there is no longer a need to, “carrying the fire” as it’s detailed in the book. The dichotomy between the boy’s moral conscience and the man’s selfish ideals helps develop McCarthy’s idea of humanity losing its selflessness in the face of danger.

In his novel The Road Cormac McCarthy uses a post-apocalyptic setting to help broaden the debate over moral good and evil. Not only do the main characters in his novel display either good or evil in their actions, but so do the people they encounter on their journey. These encounters are shaped by the moral decisions each individual makes. In this novel’s setting it is hard to define good and evil, but the choices made can still be applied to a non-apocalyptic world. McCarthy uses the experiences of the main characters to demonstrate that no matter what the scenario good will overcome evil.

"All conflict in literature is, in its simplest form, a struggle between good and evil". This quote by anonymous individual could be explained as; all themes and struggles in literature can be lead down to their most basic forms as conflict of good versus evil. Usually in conflicts, there are two sides that fight over one particular aspect. One side is considered good, which are fighting for their morals, while the other side is considered bad and are fighting for the wrong reasons. (Online 5)

What makes Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road stick out from most dystopian works is that The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they survive the dangers of what once was the United States after an unspecified calamitous event. There is not much left of the world: no food, no animals, and no hope. Many readers will ponder how someone could still be motivated to keep moving forward under such circumstances. If we were living in the same conditions as the man and the boy, this question might seem more imperative. But arguably it is a question that can be applied to today: what, if anything, makes human life valuable or worthwhile? Through the dialogue between the characters, the novel provides two conflicting arguments that serve as potential answers for this question. The first argument is hope, which is associated with the Christian religion, while the other argument is futility, which has a nihilistic outlook of the ravaged world. This paper will examine the Christian imagery and nihilistic arguments contained in the novel and how the moral systems of the two conflict. While at first The Road might present itself as a powerful challenge to both Christian and nihilistic views of the world, in the end, the novel never explicitly reject either worldview.

In the post-apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a majority of the characters are portrayed as “evil” or would be in an ideal world. Though the main characters; the Man and the Boy do not show any “evil” behaviours I would presume that if at some point in time they became desperate enough for food – and desperate enough to live, that they would do what they needed to do in order to survive. As in, eating other humans and stealing, I do not think that this is necessarily being evil or good.