Unconditional Love In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

A Familial Survival and Love Story: In 2006, Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road in which he explored how an unnamed father and son tried to survive a post apocalypperiod through an unidentified area. McCarthy, in his story “The Road” focuses mostly on thetic views of the father and son as they look out for each other with struggling hope of finding humanity and an end to the unknown dreadful holocaust. Although the no-named father and son are in a time of a post apocalyptic period, their unconditional love for one another does not diminish. Throughout McCarthy’s novel, he uses many different literary techniques to effectively express the love between the father and son. Some of these techniques are, through setting, character and plot which

During his novel, the characters were very important for the development of the theme. The protagonists of the story were the Father and Son and almost all of the book was written around these two people and how they loved each other while struggling to survive. At the start of the novel during the post apocalyptic period, the father and son began their journey to the coast in hopes of finding humanity and to show the boy the real world. The father is the only character in the novel that truly loves the boy, everyone else either wants to eat him or kill him. Many times, we can see a very strong love relationship between the father and son. Repeatedly throughout their journey, the father offers the son everything first because there 's not enough food to feed the both of them and the man knows he 's dying and he wants to make sure his son is well taken care of. The son accepts this fact but, he also takes care of his father as he says “You have some Papa. I want you to drink it, you have some” (McCarthy 23 & 78) . With this action, McCarthy was trying to show a true love relationship through character between father and son. Later on in the book, there was another very touching moment between the characters which also effectively underlined the theme. As the father and son were on a journey to find food and shelter,

The mood during The Road was very dark and bleak which makes it really amazing that McCarthy can combine a so called deep horror and father/son love story. The setting during the story was a post apocalyptic period where many were struggling to survive, find food and shelter. Since this was the setting, it enhanced the emotions and love between father and son because, essentially it was two people (father and son) against the dreadful world. Throughout the novel, McCarthy uses violence to develop the theme of a father 's unconditional love for his son. We can see this at one specific moment when the gang members roam down the road looking for humans to kill. The father and son hid adjacent to the road and one of the gang members was wandering through the woods and caught them. This gang member tried to seize the boy as he attacked him with a knife. “He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his fell back instantly.” (McCarthy 66) This is one of the moments where McCarthy used the setting and mood of violence to further explore the completely opposite theme of general love. Another crucial example is the shopping cart which the father pushes for his son throughout the entire book. The child was young and since the setting was during a post apocalyptic period, he wouldn 't be able to