The world that is presented in McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel is very bleak. Nearly all traces of what once lived are gone. It has all been turned into ashes. We are reminded of it again and again throughout the novel: “Everything covered with ash,” and, “The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop,” and, “The boy thought he smelled wet ash on the wind,” (McCarthy 140, 2, 297). It is a reminder of that everything has died, that there is nothing left. The setting of The Road allows the novel to say something about the essence of what it is to be human, telling a tale of how people behave when all material things and society itself is gone. The novel says that while personal survival is paramount, it is not everything. It can be …show more content…
The man is more concerned about this than the boy. The boy is willing to give what little they have to help others, showing concern for a man they encounter, and suggesting that they give him some food and even a spoon to eat with (McCarthy 173). Goodness is important to the boy. He “constantly seeks to connect with, and be compassionate toward, strangers,” (Gilbert 42). The man does not like it, for him “other concerns are subsumed under the umbrella of survival,” (Graulund 73). Yet, that is not the whole truth. The man holds the boy’s survival higher than his own. Carroll says that people “envision their lives extending into the future, and they look beyond their own individual lives to the continuing life of their descendants and their communities,” (24), and the man does this. When he is dying, he tells the boy that he is not allowed to die with him: “You cant. You have to carry the fire [...] I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant,” (McCarthy 298). He is keen to keep his legacy alive; his genes and his memes must go on when he cannot. This is a human need that the stripping away of society could not erase. His need to care for his son is what has kept him going all along. His wife says: “The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself,” and it is true. It is his son the man survives