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Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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“The Road” by Cormac Mccarthy was in the post apocalyptic era after a meteor strike. The father and son had to survive and they walked the roads searching for food so they could go on with their lives. They never wanted to give up and the boy was seen as the fathers fire and gave him motivation and drive to push on. They encountered many different challenges on the road and they had to change their ways to be successful in the post apocalyptic era. The father had to change his moral values to have progress when disaster struck. The son was born in the post apocalyptic era and didn't know anything different. The new destroyed world was in need of renewal of moral values, but the world was far from salvation. The father and the son had to …show more content…

The father and son were on their own and couldn't trust anyone. “ Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is, among other things, a meditation on morality, what makes human life meaningful, and the relationship between these things and god”. (Wielenberg 1) The new relationships created new everything between the father and son. The son would still have to trust his father even after the terrible things the son would see his father commit. The father had to kill and make decisions that would be against anyones morals in the old society. These actions were fine to make by the father because it's what he had to do to fulfill the mission of protecting his …show more content…

He told his past as if they were stories and he did this so he could soothe his pain in the present. He wanted to tell his son all about the old world and how society was since his son only knew the post apocalyptic era. All of the ways and morals that the father grew up with are now perished since the meteor strike hit. The father doesn't know what to believe in, so he makes folk beliefs with the fire. The father changed all of his ways just to protect his son. “A significant part of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic revelation is the base ethics, or standards and morals to live by.” (Toone 90) The father in the novel shot a man in the head because he was threatening his son. In the old society this would be a crime but since all has changed and there are no old morals the father kills the man and is still the good

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Which shows an unfair balance system coming from the father because he expects so much of the child that isn't his but nothing of the one that is. Similar to in the biblical story Cain and Abel where both children were hoping that there offering to god meant that he would allow them to live yet only one of them were granted their wish. Now as the book continues the effects of the different parenting starts to show more and more. For example, while John spends most of his nights considering whether or not he wants to be a preacher Roy spends his nights “doing it with the girls down the street.”

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The father explains his experience of being on the wrong side of

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In the Road McCarthy has the two go through many difficult events in which The Man must make hard choices such as when The Man and The Boy find a group of chained up individuals in the basement of someone’s house. Instead of trying to save the chained people, the man chooses to run away with the boy for fear of the two of them being hurt by the men who have put the people in chains. This shows that McCarthy believes that a good father would give up on saving others if it means risking the safety of his child. Another example of when McCarthy shows this same lesson is when The Boy is about to be taken away by ‘one of the bad guys’ as the man calls him and so, in response, The Man shoots the ‘bad guy’. This shows how McCarthy believes that an ideal father figure would even be willing to kill for the sake of his

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The paternal love that the man has for his son plays a major role in their survival. The man continues to strive time and time again because he wants his son to live and wants to protect him at all costs. His own survival goes on for as long as it does because of his love for his son and the measures he takes to keep him alive. Even the mother, the man’s wife, before her suicide mentioned, “…the boy was all that stood between him and death.”

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Good versus bad is very prominent in the relationship between the father and the boy, essentially meaning ethical and unethical. The boy, who was born and raised in this catastrophic world and knows nothing of society before the disaster, is fixated on being the “good guys” in each scenario. He has strong morals towards being compassionate, empathetic, and understanding. Although the world has taken a turn for the worst and left every survivor with hard decisions they never would have been faced with before, the boy wants to solve every problem with a righteous solution. Towards the end of the novel, the boy seems to get his way less and less while the man makes heartless decisions based on impulse and dire survival instincts.

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He shows random acts of kindness to strangers his father remains cautious of. He seeks to understand why the gangs are ‘bad’ and believes that deep down, they too are loving. The mother did an unspeakable act that seems cruel at most looks, but to her, she was proving her love to her son, trying to give him a better life. The power of love will always transcend after death, and that is why love will always exist in a broken

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Despite their harsh circumstances, the father consistently reassures his son that they are "the good guys" who carry the "fire" within them. This repetitive phrase represents the hope for goodness and compassion, symbolizing their commitment to maintain their humanity in a world that has lost its moral compass. These moments really stand out in a story filled with doubt and a seemingly never ending hell upon them. However, McCarthy also presents moments of doubt that plague the father's mind, questioning whether their efforts are futile. These doubts arise from the harsh realities they face and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that surround them.

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I think that he was tired of having to worry about how they were going to survive, with both having enough to stay some what healthy and also being cautious of the “bad guys.” This was very unlike the man to forget about having to be safe from other people. Everything that the father does, he thinks about how it will affect his son. But during this passage, he didn’t really take into consideration the things that could have been down in that room and how it would have affected his son. His behavior in this passage contradicts to the way the author portrays the man through most of the

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This created the man to hide with his son wherever there are others around and prepare to kill if necessary. Though there were times where he did push too far by having these morals. When they were camped on the beach by the boat, all of their belongings were stolen by another survivor. After they quickly tracked the robber, the man made him take off and give them all of his belongings. Leaving him bare naked in the

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Along their journey they come across an old man who is very ill and can’t walk well. The father and his son both have very different reactions to coming across the man. The boy wants to help the man by feeding him and possibly letting him join them, while the father wants to just move past without batting an eye. In the end however the boy is able to convince his father into giving the man some food. This is just another piece of evidence to support the fact that the boy has a major impact on his father’s way of

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English 4U ISU Love is a special thing, love is what keeps people going through the tough times in life, without love this world would be nothing. Even with all the cruelty in the destroyed world of The Road, there is still love in the midst of it. In the novel Cormac McCarthy expresses love, caring and survival through the inseparable relationship of a father and his son using character development, setting and conflict. McCarthy demonstrates the importance of love in The Road, he shows that when there is nothing left for somebody, if love is present, he has everything. The man, who remains nameless throughout the entire novel, has lost everything ever since the apocalypse happened, the only thing that remains for him is his son.

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The author is using the father as a symbol of the non distinct barrier between good and evil in our world. As the readers we are seeing the father as a good guy but if we dig deeper we see him as a bad guy as well. Clearly, the author is showing the reader that only in a perfect world is their a clear line between good and evil,

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The father and the boy do believe in some kind of morality, often referred to as “carrying the fire.” What makes this metaphoric phrase morally ambiguous is that it is not ever made clear that either father or son actually believe that there is anything to preserve or that their actions in such a world are more than futile. It is possible, however, to discern a code by which the father has raised his son to live by, a “good guy” code of sorts. The good guys do not eat people, they do not lie or steal, they keep their promises, and they try to help people; most importantly, the good guys never give up. This code keeps the two from spiralling into the abyss.

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This very moment in the book is why it is such a harrowing and dark read. Throughout the path down the Road the son’s growing maturity also desensitizes him to people around him

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In the novel readers had a sneak peek in what happened before readers got to know the son and father. The story explains that before the son was born the mother did not want to live in the post apocalyptic world and fight for her life.

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