How Does Mccarthy Use Deconstruction In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

The Road is a fictional novel written by Cormac McCarthy in 2006. The story follows a father and son fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic society. On a journey through the wasteland-like world they have now been exposed to, they come across many hardships and tough decisions that test their will to survive. One common theme running through the novel is the comparison between life before and after the disaster; leaving the memories before to seem as only a dream. Due to their constant struggling and sense of false hope, both characters grow to become very distressed and find trouble searching for reasons to survive other than for each other. McCarthy uses several techniques to depict the emptiness and sorrow throughout the novel, utilizing

This rids the piece of literature of any true, concrete meaning; giving room for interpretation to any reader. This criticism has been widely spoken of since it was first founded by philosopher Jacques Derrida, who believed words have no real meaning on their own. According to Michael Delahoyde, a writer who dissected the various criticisms in literature, claims “[deconstruction] doesn't undermine the text; the text already dismantles itself.” (Delahoyde 6). With this belief, the purpose of deconstructive criticism is to direct one’s focus on the text in order to point out values that are incoherent, contradicting, or even unintended. This essentially frees the text from meaning in an attempt to avoid the natural instinct to choose between one hierarchy and another. Derrida referred to these as binaries, which are a pair of related concepts that oppose one another. When analyzing McCarthy’s work, there are several binaries present in the

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. The distinct separation between the “good” and “bad” guys are their needs for survival, which is narrowed down to their will to kill and eat people. Throughout the story, the boy and man never clearly label the people who might be in the middle of the spectrum- people who are good but must make bad decisions from time to time. Whether their good and bad decisions vary between past and present, they are still represented by one or the other. In the boy’s eyes, leaving someone without supplies or help is the same as mercilessly killing them. Even in a world where laws and justice are not present, killing is still an act of evil