Loss Of Innocence In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a post-apocalyptic story of a boy and his father searching across a cold, wet, and ashen landscape. This story’s tale of loss of innocence is cutting and terrifying, similar to the Islamic terrorist group, ISIS; a group of Sunni Muslims formed under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They are well known for being a religious extremist group famous for attacks globally and recordings of executions. McCarthy’s illustration of the boy’s loss of innocence mirrors the innocence stolen from youth who are forced to witness ISIS’s executions of innocent humans.
From the beginning of the book, McCarthy institutes that the unidentified man and boy exists in the future where the world has been destroyed. The man in the book has faith

He sees babies cooked and eaten and people with their legs cut off waiting to be someone’s meal. Even though the father has killed people in circumstances, the boy never understood the need to hurt others. The boy struggles to keep his innocence. Towards the end of the book, the man gets shot in the leg with an arrow. When they settle down in a store building, the man patches up his leg while the boy is watching. The man asks the boy if he would like to hear a story, in which the boy replies saying no because the stories his father once told him are not true and unrealistic. The boy no longer thinks they are helping people. The boy also refuses to tell his father any of the dreams he has, because his dreams are not happy, and stories should be happy. In the beginning of the book no matter what circumstances, the boy used to be naïve, and thought stories his father told him would come true. Even though there was doubts, he always believed they were the good guys and that they helped people. Now instead of living happy stories, the boy finally gains knowledge in knowing nothing is happy and perfect. He no longer wants to hear stories his father would tell him, and he also no longer wants to tell his father his stories, instead they sit in silence. He lost his innocence by seeing all the people they have hurt in the process and the cruelties of this post-apocalyptic world. This is similar to the way the whole world lost its innocence because of ISIS. On November 13,2015, ISIS horrified the whole world by a chilling bloodbath murder of 130 people in a surprise attack in Paris, France. Additional to that, they also wounded 368 people. In response to this attack, a state of emergency was declared and border checks were put in order. People everywhere prayed for France and were shocked at this surprise attack. Other nations have increased security and agreed to cooperate to plan a strong response