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Road To Maturity In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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The Road to Maturity
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) is a tragic story of a father and son’s struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. The novel follows the father and son as they travel down ‘the road’ towards the coast, struggling with the world around them, which has dissolved into absolute nothingness. Very few people have survived the collapse of society, and the ones that have are savages and killers, doing what they can to stay alive. Seeing that all of the other survivors are turning into appalling and gruesome people, the father and son coin themselves the “good guys,” because they are not interested in hurting any of their fellow survivors. McCarthy never explicitly states the names of the father and son, nor specifies …show more content…

The boy represents children all over the world who also have to grow up quickly due to certain circumstances. Children in comfortable, middle-class families will never understand the feeling of the unknown. They are able to hold onto their childhood innocence for as long as they wish, and they never have to think about where their food is coming from or whether or not they will be alive in the morning. Children in countries like Syria are fighting for survival each and every day. Like the son’s, their horrific circumstances have caused them to mature much more rapidly than the average child. The apocalypse has taught the boy how to survive without the assistance of others. He is now able to travel ‘the road’ alone and stay alive day after day. The boy was born into the post-apocalyptic world, but that did not cause him to automatically have a cold, unforgiving heart. He shows compassion to a world that has never been kind to him. Although the boy has matured, that does not mean that he has lost every bit of his childhood, he is still able to occasionally have a laugh. It is apparent that he still has a childlike spark and a compassionate heart within him. The boy was forced to mature rapidly, but he continued to have hope through all situations, no matter how

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