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The Importance Of Survival In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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Survival is the basic goal of every living thing and when it comes to survival, the sacrifices that need to be made often become rather extreme. Individuals who want to survive must continuously made extreme sacrifices or kiss their lives goodbye. When the basic need of survival is reduced to just living, such as in times following an apocalyptic event. In The Road, the man and the boy have lived and learned from the harsh, post apocalyptic world that surrounds them. This world asks for a great deal in order to survive, even if it’s just for one night. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy demonstrates extreme sacrifices are necessary for survival. The Road describes the sacrifices and challenges of the man and the boy as they follow the road. The pair is inseparable and forced to make sacrifice after sacrifice to further their survival. From their experiences, readers begin to understand how far an individual is willing to go in order to survive. After only a few pages, the characters are ready to give up everything they’ve come to understand to ensure their survival. The entire journey is a sacrifice because they want to escape the winter in order to survive. …show more content…

This other man takes the boy and holds him at knife point which in turn forces the man to shoot him with the revolver (66). By doing this, the man is sacrificing both a physical object: a bullet, and a basic belief: humanity. In one action, the man eliminates a supply that very well may extend the pair’s survival and he also loses a piece of himself. The piece he loses takes away some of his humanity as well as his goodness he tells the boy they carry within. If the man hadn’t chosen to follow through with this sacrifice, the boy’s life could’ve been ended. Without the boy, the man no longer has a reason to live. By saving the boy, the man saves himself and furthers both his and the boy’s

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Annotated Bibliography McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print. The Road is set in a grim atmosphere.

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In Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road, the boy and the man are always aware of the fact that they could die at any time. Throughout the majority of the book, the man’s overarching goal is to make sure that if when he dies, the boy will have the tools to survive on his own, However, in the beginning of the book, the man’s views on death are very different. He originally believes that neither one of them would be able to survive without the other, stating that if the boy died he “would want die too” and asking himself if he can kill [the boy] when the time comes for his own death (11, 29). Similarly, the boy has an uncharacteristic view of death for a young child, stating that he wishes he “was with [his] mom”, who viewed death as a “lover”, and has

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For both of them, they are “each other’s world, entire” (6). Nothing or no one else matters because they can only trust and love each other. As the man 's wife points out before her suicide, "the boy was all that stood between him and death" (25). In other words, the man 's thirst for survival is fueled by the love for his son. While the man may expect his own death, he lives in order to seek life for the boy.

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