The Importance Of The Map In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

The Symbolic Importance of the Map In the hopes of understanding where one is going in life, one must also understand where they have come from. This is no exception for the father and son duo in the novel The Road (2009) by Cormac McCarthy. The novel follows a man and his son in their journey through a new dystopian-like world as they trek South in hopes of finding escape from the terror they have come to know as their new normal. Their map used for navigation stands as a symbolic representation of what the father and son are encountering both physically and spiritually. The use of maps in their journey stands not only as a tool used for guided assistance in their physical geographic locations, but also as symbols of hope, reminders of their longing for survival, and validation of their existence. Throughout their

This is seen when McCarthy writes, “They studied the pieces of map but he’d little notion of where they were” (McCarthy 133). Due to the couple’s limited information of which physical town they were residing in at the current time, the father was unable to locate where he may be on the map. The map was of great assistance in being able to see different locations in regards to one another, but when the father was running off of limited knowledge in the ash-covered town, the map was of much less usefulness. This is where the value of the map's symbolism comes in. The map in this novel serves a purpose of education, guidance, and confidence. The man may not be able to use the map for its original purpose, but he can use it as a means of knowing that he is still going. He may not know in which direction, but he knows he is alive and for that reason he is able to hold onto the sliver of hope he has