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The Role Of The Bad Guys In The Road The Man's Dichotomy

794 Words4 Pages

In the novel, The Road, humanity is trying to survive some sort of apocalyptic tragedy that has devastated at least the United States. The two unnamed main characters, The Man and The Boy travel the state freeways, aiming to make it to the coast, and to what the man hopes to be a warmer climate, as he thinks they will not be able to survive another freezing winter. While The Man and The Boy venture south, they fight hunger, the cold weather, and cannibalistic gangs of other survivors prone to violent attacks. While there are gains and losses in this society, it is important to find the difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”, and know the meaning and importance to “carry the fire”. While the world seems doomed, there exists an interesting dichotomy. While there have been losses for society, individual relationships has become far more valued. In the whole world, The Man and The Boy have only one another, making their relationship more important than what it would have been in a pre-apocalyptic society. The Man’s reason for existing is to protect and to care for The Boy; The Man tries his best to provide for him. In one section of the novel, The Man and the Boy enter a looted grocery store and find a …show more content…

The whole world that is the novel is so horrible, to be a good guy can simply mean you do not eat other people. As cannibalism is such a problem, The Man and The Boy find a fire with a baby cooked over it, many hanging bodies, and even a house holding people to be eaten. Another example would be to not steal from another group or person like the man who tried to steal from The Man and The Boy, but The Boy shows his true goodness by having compassion for the thief and insisting they try and give the thief his clothes back. Some of the other exceptionally good characters may offer help, supplies, or even an invitation to be a part of their group, like the family at the end of the

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The Road is a story not only about survival, but about love and compassion for all life in times of great hardship. However, it holds a much deeper meaning within its text, from the sentence and dialog structure to the vocabulary used and the names given to certain characters. One deeper truth about The Road regards the man’s view of the boy and the meaning of their relationship. The man views the boy as God, as the boy is the only thing he believes in anymore, and therefore would sacrifice himself to the boy as a disciple would sacrifice themselves to God. While the man and the boy’s relationship is based on the love of father and son, there is undeniably a religious element to their lives and their journey which can be found within the text

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Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.

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In the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and his son struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Told through a lens of constant hardship, the book follows their arduous journey towards a coast in order to survive the winter. Throughout the novel, McCarthy shows that having hope enables people to persevere in dire circumstances because it counteracts the possibility of negative outcomes. First, the woman’s monologue about her death displays the despair necessary to abandon all hope.

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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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The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is a novel that follows the journey of a father and son traveling south to escape the post-apocalyptic scene they were unfortunately put in. The father and son are survivors of some unnamed disaster that has occurred. As time passes by there is less and less food. There is also a lack of plants and animals. Other than scavenging for food, the only means of survival for some is cannibalism.

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In The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 2006, a man and a boy struggle to survive as they travel south on the road in the post-apocalyptic world. On their journey to the coast, the man and the boy encounter the remains of an ashen world, ravaged by men who are willing to kill to survive. Among the death and destruction of the post-apocalyptic world, McCarthy illustrates how the man gains resilience from the spirituality he finds within his son, which proves how in a world void of official religion, belief in something greater than yourself creates the strength necessary to survive. The man sees his son as a spiritual figure that provides him the strength to survive in the desolate world.

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The family pair struggles to maintain enough food for themselves, but despite that the boy still tries to give up his food in order to help others. Not only did he insist in helping a man as rude as Ely, but wanted to help the lost kid on the road. “We could get him and take him with us…. I’d give that little boy half of my food”( McCarthy 86). This displays the naturally generous and unselfish characteristics of the boy.

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The Man reveals that the Boy’s mother killed herself because due to her fear of the post-apocalyptic world. Instead of having two parents to learn from, only the Man is left to transmit new information and ideas to the Boy. One abstract idea that the Man focuses on teaching the Boy is how to carry the fire. The Man fears after his death that the Boy will succumb to being one of the “bad guys.” This causes the Man to feel responsible for not only making the Boy want to live, but to live a noble life.

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In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses figurative language, to demonstrate the difference in the people’s decisions and values when compared to the real world. The survivors of the apocalypse, including the father all had to undergo a series of radical changes in order to adapt and survive in the new world. When the father enters the house, where the people are kept for food, not only does he see naked people both male and female but also a man with his leg cut off. McCarthy writes, “On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and stumps of them blackened and burnt” (McCarthy 110).

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