The Young Messiah In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

A gift from God: The young Messiah in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
The Road shares the rough journey of a man and his messianic-figure son struggling to survive the morality of a post-apocalyptic world. The earth is destroyed and a majority of the once living are now deceased, however, the boy and his father continue to travel through their burned world. On their route south towards the coast, they find injured “good” guys and “bad” guys including thieves, shelter, clothes, and little food and water. Their only form of defense includes a flare gun which the son does not approve of for killing or hurting others, let alone as a means of obtaining food. McCarthy suggests the young boy as a Messiah throughout his story as a means to display the morality in a dystopian world.

An example of this scenario is when they find abandoned properties and the boy warns his father about going inside of homes and exploring the different rooms including a basement that held people captive and abused. Pizzino agrees with the idea of the boy being a messiah who looks out for his father’s best interest when stating, “the boy’s existence is an equivocal good, and that anything done in the service of this good has divine “warrant””(361). In making this statement, Pizzino insists that the boy is a considered an authority figure who allows the permission of specific events. The author of this article also reminds his audience that the only company the man and boy have is each other. McCarthy provides more information when he writes, “He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5). The basis of McCarthy’s disposition contains his theory that if this boy is not a child of God then God is not real. This young male took the position of being in authority in order to nurture his father and could be labeled as a savior due to