In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, the good is represented through the pure, benevolent boy while evil is portrayed through marauders, cannibals, and sometimes even the man. Evil is an incessant force that the man and the boy face daily, but McCarthy suggests that the “good” ultimately prevails. The moment right before the man and the boy find an abundance of food, the man tells the boy, “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up”. The idea of the “good guys” is present throughout this novel, but the man nor the boy had yet to see evidence of another “good” survivor until the man had already been deceased. While McCarthy overwhelms The Road with imagery of a vast, barren wasteland ridden with evil, there is always a sense of hope and optimism …show more content…
After the man and the boy find the cannibal house, the boy questions, “We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”. The boy is then reminded they are “the good guys” and are “carrying the fire”. The fire represents the the metaphorical “flame” inside both characters to survive. The flame ignites their desire to live and persevere through hardships together, as “the good guys”. The man soon becomes sick, and in his last moments he talks to the boy about the little boy they found on the road earlier. The boy wonders if the little boy is lost and “who will find him if he’s lost?”, while the man restores hope by saying that the “goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again”. However, the man is not talking about the little boy, but about his own child instead. As the man speaks of goodness finding the little boy even in the darkest of times, he hopes the boy will reflect his message upon himself after the man perishes. The man’s life finally comes to an end, while the boy is lost and without hope, until he found a man that “was dressed in a gray and yellow ski
He always wants to help someone else in need before himself, whereas the father is only concerned about their own personal wellbeings. He “is the one” who worries about their ethical choices and wants to help a stranger in any way he can (259). McCarthy proves the importance of the boy’s spirit of love for other people when his dad dies and he must take the leap of faith to continue along the road with a new family. Despite all the corrupted people they encountered beforehand, the boy meets someone who is “carrying the fire” (129). This mantra by the father and son, symbolizes hope and humanity. The qualities Steinbeck labels for a writer to create in his writings can be summed up in “carrying the fire” since the two never did give up. It is the greatness of the heart and spirit Steinbeck notes that is “inside [them]. [And] [i]t [is] always there” (279). It is noteworthy that even in the midst of death and ashes, the two are able to hold onto their relationship and sanity. The “good guys” can continue to carry meaning and structure in their lives, even in a time where society turned into a battle to survive on the remnants of
When the man and boy meet people on the road, the boy has sympathy for them, but his father is more concerned with keeping them both alive. The boy is able to get his father to show kindness to the strangers (McCarthy), however reluctantly the kindness is given. The boy’s main concern is to be a good guy. Being the good guy is one of the major reasons the boy has for continuing down the road with his father. He does not see there is much of a point to life if he is not helping other people. The boy wants to be sure he and his father help people and continue to carry the fire. The boy is the man’s strength and therefore courage, but the man does not know how the boy worries about him how the boy’s will to live depends so much on his
The Road, a post-apocalyptic, survival skills fiction book written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006 is part of the Oprah Winfrey book club. During an interview with Oprah, McCarthy answered questions about The Road that he had never been asked before because pervious to the interview he had never been interviewed. Oprah asked what inspired the heart breaking book; it turns out that McCarthy wrote the book after taking a vacation with his son John. While on the vacation he imagined the world fifty years later and seen fire in the distant hills. After the book was finished, McCarthy dedicated it to his son, John. Throughout the book McCarthy included things that he knows he and his son would do and conversations that he thinks they may have had. (Cormac). Some question if the book is worth reading for college course writing classes because of the amount of common writing “rule breaks”. After reading and doing assignments to go along with The Road, I strongly believe that the novel should be required for more college courses such as Writing and Rhetoric II. McCarthy wrote the book in a way to force readers to get out of their comfort zones; the book has a great storyline; so doing the assignments are fairly easy, and embedded in the book are several brilliant survival tactics.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a tale of survival in a dangerous life after war scenario. In this new world things such as morality are almost nonexistent. There are no longer government agencies, such as the police, to inforce the laws. This lead to people choosing to always make the bad decision over the moral option such as robbing someone for their supplies, or murdering someone so they could use them as a food source. The father fell into the category of doing whatever it takes to survive, where he killed and robbed people. The boy on the other hand is always the one who is urging them to do whatever is the ethical choice. The father and son’s voyage across McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic wasteland, the boy emerges as the pure “good guy” because
The Road, a novel written by Cormac McCarthy has many recurring themes throughout the story, and McCarthy effectively develops all these themes through his writing. Of these themes are paternal love, death, and isolation. However, the main theme of this novel is the moral concept of good vs. evil.
The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy outlines the struggles and horrifying events that transpire as main characters, the man and the boy, go on a journey traveling the road, simply trying to survive the post-apocalyptic world they were forced into. The man and the boy encounter terrifying and life-altering events throughout the depressing novel but always veer back onto the road to continue their path and try to continue their lives. As the novel continues the love and care the man has for the boy is evident, which can be seen when the boy is born and the cries of his mother “meant nothing” (59) to the man; his only worry being his boy. McCarthy illustrates the abiding theme of love and care through tactical and precise accounts of
The Road is a novel written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006. It features a man and his son struggling to survive after the world has ended, due to some undisclosed natural disaster, and after his wife committed suicide. After a long journey toward the Southern coast of what used to be America, which featured many days of starvation and often violent encounters with other survivors, the father succumbs to his injuries and his undisclosed illness, leaving the son to struggle on his own. The son is found by a family of good people who decided to care for him in the absence of his father and the book ends here. In The Road, violence occurs in several different ways including, cannibalism, murder, thievery, rape and so forth. Some of those
Throughout The Road, the man and the boy constantly refer to themselves as “good guys” who would never even entertain the notion of cannibalism. The boy is very concerned with being a “good guy,” asking “Are we still the good guys?” after the father kills the man who tries to hurt the boy (McCarthy 77). The “bad guys” in the novel have seemingly lost what we consider to be their humanity. In real life, we can view the “good guys” as the people fighting to protect the environment, much like the man fights to protect the boy. The “bad guys” can be seen as a symbol for those who do not care for the environment and instead use it fulfill their own needs, much like the “bad guys” in the book only are concerned with their own survival. Much of McCarthy’s word choice seems to reflect a struggle between morality and immorality, much like humanity struggles with the morality of what we have done to the planet and where we go from
Penelope Word once said, “Love cannot exist without fear.” In other words, when an individual experiences the power of love, they are almost guaranteed to face the fear that comes along with it. One can perhaps argue that love and fear are the of the two most powerful emotions, and their ability to influence one's actions is like no other. Cormac McCarthy considers this idea in his novel The Road and reveals the twisted relationship between love, fear, and desperation in a dystopian society. Throughout the novel, it is clear to see that McCarthy attempts to portray love as an all-powerful emotion that leads to desperation and fear based on an analysis of the man’s relationship with the boy and his wife.
Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptical novel The Road tells the fascinating story of a father and son’s journey for survival. Throughout The Road, McCarthy explores many different themes and issues which help to portray the father and son’s journey. Among these themes included are; ‘good versus evil’, ‘paternal love’, ‘death’ and ‘survival’. The Road is one of McCarthy’s most personal and heart breaking novels with trust playing a significant part as the father and son battle for survival. From the beginning of the novel were are aware of the post-apocalyptical world in which the protagonists travel through, however McCarthy does not give us details of the event which destroyed almost all of life on earth. Two important issues in The Road is
In the novel “The Road” a man and his son fight for their survival on an ash covered wasteland of what is left of earth after what is thought to be an apocalypse. On their journey traveling south on the road, they search for any food and supplies they can find, while taking shelter anywhere that seems safe. After this apocalypse, much of the human race has lost their sense of right and wrong. This has led people to murder, stealing, and even cannibalism. Unlike these savage people, the man has held onto what he believes are good morals. Knowing the importance of these morals he raises his son to live by them as well. In doing so, the man calls himself and his son the “good guys” and anyone that doesn’t follow these morals the “bad guys”.
According to the critics of Rotten Tomato (2009), “The (movie) Road's commitment to Cormac McCarthy's dark vision may prove too unyielding for some”. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and portrays how humans have taken a horrific turn by losing morals and traditional values. A world of destruction sometimes leads individuals to (essentially) lose their humanity.
The structure and language used is essential in depicting the effect that the need for survival has had upon both The Man and The Boy in The Road. The novel begins in media res, meaning in the middle of things. Because the plot isn’t typically panned out, the reader is left feeling similar to the characters: weary, wondering where the end is, and what is going to happen. McCarthy ensures the language is minimalistic throughout, illustrating the bleak nature of the post-apocalyptic setting and showing the detachment that the characters have from any sort of civilisation. Vivid imagery is important in The Road, to construct a portrait in the reader's mind that is filled with hopelessness, convincing us to accept that daily survival is the only practical option. He employs effective use of indirect discourse marker, so we feel as if we are in the man’s thought. The reader is provided with such intense descriptions of the bleak landscape to offer a feeling of truly seeing the need for survival both The Man and The Boy have. The reader feels no sense of closu...
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author makes various references to the Bible and to religion. Those references also can be compared on how they have changed the way of humans in real life. Along with how the boy maintains his innocence throughout this whole book even when he witnessed events that could’ve changed him. The man tried to the best of his abilities to preserve the innocence of the boy. Through all of the obstacles that they both faced, the man managed to keep the boy safe and even in his last moments he was sure that he taught his boy how to tell when people were good.
In the Novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, survival becomes the biggest quest to life. The novel is set to be as a scene of isolation and banishment from people and places. The author uses the hidden woods as a set of isolation for the characters, in which creates the suspense of traveling to an unspecified destination near the shore. Cormac McCarthy creates a novel on the depth of an imaginative journey, which leads to a road of intensity and despair. The journey to move forward in an apocalyptic world transforms both of the main characters father and son tremendously as time progress. In particular, the boys’ isolation takes him from hope to torment, making him become fearful and imaginative. The images indicate that McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel relies on images, particular verbal choices, and truthful evidence to how isolation affected the son emotionally and physically.