Sacrifice In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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When a child is born in a post-apocalyptic world, what is one to do? Leave the baby behind, kill it, raise it as well as one possibly can under the arduous circumstances? In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, two parents are faced with the birth of their son, and how to keep him alive for as long as they can. Family, starvation, illness, and death all play a role in the parents’ ultimate sacrifice to ensure their son’s ability to survive in the post-apocalyptic world around them.
During the hard times of the apocalypse, the family from The Road completely fell apart. One of the sacrifices the parents make for their son is their family. Between the hazardous conditions of the now post-apocalyptic world, as well as the birth of their son, the family’s unraveling was inevitable. In order to provide efficient care for the boy, they had to let one another …show more content…

Luckily, the boy is spotted by a family who cajoled him into coming with them by telling him they’re also the good guys. The boy decided to go with the family in order to continue to “carry the fire” for his parents. This shows that the boy possibly inherited the man’s will to survive (Collado-Rodriguez, paragraph 10). Considering the new family have a deference for the boy’s feelings about his loss, the let him talk to his father instead of pray. This makes the boy feel a bit more comfortable with them, and leads the reader to wonder how far they will be able to go. The man kept the boy alive through the cannibalism, fire, and ice in the world, but now the boy’s survival depends on the new family (William, paragraph 6). Due to the fact that they have their own children to worry about, it is hard to tell if they’ll be willing to sacrifice as much for him as they will their own kids. However, McCarthy finished the book on a very optimistic look for the boy. It seems as if he’s going to be able to live on and possibly rebuild the new

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