Throughout The Road by Cormac McCarthy the father insists that the journey along the road is one he and his son must make alone, for trusting strangers is too risky when they have no way of knowing the good people from the bad. In my essay I will discuss if it is worth risking everything for a chance to make their lives better. I will determine this by examining the kinds of risks taken (and not taken) throughout the book, and by looking at what influenced the decision to take or not take those risks. I will conclude that the father and son must risk contact with others because it is their only hope for changing their current doomed fate.
The characters in The Road encounter various situations where they must decide if taking a risk is worth the possible reward. One of the most evident risks taken in this book is when the father and son go looking in houses for food and other supplies. When the they decide to break open the locked door in the basement of a house that appears abandoned (McCarthy 110) they discover not food, but people living as cannibals; desperate for help. In this situation the risk was most definitely not worth the reward, for they received nothing in return for this risk and nearly got themselves killed in an attempt to escape. However, not much later in the book they choose to risk the same fate when they come across another house that appears to be abandoned. This time the result is extremely positive and they acquire more food and supplies than they have seen in a very long time (McCarthy 138). Without this food the father and son would not have been able to live for very long. Although this same risk caused so much trouble the first time it was taken, it proved to be essential for survival the second time...
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... important that one is aware of how their emotions play a role in how they make decisions in a risky environment, and that they try to make those decisions as objectively as possible. In order for the father and son to continue to “carry the fire” they must find others who are making the same journey as them to share their fire with so that the fire may spread and become a greater light in the post apocalyptic world they are faced with.
Works Cited
Graupmann, Verena, Ralph Erber, and Jennifer Poe. “Affect Regulation and Decision Making: Risk as a Social Constraint.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology. 33.1 (2011): 16-23. Web.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage International, 2006. Print.
Rambo, Shelly L. “Beyond Redemption?: Reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” After The End of the World.” Studies in the Literary Imagination. 41.2 (2008): 99. Web.
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In the post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a man and his son travel south through the ruins and ash of their demolished home. Crippled by fear, starvation, and loneliness, the man and his son struggle to maintain physical, mental, and emotion health. Throughout the novel, the characters remain unnamed, with little description of their physical appearance. The man shares all of his beliefs, memories, qualms, and feelings through his thoughts and conversations with the boy. The man has many compelling convictions referencing The Holy Bible and his unwavering belief in God. However, these accounts often contradict each other. Throughout the novel, the existence of God is indefinite. The ambiguity of the novel relates to the ambiguity of God’s existence; the characters are left in the dark about what is to come throughout their journey, just as they are left to wonder whether God’s light is illuminated or diminished among the wreckage of their forgotten world.
To do this, McCarthy did not designate the characters in his book with names, and because of this, I was able to connect with “the man” and “the boy” on a personal level and envision myself uniting with them in their chilling journey. As the reader, I was deeply overwhelmed with many mixed emotions such as compassion, sadness, happiness, disgust, remorse, and fear. I have pity for the characters in the book The Road, because “the man” and “the boy” have to pass day to day struggling to survive in a frigid, bleak world where food is scarce “They squatted on the road and ate rice and cold beans they’d cooked days ago.” “Already beginning to ferment. ”(McCarthy 29).
The boy constantly begs his father to be sympathetic and charitable to the drifters that they encounter on the road, but the father usually refuses or either puts up an argument before finally giving into the boy, and handing over one or two cans of food to the stranger. Although “the man” is in survival mode, he expresses no compassion for humanity and therefore represents “the bad guys”. “They came upon him shuffling along the road before them, dragging one leg slightly and stopping from time to time to stand stooped and uncertain before setting out again.”(McCarthy 49). “They followed him a good ways but at his pace they were losing the day and finally he just sat down in the road and did not get up again.”(McCarthy 49). “He was burntlooking as the country, his clothing scorched and black.” “One of his eyes was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull.”(McCarthy 49, 50). “What is wrong with the man?” “He’s been struck by lightning.” “Can’t we help him?” “Papa?” “No.” “We cant help him.” “The boy kept pulling at his coat.” “Papa?” “Stop it.” “Cant we help him Papa?” “No.” “We can’t help him.” “There’s nothing to be done for him.” “They went on. “The boy was crying” “He kept looking back.” (McCarthy 50). I was agitated with “the man” during this part of the novel, because I feel that he should have at least stopped and checked on the fee...
The conflict through the duration of The Road has been survival. The man has always known he was going to die, but the man never gave up because he had to keep his son alive. In this final section of the novel, the man finally accepts that he is going to die. After being shot with an arrow the man’s health rapidly deteriorates even more than it has. The father and son switch rolls in this final section of the book. The boy starts caring for his father as he approaches death. Now the boy’s main concern is his father’s health. This transaction of responsibility shows that the boy has grown and become more mature. McCarthy’s use of foreshadowing the man’s death built up throughout the book, and it made the audience believe that the man would finally die of his mysterious sickness.
The next level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is safety. Safety is a huge concern in modern society, almost every aspect of life is determined by the level of safety. In the post-apocalyptic world of The Road, safety is seen very little. The man and the boy attempt to be as safe as possible, but in a world with no social order it is basically impossible. Though they did experience very few instances of comfort in safety, they were consistently striving to search for
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 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.
At first the relationship between a father and his son can be perceived as a simple companionship. However, this bond can potentially evolve into more of a dynamic fitting relationship. In The Road The Man and his son have to depend on one another because they each hold a piece of each other. The Man holds his sons sense of adulthood while the son posses his father’s innocence. This reliance between the father and son create a relationship where they need each other in order to stay alive. “The boy was all that stood between him and death.” (McCarthy 29) It is evident that without a reason to live, in this case his son, The Man has no motivation to continue living his life. It essentially proves how the boy needs his father to love and protect him, while the father needs the boy to fuel ...