The Road Nature Vs Nurture Essay

For centuries, people have been arguing over what makes someone who they are. Is it just human nature or is it nurture? In The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a father and his son are living in a world where society has collapsed, and the lack of a structured society sets up the perfect experiment to test whether nature or nurture shapes the personality of a person. Throughout the book, the father tells his son stories that contain morals, encourages his son to carry the fire, and talks to his son about ethics. These interactions between father and son show that McCarthy believes that nurture wins in the common argument of nature versus nurture.

Like the argument nature versus nurture, people have been telling stories for years, all the way back to the stone ages. Stories are the way people communicated the news and passed lessons from family

Throughout the novel the father makes the fire seem powerful, and discusses it like a divine being, and so the boy starts to think of it that way. The boy says to his father, "And nothing bad is going to happen to us. That's right. Because we're carrying the fire" ( 83). In this context ,“carrying the fire” can be understood as," the people chosen by God to carry the light on through the darkness, to preserve humanity within as examples" (Guo). This makes the boy feel as though it his job to be an example of a good human, which then in turn makes him act accordingly. This is a form a nurture because it is the father's encouragement that makes the son act in a manner that preserves the example of humanity. This lesson follows the boy throughout the novel even after his father has died when he asks the man, "[a]re you carrying the fire?" (283). In this case, the fire is, "a metaphor for the practice of civility and ethics” (Cooper). Because of the way the father raises his son, the boy searches for others who are following the civil ways of