Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

The life of “the boy” and “the man/papa” has become a journey overall to find a home, one they can settle down on and not worry about the next source of food or water. By applying Thomas C. Foster’s literary criticism How To Read Literature Like A Professor into the context of The Road it is clearly evident that the journey the boy and the man/papa is on, is a quest. “A quest, consisting of five key aspects “(a) quester,(b) a place to go,(c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there” (3) The boy and the man/papa are the questors, who are craving to find the remaining good people in the world. They’re journey is filled with obstacles presented by the thieves and “bad guys” who are initially the cannibals. However as they surpass each obstacle, as they find a new source for food, and as they find shelter for the night, they grow as a person, especially the boy who has to witness only evil within the human heart. Their goal is an undefined location, but the journey becomes more important, and the roads become the platform of their challenges. As the boy and the man carry forth with their journey, the fear of the corruption of the world enveloping them exists. As the boy tells, “Are we still the good guys? he said. [The Man:] Yes. We're still the good guys.[The Boy:] And we always will be.[The Man:] Yes. We always will be. [The Boy:] Okay.”(McCarthy 120). Because the journey to the destination held so many

It is these extreme behaviours, which challenge and contradict the values that most individuals have been taught from the very beginning. The values the boy must carry into the future. After the mother’s death, all that stands between him and death is his father’s light. It is this light at the end of the tunnel, which allows the man to continue his quest. Despite all the wrong deeds occurring around the world, the boy progresses through his quest whilst also upholding his values such as dignity, perseverance, justice and faith. But it is a greater story of survival, it is the story of the world surviving with the morals, beliefs and laws that are at risk of losing. This concept of the story profoundly confronts my values and how others reject them for their own survival at any cost. Having experienced the environments of a refugee camp, if people were to abandon their values and beliefs just as the characters in The Road, then there would be no hope or future left for them to look forward to.

Cormac McCarthy’s brain child “The Road” is a postapocalyptic novel that illustrates the harsh reality of the world. This story serves as a truth that humans, when stripped of their humanity will take desperate measures in order to survive. The reader learns; however even when it seems all hope is lost good can still be found in the world. The son character of this story illuminates this philosophy. He is a foil of his father and shows how even a person never accustomed to the luxury of a normal life can still see goodness.

When he sees the one that has taken care of him for so long, sacrificing everything for him, using everything in his power to keep his son alive and well, the son breaks down into tears and tells his father “to take [him] with [the father]” (pg. 279). This is when the boy finally realizes that he has been the center of attention to his father and though he passes away, the boy continues to talk to the man in his own way. The boy’s appreciation goes beyond the physical things that his father could supply him and goes further into all the memories of his father. While both the boy and the man appreciate each other, they also appreciate the most basic of necessities: food. The duo go days on end without any food and whatever they can find is relished.

In the beginning of The Road, the boy undoubtedly trusts and depends on his father. Throughout the journey, the boy begins to question if his father is really telling the truth, and he begins to tell when his father is lying. For example, the man would tell the boy stories and in the beginning, he enjoyed listening to them, but at the end of the novel, he didn't want to hear them because he thought they were lies. Also, the boy at the end of the novel does not rely on his father, as he is able to move on from the man dying. Both of these changes show the boy’s opinion and character transformation that relied on the journey in The Road.

Both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Empties by Jess Row are apocalyptic stories that describe the state of human civilization after the annihilation of civil society. Whereas in The Road civil society is destroyed and remains defunct after the apocalypse, The Empties tells of a people who are able to bounce back and reestablish their society. Many people today live their lives aimlessly, squandering their time day by day, partaking in life’s pleasures, and living for their own selfish reasons. McCarthy and Row bring attention to the selfishness and self-absorption that plagues today’s teens by showing two different possible scenarios following an apocalyptic event, resulting from a fundamental difference

In the story The Road, there are two main characters. One is The Man and the other character is The Boy. The Man is the father of The Boy, who was born in a post apocalyptic world. The Man constantly faces many conflicts throughout the story, such as man against nature, man against man, and man against self. However, throughout the entire story he is able to overcome these conflicts for his sake and that of his son. One of the most difficult tasks the man has throughout the story is taking care of his son. The author reveals the death of the boy’s mom in many flashbacks. For example, when the boy tells his father, “I wish I was with my mom,” and the dad responds, “You mean you wish you were dead,” (McCarthy 49). The mom was not able to cope with the situation and committed suicide. This was very tough on The Man, however he was strong for his son. The man believes God appointed him to get his son through the tough times. He says, “ I was appointed to do that by God,” (McCarthy 66). The Man is shown to be very brave for himself and his son in every circumstance. He is able to cope very well with the setting. Overall, The Man is shown as a brave, loving, and compassionate

We often consider the world to be filled with core truths, such as how people should act or what constitutes a good or bad action. In The Road, McCarthy directly challenges those preconceptions by making us question the actions of the characters and injecting a healthy dose of uncertainty into the heroes’ situation. From the very beginning, the characters and their location remain ambiguous. This is done so that the characters are purposely anonymous, amorphously adopting all people. While on the road, the order of the day is unpredictability; whether they find a horde of road-savages or supplies necessary for his son’s survival is impossible to foretell. While traveling, the boy frequently asks “are we the good guy” and the father always replies with “yes” or “of course,” but as the story progresses this comes into question.

The father and the boy have a co-dependant relationship. The boy is dependent on his father for survival, while the father lives to ensure the survival of the boy. When the boy asks “What would you do if I died?” The father responds with, “If you died I would want to die too” (McCarthy, 11). It is clear that his love for the child is what motivates him to do everything he can to ensure the boys survival. This motivates him to teach the boy strong morals and skills to help him live as a “good guy.” After finding and humiliating the thief that stole all their belongings, the father and son

The boy is very warm-hearted and appears to struggle to understand that danger could occur at any moment, whilst his father knows a lot more about what some people, “the bad guys”, do in order to survive. It could be seen that the child is very naive and therefore trusts others more than his father. However his trust in others teaches his father a valuable lesson; that not everyone is a “bad guy”. For instance when the pair come across Ely, the father is wary about him but his son is adamant that they give him a tin of food. This shows to readers that the boy has faith unlike his father. Another example is when the son sees the little boy; he begs his father to go back and help him and asks if he can go with them. I believe that he wants to help others as

Another example of the son showing compassion is when he finds a little boy. The boy finds a little, lonely boy and tells his father about it. He mentions that he is “afraid for that little boy…We should go get him, Papa” (86). He cares about the other boy and does not want him to die. He suggests going back to get him because he cares for him.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy details a post-apocalyptic world with mysterious origins. While there are many questions about this world, the reader is left to their own imagination to determine how it got that way. Within this world, there is a man and a boy, father and son trying to make their way and survive until they can find a safe haven that may or may not exist. The see many things along the way and the man instills in the boy that it is important to remain a good guy and always “carry the fire”. Carrying the fire refers to the light inside of you that makes you who you are and may also carry the “goodness” of human nature. Inevitably, the man meets his fate via a mysterious illness leaving the boy on his own. The boy is then introduced to a family that has been following them knowing that the man was not well and the boy would need someone to look after him.

One thing that remains constant in the ever-changing world of Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel The Road is the relationship between The Man and The Boy. The father and son’s bond is extremely close, especially due to the isolation they face on The Road, but it is filled with love and endearment, like someone would expect any relationship between a father and son to be.

The boy who travels with his father finds purpose to survive in believing that they will one day find the good guys. In this he believes that they themselves carry the torch of being the good guys and finds hope in that. Throughout the novel, the boy expresses his heart for helping others several times when he gives an old scraggly man on the road a can of peaches, pleading to help a man who got struck by lightning, and by being worried about a boy who was alone they had passed on the road. The boy evidently through his actions expresses a need to help others. When the boy spotted another little boy from the road, he ran over to where he had seen him and searched for him. When the Father saw that the boy ran off, he grabbed the boy by the arm and said “‘Come on. There’s no one to see. Do you want to die? Is that what you want?’” Sobbing, the boy replied, “I don’t care, I don’t care” (85). The boy sees the little boy as alone with nothing and he feels like it is his responsibility to his own

Due to the popularity of the book, many people commented on it and so there are many different ideas, which can be view differently according to the readers' own judgement. " The boy is after all doing what is required of human being to do: he is growing up, going away, making