“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
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1. “The Road” is the story of an unnamed father and son on a journey towards the coast, which they see as a last refuge of hope. The post-apocalyptic world that they find themselves in is harsh and unforgiving, all they have is a gun with three bullet, a little bit of supplies and each other. On the trail they see the “bad people;” slavers and marauders who are trying to take advantage of each the people around them. They have to always be cautious in their travels towards the coast, but they eventually make it, and when they do it isn’t what they expected. It’s just as bleak and desolate as the rest, and shortly after reaching there the father died from illness mixed with physical injury. This leaves the boy with no hope, unsure of what to do he sits by his father’s dead body for fays until he is found by a man who says he will take him into his company of wanderers.
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2. The theme is about good vs. evil. The man and his son are like the last bastion of goodness that is left in the world. Everything around them has succumbed to the world around them. Cannibals, slavers and marauders are what they have to assume people are, and they struggle to even find food. But they don’t give in and eat others, or steal things or people. They try and stay as honest as they can in their attempt to survive in the post-apocalyptic world.
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3.The tone in this novel is one of hopelessness. Even when the father is telling his son that they will get through it, sometimes even he doubts their chances in his mind. The writing makes the entire story feel empty and as though the man and son and just delaying the inevitable.
“When were all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say; Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?” This quote talks about how soon everyone will be gone, even death will be lost and hopeless.
“Do you think your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in the ledger book? Against what? There is no book and you fathers are dead in the ground.” This quote shows the man and how all his hope in even the divine is lost. The writing itself is so harsh and extreme that a looming hopelessness is left after reading it. “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.” Here McCarthy does a lot with one line. The isolation that the man feels, the devastation the world has endured and the hopelessness that was left behind.
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4. “The Road” uses many literary elements and techniques to create the gloomy and hopeless world that was so effectively captured; and show the struggle between good and evil. The syntax used, setting, imagery, symbolism and use of similes.
“He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast.” Here we see how McCarthy uses imagery to really give the reader a vivid image of the simple action of the man waking up. At the end of the quote we also see a simile that refers to the bible, this reference brought to us by the simile, shows how the world has become a place terrible enough to discourage anyone. The image of there no light in the sky and the reference showing how they’re like biblical figures, swallowed up in this new apocalyptic world help to convey the tone of hopelessness that is prevalent in this book.
“Look at me, the man said.
He turned and looked. He looked like he’d been crying.
Just tell me.
We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving.
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t
I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving.
But we wouldn’t
No. We wouldn’t.
No matter what.
No. No matter what
Because were the good guys.
Yes
And were carrying the fire.
And were carrying the fire. Yes
Okay” Here we see the boy wrestling again with morality and where they fall in the world. The imaginary fire that he is so concerned about seems to be one of the more important symbols in the book. It symbolizes love and goodness, something that seems to be all but lost to everyone but the man and his son. The words used here are very simple and to the point, but they’re dealing with a very complex issue. Good vs. evil is easy to notice as being important when the boy begins to think, why aren’t we like them if were in the same situation, what makes us different?
“He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of floating cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small penknife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.”
This quote very effectively shows the eeriness and emptiness of the setting; there is no hope in this quote. Whenever the setting is described, it is about how it is dead, grey and ashy; the setting really contributes to why hopelessness is what is felt while the book is being read. Everything is gone, it is a struggle to survive and everything is hostile.
