The Road By Gitta Sereny: An Analysis

“If morality is extinguished, there is no human being left,” Gitta Sereny answered, when asked about her personal beliefs on human morals. Sereny, a famous journalist and writer, was famous for her outlook and interviews on controversial people, including a child murderer of the 60s, Mary Bell. Bell was only eleven years old when she took the lives of two toddler aged boys. Sereny was an expert of Mary Bell’s case, a girl who seemed to have no care of other humans. She noted how a person with no morality behaved, resulting in the previous quote. The Road by Cormac McCarthy demonstrates to readers the same general perception, and displays just how much an inadequacy of morality can transform a person, or a world, for the worse. Like Sereny, the audience of The Road experiences the changes of people who have no morality, and one cannot help but question the beliefs previously strongly accepted before taking a gander at its pages. For example, we see early on in The Road, the resilience of trust in other humans, and rightfully so. People in this book have proved over, and over again, to be nothing but concern for the boy and his father. They encounter a shady old man who, despite being friendly to, lies about being much older than he actually is. The Father denounces him on his lie, but the

At what point does survival trump morality? Are the choices we make, the right ones? How strongly do those choices impact others? And how dreadful does life have to become to lose faith in a higher power? While McCarthy hints answers to some of these questions through the character’s actions and thoughts, he mostly leaves it up to the reader’s decision. McCarthy is effective with this writing technique, with the lack of answers and the overpowering love in the father/son relationship, his readers all left pondering and buzzing from an exceptionally well written