In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, an unnamed father and son make their way across the desolate, ash-covered southern United States with only sparse resources and their hope keeping them alive and moving. Through trials and tribulations both the father and son come to maintain a certain idea of humanity and ethics, and though the father wavers at points, the son corrects him and they continue to “Carry the fire.” of humanity. The book ends with the father dying, and after staying with the body for three days, the son is met by a group of travellers who take him in and continue their journey with him, keeping the proverbial fire alive for the foreseeable future. Through symbolism like the aforementioned three days spent with the corpse of the father, and direct statements by characters, McCarthy clearly intends for God to be a large thematic element of the story, and through the somber and melancholic tones of the novel, offers an ending full of hope, not just for the son, but for humanity as a sort of rebirth, similar to the cleansing of sin from the world through Jesus’ sacrifice. …show more content…
I was appointed to do that by God,”(McCarthy 77). The Father’s role as protector of not only the son and their ethics, such as not eating people, but humanity and civilization that both ultimately represent can make the father out to be a martyr figure, with many attributes similar to Jesus. The most compelling of these is in the very end of the novel with the father’s death. After succumbing to his injuries and illness, the father finally dies in the night with the boy next to him. The boy spends three days with the body, directly referencing the resurrection of Christ. After the father has died, the boy can now live in a new world, without his father in the literal sense, but with his father’s spirit always with
Throughout the novel the father's love for his son pushes him to protect him no matter the risks. For example in the novel many times the two would go to an abandoned house
An example of this scenario is when they find abandoned properties and the boy warns his father about going inside of homes and exploring the different rooms including a basement that held people captive and abused. Pizzino agrees with the idea of the boy being a messiah who looks out for his father’s best interest when stating, “the boy’s existence is an equivocal good, and that anything done in the service of this good has divine “warrant””(361). In making this statement, Pizzino insists that the boy is a considered an authority figure who allows the permission of specific events. The author of this article also reminds his audience that the only company the man and boy have is each other. McCarthy provides more information when he writes, “He knew only that the child was his warrant.
It seems that there is no reason to keep surviving in a world which no hopes remain, a father still perseveres to survive with his son and they are sustained by their love. On their journey, the father sacrifices a lot to protect his son and strongly shows his parental love. In this book, the father and the son have great
The thrilling novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a story about a post apocalyptic world following the lives of a man and a boy as they head south to escape the cold winter that is headed their way. Along with the cold of winter approaching they also have to deal with the new dangers of the land while traveling such as cannibals, robbers, and many more dangers. This is a tale of a unnamed man and a boy who must not only learn how to survive but find a inner “fire”, establish a code of ethic, and continue in finding reasons to live in this “new world”. With McCarthy’s unique approach to the characters of the book having no names or the cause of destruction of the world unknown it helps the reader feel the confusion and whats really important
The father’s wife had recently died, leaving him with the boy to take care of with the only mindset of keeping him alive, doing anything for their survival. This affected the father in a big way, leaving him with little hope and hardly any reason to stay alive, but the boy was “his warrant” (McCarthy 5) , his only reason for life. The boy starts out very scared and weak, always wanting to hide behind his father, knowing that one day he will die. The boy matures with every event that happens, and he maintains to have hope throughout most of them. “The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.
As the man was drying off his son’s hair by the fire, he thought it was all “like some ancient anointing,” why not “evoke the forms” and “construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them,” showing how the man identifies his son as sacred (McCarthy 74). The simile compares the man’s actions to that of an ancient anointing, in which his son is the one being blessed. This passage demonstrates how the father maintains some belief in religion and equates both beauty and piety to his son. For the man, the boy represents something sacred that creates an incentive for the him to keep living, if only to protect the boy. The man “sat beside him and stroked his hair.
Annotated Bibliography McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print. The Road is set in a grim atmosphere.
From beginning to end, the son calls his father “Baba” to show his affection and admiration. Despite the father’s inability to come up with a new story, the son still looks up to him. This affectionate term also contrasts with the father’s vision of the “boy packing his shirts [and] looking for his keys,” which accentuates the undying love between the father and son (15 & 16) . The father’s emotional “screams” also emphasize his fear of disappointing the son he loves so much (17). Despite the father’s agonizing visions, the son remains patient and continues to ask for a story, and their relationship remains “emotional” and “earthly”--nothing has changed (20-21).
In the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and his son struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Told through a lens of constant hardship, the book follows their arduous journey towards a coast in order to survive the winter. Throughout the novel, McCarthy shows that having hope enables people to persevere in dire circumstances because it counteracts the possibility of negative outcomes. First, the woman’s monologue about her death displays the despair necessary to abandon all hope.
In Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road, the boy and the man are always aware of the fact that they could die at any time. Throughout the majority of the book, the man’s overarching goal is to make sure that if when he dies, the boy will have the tools to survive on his own, However, in the beginning of the book, the man’s views on death are very different. He originally believes that neither one of them would be able to survive without the other, stating that if the boy died he “would want die too” and asking himself if he can kill [the boy] when the time comes for his own death (11, 29). Similarly, the boy has an uncharacteristic view of death for a young child, stating that he wishes he “was with [his] mom”, who viewed death as a “lover”, and has
The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, is a novel that follows the journey of a father and son traveling south to escape the post-apocalyptic scene they were unfortunately put in. The father and son are survivors of some unnamed disaster that has occurred. As time passes by there is less and less food. There is also a lack of plants and animals. Other than scavenging for food, the only means of survival for some is cannibalism.
Fear eventually catches up to them because what the father had been afraid of since the beginning has finally come. He dies, leaving the boy to fend on his own. Mccarthy concluded his novel with a tragic ending filled with gloom and
This action shows that the boy obviously misses his father and wants him to come back. He had no one else and now is all alone in the world. The boy is sad because his father died, but also because of his desolation from life. The boy is so secluded from life, he weeps for his
Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.
Cormac McCarthy’s novel ,Child of God, is the tale of a violent, dispossessed man living on the outskirts of society. Set in 1960s rural Tennessee, the novel focuses on the life of Lester Ballard, a murdering necrophiliac who seemingly only follows his own rules. Ballard is represented as a despicable, unhuman character, who apparently is, “A child of God much like yourself perhaps” (4). While Ballard repeatedly commits evil acts, one cannot help but find a soft spot for this man who was unloved as child and seems to be a product of his cruel environment. On the surface, Ballard’s actions make him seem alien to “us” (society) but to delve deeper, one discovers a true understanding of Lester Ballard.