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Theme Of Isolation In The Road

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In the beginning of the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2000), it starts with a man and his child traveling in the ashen world. They are in the world after mysterious apocalypse happened and there is no sign of life. Each day is just another day of survival for them and their situation is so depressing and hopeless. They are isolated from everything: food source, other good people, safe shelter and even love from their God. Throughout this book, McCarthy develops isolation in characters to reveal the hidden inhumanity of human being. First of all, the road is full of cannibals and roving bands on the road which shows people’s brutality and selfishness appeared for their survivals. In the apocalypse, the isolation from good food sources made …show more content…

Even though the man tell his child that they are the “good guys”, he ignores others who need help. When the man and his child spotted the man who was struck by lightning, the child asked his papa to help him. However the man said to his child, “But we have nothing to give him. We have no way to help him. I’m sorry for what happened to him but we cant fix it” (McCarthy, 50). Because of the isolation from enough foods, the man only thinks about him and his child and even his conscious tells him he should help others, he walks away from them. Furthermore, the papa also threatens, or even kills others who try to harm his child. When stranger on the road tried to hurt the man’s child, the man shoots the stranger. McCarthy depicts, “the man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead” (McCarthy, 66). The isolation from other “good guys” made the man to not hesitate to kill the stranger in front of his child. To sum up, after everything in the world died and survivors were isolated from hope and light, people started to act different as they used to. The author Cormac McCarthy shows how people follow their barbarity and selfishness to survive throughout the book. This also relates to people living now,

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