Analysis Of The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

In The Road, by Cormac McCarthy in 2006, a catastrophe takes over the world and leaves civilization struggling. The book focuses in on the hardships of son and father just trying to make it to the coast. Through their journeys we see the lengths to which people will go to survive, and the man’s determination to do things the right way. They survived on scavenging over the scraps of past society. They kept pushing and found encouragement in the small things. Throughout the book the duo learn that hope strips away troubles in order to instill strength and confidence.
Near the beginning of the book, the man and his son discover a waterfall and stay there to recover. As they come up to the bottom of the waterfall, the author describes their reaction,

“He squatted and scooped up a handful of stones and smelled them and let them fall clattering.

Polished round and smooth as marbles or lozenges of stone veined and striped…. The boy walked out and squatted and laved up the dark water” (McCarthy 38). The pebbles and the waterfall are a symbol of hope for the father and son. The hope is shown in the pebbles by the descriptions of “polished”, “smooth”, “lozenges”, and “bright”. Polished, smooth, and bright convey purity which is sparse in their world. These purities seem to soften the man as he proceeds to play with the boy in the water. The author also writes “laved” as to communicate that the boy regarded the water as hope. The boy had not seen a waterfall before and thus he gently gathered it in his hands in awe. The connotation of laved is gentle and is often used as a purifying or ritualistic cleansing. The boy was almost washing away his worries as he ogled the flowing water. The water was a sign of hope to him that there was something more to life. The

author says the boy “dove headlong” into the water to demonstrate that the water strengthened him and gave him more confidence. The boy was always very purposeful in what he did as well as cautious, questioning everything. When he came up to the water he didn’t worry if he’d drown, he just dove in as if he were called by the water. Confidence is shown in his free leap into the unknown waters. Strength is demonstrated by him swimming through the freezing water, ignoring the limits of his emaciated limbs. Once they dry off they look for food in the woods and find morels:
A small colony of them, shrunken, dried and wrinkled. He picked one and held it up and sniffed it. He bit a piece from the edge and chewed.
What is it, Papa?
Morels. It’s Morels…
The boy smelled the mushroom and bit into it and stood chewing. He looked at his father. These are pretty good, he said. (McCarthy 40)
The morels are a sign of hope to the two as well.

The repetition of “morels” exhibits the man’s excitement and awe towards the mushrooms. The pleasant reaction implies his hope that there is still good in the world that he can strive for. The mushrooms are also a symbol of the man and boy in that they are each their own “colony”. The use of ‘colony” reveals that they can survive and stand their own. The discovery of the morels take away their worries of survival and starvation. The morels are their source of food for the next night and strengthens them on a basic level but also psychologically. Due to their discovery of such pure sources, they gain confidence that they may find more of the past’s presents later on, that they can survive, that there is still more good to live for and look

for.
After they were scarred by the sight of the basement people, the man discovered apples and a cistern and began to focus on survival. When the man found the first apple he “ate it entire, seeds and all” showing that the apple was well needed and that the man was very malnourished. The first apple was a sign of hope, that he would find more food and wouldn’t die in the field with his son. The man proceeded to look for more apples, walking “row by row” until his feet were numbed. The man seemed to have been strengthened by the hope for more apples because he kept pushing until he couldn’t walk any farther.