Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and the boy live in a post-apocalyptic world in which fire has destroyed much of the landscape leaving forests and cities in ash and ruins. They spend a majority of their days trekking a southbound road, and throughout their journey on the road, they are unremittingly challenged by their environment. The threat of cannibals capturing them, the possibility of hypothermia, and imminent starvation are constant terrors. Each trial they face is met with the man’s constant attempts to encourage the boy. Due to the troubles they face and the security they lack, it is difficult for the man to keep the faith to continue on their journey. Because of the many mentions in the novel, the man and boy’s recognition of an omniscient being is proof they rely on a god to be their motivation and the man’s hope for the future is fueled by a higher power acting as their guiding light.

In McCarthy’s novel The Road, the protagonists’ actions are governed by an unspecified moral code. Morality is the understanding of right and wrong behavior, and, due to its universal meaning, it is an idea that has not been created by humans. Morality is best justified as a spiritual connection to a higher power. It is this higher power that has instilled in the man and the boy what is

acceptable behavior in their time of desperation. It is a spiritual connection that guides acceptable behavior; the internal fire that is guiding the man and the boy can only be the result of a higher being initiating a spiritual connection.
The first spoken words in McCarthy’s novel point to the man’s belief of a higher being existing in his universe. He says, “If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5). The man believes if his son had not been created by a god then everything had come into being without a god. Wielenberg explains in his article, “God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road,” the god depicted in the book of Genesis is a god that creates through speech (1). Had the god not spoken, nothing would have been created because Wielenberg says, “a God that does not speak is a God that does not create” (Wielenberg 1). Therefore, the man merely agrees that, if a god existed but did not speak and therefore did not create, his son would not have come from a god.
Consistently throughout The Road, the man and boy mention that they are “carrying the fire,” and they, particularly the boy, believe “carrying the fire” constitutes good morals (McCarthy 128). For example, a conversation takes place between the boy and a man that has come upon him on the road that illustrates the boy’s understanding of morality (McCarthy 283, 284). The boy asks the man if he is “carrying the fire,” and after the man says yes, the boy then asks another question and is almost surprised to find out the man doesn’t eat people. The man demonstrates he and the boy share the same morals and are therefore influenced by the same higher power that instills suitable behavior.
Many Christians would believe the internal fire that guides the man and the boy is what they would refer to as the light of Christ. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was sent down from heaven to be a living sacrifice for the entire world. He was the son of God and his purpose was to live a perfect life and set an example of living through his words and his actions. When he was crucified, God sent the Holy Spirit as a constant reminder of the standard of behavior set by Jesus during his time on Earth. Christians refer to the Holy Spirit as the light of Christ because it acts as a moral compass, influencing and directing the actions of Christians and people everywhere.
As Wielenberg says, “[C]arrying the fire and being a good guy are closely related: only good guys carry the fire” (4). Whereas bad guys steal, lie, break promises, and treat people as food, good guys maintain morale by refraining from those acts. Carrying the fire is synonymous with being guided by the light of Christ, and many Christians would testify in saying Jesus never stole, lied, broke promises or ate people.
In another instance where “carrying the fire” is mentioned, the father and his son have encountered some people being held in an abandoned house, slowly being eaten limb by limb. While the two sit on the side of the road and eat all they have left of some apples, the boy becomes worried they will starve and asks the man if they would ever eat anyone. The man assures the boy that they would never eat anyone, no matter what, because they are “the good guys” and they are “carrying the fire” (McCarthy 128). This proves, through the spiritual connection to a higher being, they have a profound understanding of what is considered right behavior.
Wielenberg explains in his article that not eating people is among other moral codes within the understanding of the man and the boy (4). Another important quality needed to survive the harshness of the road is the unwillingness to give up. The man and the boy face many challenges on the road, but, all the while, the man incessantly inspires the boy to keep his faith and to keep his eyes on the good that will come. The inspiration that the man gives to the boy is not something that he has mustered up himself.
The man doubts the goodness of the higher being (McCarthy 11). One morning, while the boy is sleeping, the man goes off by himself and seemingly prays: “[A]re you there? he whispered. Will I see you at last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.” Although the man has his doubts about the higher being, it does not negate the fact that the higher being is continuously guiding and influencing the man’s decisions.
In his song Don’t Give Up, Seth Dias encourages the listener to not “give up because the faith you lack,” and, in this moment of weakness, the man is angry that his god has not come through in the way that he expected.

The man is crying out to “God,” desperate for him to intervene (McCarthy 12). In the third line of his song, Dias explains to the listener that “he’ll let you bend but not break.” If the higher being that Dias is writing about is the same that governs the moral code in the man’s world, then the god that exists in the man’s universe is allowing for the man and the boy to experience trial but is protecting them from being crippled or torn down by the same

trials.
This raises the question of does the higher power allow for the man and the boy to practice free-will or has it pre-destined all the things that they will experience? If the higher power does not let the man and the boy experience anything that they can’t handle, does that mean that it intervenes to prevent things from straying from a plan that it has set out? And, does that also mean that the god is motivating and encouraging the man to go along with a plan that has been set out for him? As Wielenberg points out on the first page of his article, there are many instances where a higher being seems to have intervened. For example, the man and the boy are starving and running low on supplies when they find a bunker filled with food (McCarthy 138). Later, they are again on the brink of starvation and the boy spots a house in the distance and they find food inside of it (McCarthy 202). Still later, the boy encounters the man on the road after his father dies, giving the boy another chance at survival (McCarthy 281). A pattern of such experiences develops throughout the book, and it is these events that suggest a divine intervention has taken place.
In accordance with the preceding paragraph, another example occurs later in The Road on pages 238 through 240. The man and his son have reached the coastline and have come across an abandoned, shipwrecked boat named “Parajo de Esperanza” (McCarthy 223). The man has spent two to three days strip searching the boat and salvaging any resources he can find. On his final trip aboard the ship, the man finds a flare gun (McCarthy 240). It is not an easy find and, had the man not lingered on the boat just a few moments longer, he would not have found it. The spiritual being that exists in this book is capable of motivating the man and the boy in a wide range of decisions, and the instance that occurs on page 240 is an example of how the spiritual being motivates them even in what seems like the most insignificant of moments.
Despite the many trials they face, the man and boy remain persistent in their state of mind. They choose to act in ways that are filled with morality and good judgement, an antithesis of the choices many people are making in the world around them. The spiritual connection they have to a higher being anchors them in faith and allows them to find encouragement through this higher being.