Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

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In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, a man and his son journey across a post-apocalyptic terrain in search of a place in the south that is more suitable for life. Their travels highlight their struggles and the evils they face in this post-apocalyptic society. For example, the man and the boy must constantly search for food in a dead world that only has a limited amount of food left, and if they stop searching or do not find anything, they will surely die. They must also run from the “bad people” who enslave, prostitute, and eat people. Because there are so many “bad guys” out there, the man trusts no one on the road, and he tries to avoid other humans as much as he possibly can. The boy is extremely trusting, and he wants to help everyone …show more content…

The narration even says, “If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). The man has gone through a lot in his lifetime, and because he has been living in this post-apocalyptic society, he has seen the absolute worst in people, which has shaken his faith. Everyone they meet on the road is corrupted in some way. Some people eat other people in order to thrive in this dying world, while others steal from desperate people to keep moving on. Either way, the man has only seen people motivated by personal gain except for the boy. The boy preforms selfless acts for others out of the goodness of his heart, and it greatly saddens him when he cannot help other people. The boy is the last thing in the world that he perceives as good, so he places his child on a pedestal. He is saying that if the boy is not the physical embodiment of Christ, then God simply does not exist. The article “God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's The Road” by Erik J. Weilenberg brings attention to this idea when he states, “The man’s declaration is that either his son is the word of God, or all practical purposes, the Universe is a godless one” (Weilenberg

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