Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

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Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A Powerful Illustration of Human Morality?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an insightful towards the discussion what makes the human life meaningful. The entire story is set in a destructive world that is “barren, silence and godless” (McCarthy, 4). In such a world, survival has become the important task for human beings. The morality of human is naturally exposed to challenges of survival. There are two possibilities occurred in this desperate world: one is the collapse of human morality due to the survival pressure, and the other is the rediscovery of morality through overcoming difficulties. Through the depiction of the journey of a father and his son, McCarthy argues that although individuals know what it means to be good, the code of the good they find it challenging to be good people in such a harsh environment. In other words, not only survival of human beings depends on the environment, …show more content…

Monbiot argues that “The Road” by McCarthy clearly demonstrates impossibilities to survive or maintain human morality in such a disaster. The argument of McCarthy and the support from Monbiot are partially right. It is a very challengeable task for people to maintain the morality and be merciful. The existence of harsh environment forces people to devote almost entire their efforts to survive. People become reluctant to help others.The father in the The Road story of McCarthy is a good example to support the vanishing of human morality. If the story occurred in the contemporary society, the majority of people who occasionally meet with a hopeless boy will do him a favor, at least help the boy to find his parents or send him to a police station. This example strongly indicates the destroyable influence of the harsh environment on human

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