Cormac Mccarthy The Road Essay

The nature of man has and will always be debated throughout our lifetime, some novelists and philosophers believe in the mixture of humans being entirely corrupt or moral. The book The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an apocalyptic story of a journey where a father and his son carefully tread their way across a very treacherous version of our Earth. Throughout their journey, the father and the son see the truth behind the inhumanity of which times of chaos causes. The theme of The Road is closely related to the explanation of John Locke’s, where he explains humans are pure from origin, but human choices in life are what corrupt us in the end. McCarthy incorporates this theme into the story with the actions of young child who chooses to help all

who are in need, and a father, who makes challenging decisions for the best possible outcome for himself and his son in the means of survival.
Cormac McCarthy directs the reader to the child’s purity by providing events or occurrences where the boy constantly thinks of others, such as the people on the road, or people on the road who might want to harm him.

No matter what it is the child tries to help others without thinking of consequences. While on the road, the son spots a small figure on the distant road that was “bent and shuffling,” and once they caught up to the figure they found out that it was a “man with no shoes at all” and his feet were “wrapped in rags”(McCarthy 83). While the father called out for the man, the boy’s first instinct was to “put a hand on his shoulder,” look up to his father and say “He’s scared, Papa. The man is scared.”(McCarthy 84). While convincing the father, the son, who has not been negatively influenced by actions or events, has no idea of what dangers or if the man is a trap/ambush which may happen while he is talking to this man and attempting to help him. Another aspect to the child’s purity is when the boy reminds his father that they do not treat others on the road with compassion and goodness like the stories his father tells them to try to keep their spirits up. While the father and son were stuck in a building, the father offered to tell the son a story and instantly and said “No.” with the explanation that the “stories are not true.” and that “in the stories we're always helping people and we don’t help people” (McCarthy 138). The son in this circumstance is unhappy

with what decisions the father has made, which were to not help another being, especially the most recent case, where they did not allow the old man to travel with them ensuring the old man’s death.
Through the many decisions and actions that the man has faced, he clearly represents the idea of being corrupted through society which is explained by John Locke. Throughout the story the man’s one objective is to keep his son alive, and through this goal he does anything or kills anything as a matter of fact that poses as a threat to them. One morning the man noticed a couple men stopping near where they were sleeping in a diesel truck, the man quickly woke his son up and went to the woods. While in the woods the father and the sun were confronted a man from the diesel truck, the man was holding a knife and in almost an instant “the man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead” (McCarthy 34). With no debate to reason or see what the man from the diesel truck was going to do the father with no hesitation shot the man, dead. Another aspect of the corruption of man in The Road are the humans who go to the extreme for their goal, those who take it to the extremes in this case are the cannibals, and their actions have severely corrupted who they are. Whether it is for food or to increase the likeliness of survival the cannibals eat and kill anyone who will be a benefit for them. While the boy’s father was clearing the perimeter, the boy saw something and quickly buried his face against the father, what he saw was “a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit” (McCarthy 103). The charring and decapitation is not only immoral but it shows that the cannibals have no emotions at all and all senses of purity from their bodies have vanished.
The man and the son represent two different personalities, the son who wants to help all in need, and the man whose mission it is to protect the son.

The man and the boy have conflicting ideologies; the son who only wants to help others, does not realize what the dad needs to do in order to protect him. The dad, through experience knows that not everyone will be as pure as the son, and sacrifices and killing are justified to survive. The dad on the other hand is not completely immoral, such as the time he gave the “tin of fruit cocktail” due to the boy asking him to (McCarthy 84). The act of listening to the son’s opinion which has no harm intention and giving the man food shows that the choices you make reflect who you are, in this case shining on the humane side on the man. The man also realizes that the boy is a powerful force that pushes him to survive every day, whether it is his innocence or his acts of kindness on others. When the boy asked the dad what would happen if he died the dad responds saying, “When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too”(McCarthy 88). If the son were to die, all sense of purity from the dads life will disappear the son dying relates to the idea of what would occur if purity and innocence disappeared in total throughout the earth. If there is no peace and purity on the earth, humans will live in chaos and not have the natural purity that they were born with. In a sense, son’s purity and innocence relate to a higher sense of

motivation for the man and the man stands for the sacrifices you have to make for life itself.
In The Road McCarthy supports the theme that humans are pure from origin, but human choices in life are what corrupt us in the end. McCarthy incorporates this theme into the story with the idea of young child who chooses to help all who are in need, and a father, has to make decisions for the reason of survival. McCarthy created this apocalyptic world to debate the real nature of man, where there are many debatable ideas to the nature of man, the world he created with chaos is a great example that leaves the true nature of man up for interpretation.