Cormac Mccarthy The Road Essay

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In “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy employs a barren, post-apocalyptic setting and minimalist writing style to emphasize the existentialist journey between a father and son, highlighting their struggle to maintain humanity and moral integrity when faced with themes like choice, purpose and alienation from societal customs. McCarthy uses a barren, lifeless setting to remove the distractions of a functioning civilization, to direct the reader's attention toward the relationship between the two characters, and the morals they uphold as they reflect on what is left of their human nature and identity in the ruins of civilization. In the book, the author employs a naturalistic setting and sparse narrative to build the lifeless, post-apocalyptic environment …show more content…

The father reflects on the state of the world, stating that it has shrunken into “a raw core of parsible entities.” (McCarthy 88) Things that were once taken for granted, such as colours or the name of birds, were mere luxuries of civilization. This estrangement from human institutions underscores their isolation. They are alienated not just from society, which no longer exists in any form, but also from a meaningful past and future, embodying the existentialist notion that they "do not belong to the past, to the present, or to the future." The father and son’s moral values alienate them from the cannibalistic groups they encounter, who have abandoned all aspects of civilization and empathy, choosing to survive through violence, allowing their morality to deteriorate. At a glance, there are commonalities between these two figures. They both have been stripped of any formal identities or class, faced hardships and suffering and have chosen life, continuing to survive a world-ending catastrophe. The difference is the human nature and choice of goodness that the father has passed down to his son, and the loss of morality in the destructive, cannibalistic

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