Cormac Mccarthy's The Road: An Analysis

Stephen Siperstein describes Cormac McCarthy’s novel in his essay “Climate Change Fiction: Radical Hope from an Emerging Genre.” He says that her book The Road “perpetuates a particularly pernicious set of assumptions about the relationship between masculine individualism and survival and also makes invisible the racist and sexist dimensions of environmental risk.” Climate change fiction novels should not set certain roles to certain characters based on the color of ones’ race or sex. As they focus on issues such as social class, minorities, and gender roles, Climate change fiction should clearly state the issues in the environment of the novel. Siperstein states that climate change fiction has “opened a space in mainstream media or discussions about how the power of culture, role of environmental humanities, and the necessity for focused climate change education.

Ship Breaker, written by Paolo Bacigalupi, is a climate fiction novel that features intertwined relationships of poor and rich characters, comparing the morals, and characteristics of each. This novel does agree with Sipersteins view on climate fiction novels. This novel does not only feature male leads. The protagonist of Ship Breaker is Nailer, a young boy who must work a dangerous job in order to live day to day. Nailer is a male character who makes a number of important and dangerous decisions, and is featured throughout the entire novel. Though he is a very vital character in the novel, there are also two young girls who are also mentioned numerous times throughout, and are important to the story as well. The issue of women being inferior to men is does not appear often through the novel, whether it be bad or good, skills are considered more important

than someone’s sex would be. Women are praised and punished in the same way. Everyone has the same consequences. On page 40, Sloth breaks blood oath and is kicked off of the crew. “Bapi had put his knife through her light crew tattoos himself, disowning her completely. She’d never work as a ship breaker again.” Sloth broke a rule and it resulted in the same consequence as it would if a man broke the oath. Ship breaker addresses another issue in the world rather than climate change, the differences between social classes. There are instances in this novel in which the rich and the poor are put against one another, showing the barrier between social classes. On page 152, Nita, a high class rich girl exclaims “I’m getting pretty good at eating with my hands.”. This made Nailer, a poor boy who has never eaten with anything other than his bare hands, angry. This book makes the barrier between the rich and the poor extremely obvious while subtly adding points about climate change. For example, the only reason that Nita met Pima and Nailer was due to the fact that the ship that they had been searching had wrecked in the middle of a storm. Ship Breaker is a climate change novel but does not cease to address other issues in our world as well. While he does this, he clearly shows how climate change can affect individuals, groups, and classes in times of crisis.
Survival Colony 9, written by Joshua Bellin, tells the story of a group of citizens who have lived through the war and their battles both internally and externally.

Their desperation and attempts to keep themselves and each other safe are very

clear.
Siperstein states that novels such as The Road, “perpetuate a particularly pernicious set of assumptions about the relationships between masculine individualism and survival”, and they also “make invisible the racist and sexist dimensions of environmental risk.” . In this novel, there are both masculine and feminine male and female characters. There are both masculine and feminine women, and masculine and feminine males seen thoughout the story. Korah is a beautiful young girl, and every time she is described, it is in a way that tells of her gorgeous characteristics, her beautiful strength, or her feministic features. There are numerous instances where Querry speaks of Korahs beauty, one example being on page 78. “She turned from me to talk into the night. I watched her profile behind the curve of her hair, caught her words as they formed and fell from her perfect lips. There are masculine females in this book as well, though. Aleka and Petra are females associated with great strength, wit, and leadership. Masculine males such as Yov are extremely aggressive, muscular, and strive to lead. Querry, the central character is a fourteen-year-old boy, who can do what the others can, but to me gives off a sense of feminism. He has many emotions and thinks, unlike the other males really do. The way he feels about Korah shows that he is not like the other boys, he even tends to show more emotion towards Korah than her boyfriend Wali does.
Aside from emotional roles that are represented in the novel, the jobs and duties in the novel are given based on skill rather than on gender. “She was our best scout, the one who we always counted on to keep us alert.” On page 28, Petra is being described as an important member of the colony. She looks out for the rest of the members, and keeps watch for the Skaldi and any other dangerous situations that may affect the colony. Though she is a female, she is counted on and trusted. In books like The Road, Siperstein explains there are no female leading roles, and women are not “counted on”. This book agrees that climate change should reflect not only on climate change, while it pushes away other potential issues such as sexism and racism. The collection of the characters’ names in this novel were created to show a range of different races and characteristics, without actually describing what each character actually looks like. By doing this, Bellin sheds light on the diverse colony.
The issue of climate change is present through this novel, more so than in Ship Breaker. The extreme heat effects each person working, making their jobs and daily activities even harder to complete. There is not common rain where they live, resulting in the colony having to drink from the lake, get extremely dirty, and overall live in an extremely unhealthy manner. On page 82, in the beginning of the first rainstorm in months, Querry states “In the sixth months I could remember, this was only the second rainstorm. The characters in this book often reflect on the people of the past ‘ruining their worlds”, due to laziness in taking care of their environment when they lived in it. Survival Colony 9 addresses climate change as a large issue as well as touches on other issues such as equality. On page 133, Laman tells the rest of the colony: “We’ve been living as if we’re the ones responsible for what happened to our world. As if we have to atone for what someone else did fifty years ago. But life isn’t a penance for the past, people. Life isn’t about looking back. It’s about looking ahead.” This agrees with Siperstien as he states that “the real hallmarks of the cli-fi genre should be its diversity, resilience, and liveliness. The leader of the colony explains that dwelling on the past that others have destroyed is useless, and the only thing the do is focus on repairing the future. Climate change runs throughout this novel, effecting the colony each time it occurs.
The texts written by Stephen Siperstein, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Joshua Bellin follow the same suggestion of what a climate change fiction novel entails. Each focus on diversity, equality, and social classes. The effects of climate change are present in the two novels. The two novels open a discussion of climate change, and show the what extreme results may be caused by having a lack of knowledge and no will to take care of our world could potentially do to us in the future.