Good Vs. Evil In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

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In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, the good is represented through the pure, benevolent boy while evil is portrayed through marauders, cannibals, and sometimes even the man. Evil is an incessant force that the man and the boy face daily, but McCarthy suggests that the “good” ultimately prevails. The moment right before the man and the boy find an abundance of food, the man tells the boy, “This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up”. The idea of the “good guys” is present throughout this novel, but the man nor the boy had yet to see evidence of another “good” survivor until the man had already been deceased. While McCarthy overwhelms The Road with imagery of a vast, barren wasteland ridden with evil, there is always a sense of hope and optimism …show more content…

After the man and the boy find the cannibal house, the boy questions, “We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”. The boy is then reminded they are “the good guys” and are “carrying the fire”. The fire represents the the metaphorical “flame” inside both characters to survive. The flame ignites their desire to live and persevere through hardships together, as “the good guys”. The man soon becomes sick, and in his last moments he talks to the boy about the little boy they found on the road earlier. The boy wonders if the little boy is lost and “who will find him if he’s lost?”, while the man restores hope by saying that the “goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again”. However, the man is not talking about the little boy, but about his own child instead. As the man speaks of goodness finding the little boy even in the darkest of times, he hopes the boy will reflect his message upon himself after the man perishes. The man’s life finally comes to an end, while the boy is lost and without hope, until he found a man that “was dressed in a gray and yellow ski

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