Conflict Of Morality In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

Conflict of Morality in The Road

In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the main characters are in constant conflict over their different views of the world and how they should treat other people. The conflict between the man and the boy is because of their individual stand on morality. In this essay, I am going to discuss two different instances where the man and the boy are provided with a means to cause conflict within their relationship due to their personal views on morality. These two instances will be when they come across other people along the road and how the man and the boy deal with these situations.

The first person the man and the boy come across in The Road is a man that has been struck by lightning. They followed him until the man struck by lightning sat down and stayed …show more content…
The man answers this by arguing why they could not have helped the other man, and asks the question what could they have done to help? Give him some food, or take the man with them? These options are both very impractical to the father and he tries to get the boy to understand why they cannot help the other man because,“We can’t share what we have or we’ll die too” and in the boy’s eyes leaving the man struck by lightning to die on the side of the road is a morally unacceptable thing. The boy thinks that by helping other people that they are the ‘good guys’ on the road and therefore be moral people in this post-apocalyptic world. By wanting to help the man struck by lightning this shows that he still has faith in humanity, because who is to say that if they nurse the other man back to health that he would just kill them and take over their supplies, and this shows naivety in the boy. Even though it would be morally ‘right’ to help out the struck by lightning, the man and the boy are probably not in the position to help out a dying man and this is the decision that