Cormac Mccarthy Choices In The Road

Choices in The Road Throughout literature, stories that depict a survival scenario in a post apocalyptic world has drawn the attention of readers everywhere. Where still subliminally sending the message of the author into the reader. In the story The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, the author depicts the tales of a father and his son, living their lives in the southern U.S., desolate and destroyed.Throughout the story, McCarthy uses many context clues to depict many scenarios of choice in these harsh conditions, like attempting to make ones life a little better, or even forgetting all that you have known to continue on. McCarthy shows us these scenarios via the pairs choices throughout the story, like their encounter with Ely, the options to share the dreams between the two, and the boy even forgetting all that his father taught him when meeting the …show more content…
The boy makes the choice to forget everything that his father ever taught him and put everything on his faith to see where it takes him. "Someone was coming. He started to turn and go back into the woods but he didnt. He just stood in the road and waited, the pistol in his hand. He'd piled all the blankets on his father and he was cold and he was hungry. The man that hove into view and stood there looking at him was dressed in a gray and yellow ski parka. He carried a shotgun upside down over his shoulder on a braided leather lanyard and he wore a nylon bandolier filled with shells for the gun. A veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye wandering. When he spoke his mouth worked imperfectly, and when he smiled” (285). This decision shows how through his father's death, he found his “holy grail” or rather his ticket to survival. To the boy this one act shows that he was willing to forgo his knowledge and act upon