The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a story between the protagonists, a father and his son, versus a post-apocalyptic world. The father and son leave their house after the wife shoots herself and heads south, where it is warmer. Throughout their journey, they meet survivors whom the father does not trust and it shows. Some of the survivors are terrible people who eat other people or murder others and some are thieves who are forced to steal to survive such as the thief who tried to steal the cart away from the protagonists. However, they meet people such as Eli or the man with a family who pose no threat and would sometimes help them. Through these interactions with the survivors, the protagonists’ intellectual, ethical, and moral status is proved.
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One example is that he understands the inner mechanism of the brain and which part is responsible for which action. In The Road he points a gun at someone, who looks to be harmful, and explains that in order to hear the gunshot from the gun, if it was fired, he “will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal…” (64). In order to know the names of the parts of the brain as well as knowing which part is responsible for which action, a person would have to study the brain and most people who study the brain tend to be smart. An ordinary survivor may not know how the brain works and instead will just shoot. The man even notices this and asks if the father is a doctor. A doctor are known to be very intelligent since getting a medical degree takes a long time. Another example of the father showing intelligence is that he understands which types of mushrooms are safe to eat and which types are toxic and can kill. In the story, the father and the son find morels. The father says that “[t]hey’re a kind of mushroom. Can you eat them? Yes” (40). There are many kinds of mushroom and some of them are harmful. Knowing which types of mushrooms are safe to eat proves that someone in intelligent because others may just eat mushroom even though they are poisonous or not eat any despite the mushrooms being edible. By
One example is that he understands the inner mechanism of the brain and which part is responsible for which action. In The Road he points a gun at someone, who looks to be harmful, and explains that in order to hear the gunshot from the gun, if it was fired, he “will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal…” (64). In order to know the names of the parts of the brain as well as knowing which part is responsible for which action, a person would have to study the brain and most people who study the brain tend to be smart. An ordinary survivor may not know how the brain works and instead will just shoot. The man even notices this and asks if the father is a doctor. A doctor are known to be very intelligent since getting a medical degree takes a long time. Another example of the father showing intelligence is that he understands which types of mushrooms are safe to eat and which types are toxic and can kill. In the story, the father and the son find morels. The father says that “[t]hey’re a kind of mushroom. Can you eat them? Yes” (40). There are many kinds of mushroom and some of them are harmful. Knowing which types of mushrooms are safe to eat proves that someone in intelligent because others may just eat mushroom even though they are poisonous or not eat any despite the mushrooms being edible. By