Cormac Mccarthy The Road Analysis

With so many dystopian novels and movies, not many address their beliefs, they mostly stick to how they survive. Cormac McCarthy, a great author, in 2006, published the book The Road. The Road is a novel placed in a post-apocalyptic world where cannibalism is common place. McCarthy gives us 2 characters in his book, an unnamed man and his son who consider themselves the good guys in this world. They continue their journey south through death in search of hope. In a world of ash and cannibalism, Papa and the boy struggle to maintain their morals showing times of peril make it hard to uphold your beliefs. Throughout the book, Papa and the boy attempt to hold their beliefs. During a flashback, the boy’s mother is discussing their eventual fate with Papa and how to …show more content…
While searching a house for supplies, Papa and the boy find a room that is locked, they proceed to knock down the door. When they see what is beyond the door Papa explains, “On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burned”(110). This description uses vivid and grim imagery to portray the horrors they lay their eyes upon. By giving us the detail that some of the man’s limbs are gone, McCarthy implies that the people that put this man here in the first place, have resulted to not only eating people, but eating people bit by bit. This statement frames the fact that these people have given up on their morals. They have given up on their morals because they have adopted to survive by resorting to cannibalism, an act that would have never been tolerated in pre-apocalyptic society. The “bad guys” according to McCarthy are the ones that have resulted to cannibalism like in this passage. The fact that they are eating them bit by bit further proves the fact that the apocalypse has proved to be too much to some people, whether it's taking your life or taking