Cormac Mccarthy The Road

Usually, when one thinks of the future, they think of flying cars and robots, but what most people don’t think of is a damaged earth with the constant threat of losing all it’s life. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a thrilling tale that takes readers on a journey of adventure, suspense and survival. The novel, taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting of a deathly winter, includes a father and his son journeying across the United States with the incentive of finding food and shelter to escape their imminent death. Despite the fact that death is inevitable in this time and human beings are conforming to either cannibalism or suicide, McCarthy creates two strong, independent characters with the fortitude to persevere through the most dangerous …show more content…
The theme revealed by McCarthy is that obstacles should always be expected because they erupt when one least expects them. This theme is conveyed by McCarthy through the title and character change. At the start of the novel, a crestfallen father and his emaciated son are struggling for life and are vulnerable. Throughout the novel, the two protagonists’ change from weak and vulnerable subordinates, into strong, eminent characters. As their story developed they realized that “where you’ve nothing else, construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them” (McCarthy 79). They may not have had access to a lot but they made their way with the little they had in order to survive. The father and son became educated on the abstruse ideas that to survive, one must make the best of every situation in an optimistic way, which led to their survival. Although the man may not have survived till the end of the novel, he overcame the most impossible obstacles and saved his son, which is survival. He always knew that “some part of him always wished it to be over” but he knew that just because he experienced an unexpected obstacle, didn’t give him an excuse to ignore them (McCarthy 155). Assisting character change, title also took part in revealing theme. The Road symbolized the characters’ mental motivation to keep trying and surviving, but along the road is also where almost every problem erupts. The father and son experience multiple obstacles as they travel the interstates but they soon discovered that “tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them...it didn’t even know they were there” (McCarthy 172). They learned along their travel that many unexpected things were going to continually happen, so they became educated in the sense that they were always expecting the worst possibilities, hoping for the best outcome. The theme impacted the readers in various ways. It changed