Death And Death In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

On the brink of extinction, a man and his son are among the last survivors of the human race. The winter is getting too cold and dangerous for the man and the boy to survive any longer. To survive, they have to travel south to warmer weather along a distant road to escape the treacherous winter. Experiencing many dangers the entire way to the sea, the boy and his father came across many threats to their lives, such as the bad guys, starvation, and hypothermia.
Throughout The Road, Cormac McCarthy displays the theme of death repeatedly through the father and son almost starving to death, murder, the description of the landscape, and hope to exhibit the abilities of how harsh and destructive humans can potentially be. The man and the boy display the theme of death by always fighting to stay alive and find food. Throughout The Road, food is a scarce and sacred artifact; therefore, the man and the boy have to fight and search for food for the duration of their journey along the road. If they do not find any food, they will die from starvation. On page 253, when the father and son were away from their cart full of …show more content…
The main theme of death during the man and boy’s trip along the road is presented through many instances, ones such as the thief stealing the man and boy’s cart full of food, which just about left them to die of starvation, when the man kills the bad guy as the guy tried to take the boy hostage, through the description of the eradicated landscape, and how death sways the amount of hope the man and boy have throughout their journey. It may seem as if humans would not be able to destroy their own kind, but in McCarthy’s reality within The Road, it is truly possible for this to happen. McCarthy was able to apply the theme of death throughout the The Road to make it evident of what the human race has the potentiality to