Good Vs. Evil In The Road

Something that comes to mind when we think of a road is choices, the twists and turns that the road has are just like the perils that boy and his father have to face in this novel, the bitter cold, starvation, death and sickness. And of course roads remind us of forks in the road, the decision making turns, when we have to choose between going one way or another, choosing the right path or the wrong path just like the two sets of people in the book, the “good guys” who choose the right path of moral ethics and selflessness and the “bad guys” who choose the wrong path that leads to destruction and chaos. So the theme of good versus evil is very evident in this book. It highlights the worst things that we are capable of doing when we realize …show more content…
The line between the good and the bad is blurred in a world such as the one depicted in The Road. It is hard to define a “good guy” and a “bad guy” as the novel categorizes them. The child asks his father various times for confirmation of their status as the “good guys”, the people who do not eat other people or victimize those who are weaker. The father although describes them as those who “…keep trying. They dont give up” (McCarthy 53), people who persevere even in the face of utter chaos and destruction. The child although becomes skeptic after a certain point. He refuses to believe that the stories the father tells of helpful and chivalrous fold are true and he becomes doubtful that they are the “good guys” and are “carrying the fire”. When a thief steals their belongings and his father catches and punishes the thief by stripping him naked of his clothes and shoes, in the splintering cold of the landscape The Road is set in, the boy literally pleads and begs his father to let the thief go and even starts crying because he understands the need and hurt of others and doesn’t want him punished because he was starving and did what he thought he should do and also did not try to hurt them physically (McCarthy 96). The boy doesn’t understand the need for the “good guys” to hurt anyone even if they themselves try to hurt the boy and his father because then to the boy there will be no real difference between them and the “bad guys” that he has come to know. He at one point becomes doubtful of whether they are good or not and does not feel good committing these acts of survival, according to his father, and feels complicit in them when his father does