Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy's Big Two-Heart

Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road contains an excellent example of survival instincts in a destructive world and of how a person’s love can motivate someone to continue on the right path. Since the novel is dedicated to McCarthy’s son John Francis, some readers like Oprah Winfrey have stated that the novel is similar to a love story. The narrative describes a post-apocalyptic world where two main characters, the man and the boy, travel along the abandoned state roads to reach the South for better living conditions. However, while traveling, the father and son face numerous obstacles that test their sanity, relationship, and humanity. According to Donovan Gwinner, “The Road makes evident its pragmatism by highlighting the protagonists’ application . . . of knowledge to the work of interpreting their surroundings to exist in them” (138). As a result, the knowledge the two characters possess offers the reader insight into how the characters cope with the various struggles they face while traveling. Overall, McCarthy portrays …show more content…
Many critics have interpreted the subject of humanity in The Road in different forms, one being that the ending passage of the novel illustrates the revival of hope for a new society. However, one critic Kenneth Brandt argues against this claim by comparing Ernest Hemingway’s story Big Two-Hearted River to The Road. As a result, Brandt suggests that “humanity needs to exist in a fertile ecosystem” and that there should be a balance between both (63). Even though it is impossible for the characters to achieve a coexistence in humanity and ecosystems because of their surrounding