The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a father and his son trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world where all that is left is ash and death. They spend the novel traveling south to the coast in order to improve their chances of survival through the impending winter. Throughout the novel they act as pilgrims exploring the new world left behind by the catastrophic event that has rendered the world ultimately void of all life aside from a few humans, most of which have abandoned their morality in favor of a more animalistic survival instinct. The destination of this journey is to reach the coast, but it is the adaptation and replacement of what humanity used to be into what it is now that the book emphasizes. This change is shown
…show more content…
The father decides that now was as good of a time to leave as any because their supplies were beginning to dwindle where they were. From the start the father is mainly concerned with the child’s survival, to him, the child was the only thing that mattered. one of the first things written in the novel is how “[The father] knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). The boy is the only thing that the father has left in this world so now everything that the father does, he does for the survival of his child. The father has adapted and learned how to operate in an entirely different environment than what he’s known in order to survive so he can ensure the same for the child. The boy knows only what his father has taught him of these vastly different worlds and how much has changed, as the boy was born after the apocalypse. the boy is representative to the father of what little goodness there is left in the world so together they embark on this journey to stay …show more content…
While it chronicles the journey of a father and son across the barren, ash covered, wasteland that is now the earth, the novel is truly about how the torch is passed on to a new world order by those who knew what the world used to be. The father and son act out the tale as pilgrims who travel on to their coastal promised land in search of a better chance of survival while secretly telling another story of how the human race can and will adapt to almost any situation and how even in the darkest of times it is possible to preserve goodness in the
The father decides that now was as good of a time to leave as any because their supplies were beginning to dwindle where they were. From the start the father is mainly concerned with the child’s survival, to him, the child was the only thing that mattered. one of the first things written in the novel is how “[The father] knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (McCarthy 5). The boy is the only thing that the father has left in this world so now everything that the father does, he does for the survival of his child. The father has adapted and learned how to operate in an entirely different environment than what he’s known in order to survive so he can ensure the same for the child. The boy knows only what his father has taught him of these vastly different worlds and how much has changed, as the boy was born after the apocalypse. the boy is representative to the father of what little goodness there is left in the world so together they embark on this journey to stay …show more content…
While it chronicles the journey of a father and son across the barren, ash covered, wasteland that is now the earth, the novel is truly about how the torch is passed on to a new world order by those who knew what the world used to be. The father and son act out the tale as pilgrims who travel on to their coastal promised land in search of a better chance of survival while secretly telling another story of how the human race can and will adapt to almost any situation and how even in the darkest of times it is possible to preserve goodness in the