The Road,
Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" is a moving story about a nameless father and son in a post apocalypse world. The father's demise helps demonstrate the meaning of constant struggle to get food, shelter, and safety.
McCarthy depicts the road as fraught with danger, as no one traveled the road, and of those that have survived, many are depraved and blood thirty. "They passed through the city that was mostly burned. No sign of life. Cars in the street caked with ash and dust" (McCarthy 14). The journey is unlike an archetypal exploration, it's made distinctly unpleasant by the landscape colored in dim tone. The endless live for survival was accentuating. While traveling, the characters fear those who target them for food or the possibility that they will be dozing off and waken in terror. The extreme violence was set as the "bad guys" approach and try to take the boy hostage. "He (the road-rat) let go of the belt and it fell int the roadway with the gear hanging from it. A canteen. An old canvas army pouch. A leather sheath for a knife. When he looked up the road-rat was holding the knife in his hand. He'd only taken two steps but he was almost between him and the child" (McCarthy 102). The man harms quite a few people that get in his way. He puts a bullet straight to the head, blood bubbles from the hole in his forehead. The scarcity of resources has driven few survivors to murder, thievery, and even cannibalism. As the man is preparing to die he prepares his son to live and have faith for his son as death surrounds him. "you have to carry the fire." (McCarthy 205). The man know the road will end soon and his son will continue the journey. He faces the reality of leaving his son behind. As the boy is now on his own he is to learn the desperation to survival in such darkness world.The novel ends with a note of mystery, the mystery of the bond that existed between father and son; the mystery of the boy's and humanity's future; and they mystery of this new world and what it will be like now that it has been forever changed. The boy is welcomed into a new family in a new world that he must learn to inhabit. The question of his future, and the future of humanity remains.
