The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Book Report/Review Example

The Road by Cormac McCarthy In his singularly dark and oppressive apocalyptic novel, The Road, Cormac McCarthy presents a world of ash and violence that is relentless in its exploration of the depths of evil that man will plumb when forced into a bid for his own survival. However, despite the darkness of the novel, McCarthy weaves in a thread of hope in the relationship between the man and his son who journey through this world of desperation. Apocalyptic novels, such as The Road, present the reader with a view of society after all formality and pretense are stripped away.

In doing so, these stories teach us which societal and individual values remain when everything else is gone. In The Road, McCarthy presents two different ethics. The first ethic is that of the survivalists whose only moral code is to kill or be killed. This ethic is present in society at all times, but it becomes the dominant code when the world experiences an apocalypse. In the novel, McCarthy demonizes this ethic. The protagonists, the man and the boy, encounter many survivalists who they witness roasting children and slaughtering other people for sustenance.

They always react negatively and flee these scenes. The father and the boy represent the opposing ethic. They survive by taking what they can gather from the broken and destroyed world. They do not believe in further destroying of the world but focus on gathering the pieces they find and using them to continue on their journey to the coast. In the end, The Road and other apocalyptic stories reveal that humans are either anarchists or beings who crave order. When society is broken and the world plunged into chaos, humans will either try to pick up the pieces, work together, and rebuild, or they will further destroy the pieces and the world.

The beauty of The Road is that the father wants what many fathers desire: a world for his son. He gathers the pieces and teaches his son the same values in the hopes that society will continue and that his son will survive. Though he knows he cannot save the world alone, he can save his son.