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Rosa M. Penate
Professor Eric Barnhart
English 133B
12 October 2015

Selfishness Leads to Nothing Good, Having Compassion is the Way

Compassion is an emotion that is felt when you see another person struggling or going
through a difficult time in their lives. In Cormac McCarthys The Road, we see a father and a
young son trying to survive in a world that has lost its sense of meaning. There are many people
and characters in this book that are not mentioned as much but that are going through the same
situation that they are going through. The boy in this novel is that character that demonstrates a
sense of compassion while the man is the character that demonstrates selfishness towards others.
The first demonstration of compassion from the son comes when they run into the man
that was struck by lightning. The boy shows immediate compassion by being concerned about
the man they find on the road. In the article Speaking of Suffering: A Moral Account of
Compassion by Warren Thomas Reich claims that the second stage of compassion is called
Expressive Compassion which when a person is trying to bring attention to the person that is in
suffering. We can see that for obvious reason the man that is suffering cant scream for help
because one he could be found and killed and two he is in too much pain that he doesnt have the
ability of strength to ask for help. In this case, the boy continues to look back at the man on the
side of the road and tell his father, Can we help him? Papa? The father tells the boy that they
cant by telling him that they dont have enough to do so but the boy keeps trying to insist by

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pulling his coat trying to get his attention into going back to help the poor man that was struck by
lightning. This act of selfishness is demonstrated everyday and I observe it. Every day on my
way to school, I see the poor people asking for money to buy food or whatever it is that they
want or need. I see the people just ignoring them, walking past them, and not caring about what
the person conditions are. We all at some point in our lives have done that at least twice or maybe
even more.
Reich also mentions in his article The compassionate friend or caregiver can assist in the
reformulation of the story.(Pg. 94). What would have happened if the father had decided to
listen to the boy and help the man? Lets remember that because they live in world that has died,
they dont have as much resources as they wish they had because all of the resources are gone.
The father and the boy have very little resources in their cart. They have very little food and
blankets to keep themselves warm. Thinking through this situation through the fathers point of
view, the father doesnt want to help because he knows that if they help him they will run out of
their own resources. Now if we look at this from the boys point of view, no matter what they
were going through, the innocence child is what charges him into wanting to help the man. What
this means is that if they had decided to stay and help the man, the novel would have a
completely different ending.
We know that the father decided to keep moving forward through their journey to
survival but they run into another person in the book and his name is Ely. The boys curiosity
gets the best of him once again. They have followed this man for a while and the son asks his
father to help the man. The son keeps insisting and that is when the father decided to stop and
help him. I personally feel like the father decided to stay because he just didnt want to hear his
son beg and beg. In Jesse Prinzs article, Is Empathy Necessary for Morality, he states that the

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way to get to good actions is my having good intentions and good feelings. The son in this novel
always demonstrates good intentions when he meets people that need some help. The father
hasnt really been showing good intentions or compassion because he himself told Ely, You
should thank him you know, the man said. I wouldnt have given you anything (pg. 173). This
proofs that the father clearly did not want to help and only did it because his son asked him to do
so. A study done by Gilligan, mentioned by Prinz, states that women are much more sympathetic
feelings than men and are willing to out themselves in the pains of others and according to
Gibbs, also mentioned ion the article, states that only 27% of men have appeals to empathy
(pg. 12). What this means is that men are not really relatable to the feeling of empathy like
women are. The father does have the heart to help his son survive but in doesnt have the heart to
help the other people in need. We can see these types of situations in our government today.
Many people consider that the U.S government and economy have become selfish. According to
an article from New York Times called Sunday Dialogue: Are Americans Selfish? states that
most Americans do not understand why others have to benefit from their taxes. Most Americans
do believe this but the thing that they dont realize is that the government is helping those
families in need for help, which can be looked as a compassionate move done by the
government.
One thing that I have noticed about the boy in the novel is that every time they dont help
another person and walk away, the boy continues to look back at the person in need. After Ely,
the father and the son go their separate ways, The boy never looked back at all. (pg. 174).
Every time the boy looked back, the boy wasnt happy leaving knowing that he couldve done
something to help. The boy not turning back after leaving Ely symbolizes that he is satisfied
knowing that they did something to help him even though they knew that Ely might die meaning

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that his conscious was calm. Could it be that the conscious of the father wasnt tormented by all
of the harm he was causing.
This statement brings me to the third scene in which the father doesnt show lots of
compassion. This is the scene when they run into the thief. The father and the son leave their cart
full of essentials of survival unattended but when they come back, their cart is gone. They follow
the tracks left by the thief and find him with their things. The immediate reaction that the father
takes is not compassionate was so ever. The encounter with the thief brings out the worst side of
the father that the son has probably never seen before. At the beginning of the novel, the father
promises the boy that they would never kill any other human being. Clearly, the goals of the thief
were to some new clothing and find something to eat. If we think about the situation in the novel,
the thief might have been going on the same journey to survival just as the father and son. The
conversation with the man and the thief continue with the man threatening the thief that he will
kill him. He demands the thief to take off all of his clothes. The thief and the boy ask him not to
do what he is doing but the response of the man is, You didnt mind doing it to us. (pg. 257).
In the article Compassion as Justice by Richard Reilly, Reilly looks at compassion
through a religious point of view that can be connected to the situation happening in the novel.
Reillys article states one of the most important rules in Christianity and Confucian and that rule
is known as the Golden Rule. According to the Christian community, the Golden Rule states,
Do to others as you want them to do to you (pg. 1) and to the Confucian community looks at
the Golden rule as, What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. (pg. 1). If we
translate both of these statements, the Christian and Confucian community show a more
compassionate view on the rule by telling us that if we dont want others to treat us badly, we
shouldnt treat others badly. In The Road, we can see that the father has taken a more negative

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stance on the golden rule. The fathers way of thinking is, Because he did to me, I will do it to
him too or Because the thief was close to making us suffer, I will make it suffer too. Looking
at the scene using the golden rule, it shows that the father was only giving those commands to
the thief as an act of revenge for trying to steel their things.
Going back to the promise that the man made to his son about not killing anyone, well the
encounter with the thief gives the man a revelation. As an experienced daughter, I have come to
learn that when a parent makes a promise to his son or daughter, that promise is meant to keep.
Well at least in my family. The revelation that the son gives to the father is something powerful
and something symbolical. The following conversation between the man and the boy states, I
wasnt going to kill him, he said. But the boy didnt answer.He could tell by his breathing that
the boy was awake and after a while the boy said: But we did kill him (pg. 261). The man didnt
show compassion to the thief and he didnt show compassion to his sons feelings. The thing that
the boy is trying to tell the man here is that he didnt necessarily had to shot hip to kill him.
Leaving him with no food and clothes in a world that has no way to survive, now that is killing
him. On their journey, they meet the man struck by lightening and the boy. The man didnt help
the man struck by lightening and the boy died eventually meaning that they did because they had
no means of survival and the father with the son didnt stop to help them.
If we continue to look at this scene through a religious point of view, we can view the
boy as the Great Samaritan and the father as the priest and the Levite. In this story, there was a
man that had been stolen and beaten down. The priest passed by and didnt help the man that was
almost dead. The Levite passed by and didnt help as well. Finally, a Samaritan passed by the
scene and decided to stay to help him. He tried to cure his wounds, put him on his donkey, and
took him to the nearest hotel in the nearest city. This Samaritan had the compassion and the hear

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to help this man in need even though he might not have had enough resources to help him. The
boy is the great reflection of the Samaritan in this story. The man and the boy didnt have enough
resources to help anyone or not enough to help themselves but because the boy has a big heart,
his compassionate side shines when he wants to help. The man is a reflection of the priest and the
Levite. All of these three characters just wanted to and did walk past the people in need only
looking out for them and not for the well being of the others surrounding them. We can see that
throughout the entire novel, the man is only really looking out for himself, which demonstrates
his selfishness. In the beginning of the novel the father said or though to himself, My heart, he
said. My heart. But he knew that if he were a good father still it might well be as she had said.
That the boy was all that stood between him and death. (Pg. 29). Another thing that he does is
that when he leaves his son alone with the gun, the man tells the son that if a stranger comes
toward him, he should shot himself and not the stranger. That does not show compassion or love
towards the life of his son.
We can see many aspects of compassion and selfishness in our everyday society.
The innocence of the child encourages the child to have a more compassionate approach
to the life his is living with the man and the other people that they meet on the road. The
selfishness of the man shows a dark side to the boy especially when they follow the thief. This
should teach us to be like the boy in the novel and know how and when to be compassionate
towards others struggles but it also teaches us to not be careful because we can be taken
advantage of.

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Resources Used:
1. Reich, Warren Thomas. Speaking of Suffering: A Moral Account of Compassion.
An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 83-108. Penn State University
Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178467

2. Reilly, Richard. Compassion as Justice. Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 (2006),

pp. 13-31. University of Hawaii Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139178

3. Prinz, Jesse. Is Empathy Necessary for Morality? Forthcoming in P. Goldie and A.

Coplan (Eds.). Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Stable URL: http://www.subcortez.com/IsEmpathyNecessaryForMoralityPrinz.pdf

4. Nevins, Paul L. Sunday Dialogue: Are Americans Selfish? Sunday Review, New York Times
Website. Stable URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-areamericans-selfish.html?_r=0