Both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Dune by Frank Herbert are set in inhospitable

environments and deal, at least partially, with the nature of humanity. McCarthy, in his post-

apocalyptic land of gloom and ash, presents a first-hand exploration of humanity. From a

traumatic past, a father and son head south to escape the oncoming winter. In addition to

closing in on their heading, their journey explores what it is to be human and that which may or

may not separate humans from animals: necessary sacrifices, fear, obligation, complex

emotion, adaptation, and religion. Herbert’s Dune takes a somewhat more objective view of

the world, with young Paul Atreides’ teachings educating him on the observations of others,

while also presenting Paul’s own observations. Additionally, contrast is presented through

omniscient observation of Paul’s enemies, and through passages from literature in the Dune

universe. Dune presents Herbert’s own interpretation of humanity through fear, obligation,

adaptation and religion, in addition to distinguishing humans from people, and both from

animals. From Paul’s position as a leader, we see what it is that influences humans on a large

scale, in addition to the influences on the individual presented in both Dune and The Road.

Perhaps the most integral question to be answered when considering humanity is:

What separates humans and animals? After all, humans are animals. Where does the animal

end and the human begin? Cormac McCarthy shows through desperate survival three sides of

humanity. In The Road the survivors can be categorized in three ways: those who abandon the

constructs of humanity in order to survive, those who maintain the constructs of humanity as

best they can, and those who drift.

 Many of the survivors in The Road have made it as far as they have by forming gangs

and prospering by exploiting other survivors. The father and son encounter a member of one

such gang as he abandons the group to urinate mere feet in front of the pair’s hiding spot.

McCarthy describes him, “Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside

a skull looking out the eyeholes.”(37) The man, like the other gang members, has abandoned

human morality in favor of brute survival. The eyes are commonly called the window to the

soul, and McCarthy describes this man’s soul as wholly animal—focused on nothing but self-

preservation. These people do not form gangs because they appreciate company, or even favor

the company of their comrades; they join because of the same mechanism which causes wolves

to form packs. Strength and security come with numbers. Upon entering the basement of the

hub of one such gang the man finds that “huddled against the back wall were naked people,

male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a

man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt.”(67) These

packs survive by cannibalizing their victims. All semblance of human decency is void in the

presentation of the pack human. In another instance, they discover the cooked remains of a

fetus, miscarried but reclaimed for the meager nutrients it could provide. McCarthy presents

an interesting concept with these roving, animalian groups; as these people are still human, it is

a component of what it is to be human to be able to revert near entire to animal instinct, in the

process abandoning what some would call human virtues.

Not all of the survivors are bereft of virtue and morality, however. The unnamed father

and son lack only human creature comforts; in mentality their code of ethics is complete. They

enter hidden shelter and discover the food reserves of an enterprising survivalist, who was
taken in the destruction, completely untouched. The boy is conflicted about eating the food of

another because the food was not intended for them. After the father explains that the

survivalist would want them to make use of the food, the boy asks, “Do you think we should

thank the people?” “The people?” asks the father. “The people who gave us all this,”(88) the

boy clarifies. He goes on to thank them and says, “We know that you saved it for yourself and if

you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were and we're sorry that you

didn’t get to eat it and we hope that you're safe in heaven with God.” Before finding this cache

of food the boy and his father were near death from lack of food, yet the boy says they

wouldn’t touch the food if its original owners were still around. Adherence to principal over

penalty of death is distinctly human. Despite the conditions morality is not dead among people,

and truly it thrives in the boy and his father.

Impartial to morality is the third category of survivor. These types are represented in

the old man whom man and boy meet on the road. The man seems to be wandering aimlessly

and the boy’s father asks him how he lives, “I just keep going,”(105) answers the old man. The

father questions him about his apparent disinterest in speaking, something a man on his own

wouldn’t have much opportunity for on the road. The older man says, “I think in times like

these the less said the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met

on the road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we don’t.”(108) The

aged man says that he is not a survivor; he just keeps going. Men like he have no ambition;

they see themselves as having been overlooked by the destruction, “I might wish I had

died,”(105) says the old man. In a world split by creedless cannibals and the morally righteous,

there exist the aimless wanderers who go on simply because they exist.
 In Dune, Frank Herbert’s portrayal of humanity contrasts strongly with the portrayal of

humans in The Road. Humanity is taught in the way a subject is taught in school; Paul learns

about it through his various teachings. The nuance of humanity in Dune is only partially the

degree of overlap between animals and people; furthering the disparity is the distinction

between people and humans.

Immediately Herbert lays out what it is to be animal in the universe of Dune. In one of

Paul’s recited teachings he says, “animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given

moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct . . . the animal destroys and does

not produce . . . animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the

perceptual . .”(2) Animals are defined as consumers concerned only with the present,

motivated more by prerogative and need than preparation and desire. In a conversation about

native species on Arrakis Paul says to Kynes, the planetologist, "Most educated people know that

the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind. They are eating

from the same bowl. They have the same basic requirements." Humans, as represented in The Road

have the capacity to choose between competiting with each other or working together for the benefit of

all. The distinction of who one considers to be “all” can determine how much humanity a person has

retained. “All” can mean both “one’s pack or gang” and “all people,” but the difference is the difference

between animal survival and human altruism.

Paul’s same mantra reflects on the human, too, “the human requires a background grid through

which to see his universe . . . focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid.”(2) The first part of

the mantra says that animals think in the present and destroy things and react to sensation, and humans

do all of this too, but humans go beyond. Where animals avoid the perceptual, humans dwell in it. The
background grid of the mantra is the memory of the past and the mental projections of the future; it is

against these that humans measure the present. After Paul gains his prescience he says, “people need

hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” Through extreme understanding of action and

reaction humans can read the combined grid of past and present to predict the future. This is a

distinctly human trait. Paul says, “deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical

universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”(276) It is clear the

value of seeing the future; foresight removes part of the mystery of the universe’s step beyond logic.

The ability to assess the past in order to see the future is so important that the Bene Gesserit

order exists to protect it. The Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother tells Paul, “"We Bene Gesserit sift people

to find the humans."(6) In sifting the Bene Gesserit have learned the separation between human and

ordinary people. People are of impure blood; a taint was introduced in the genetic line which hinders

psychic development. The Bene Gesserit exist to breed the perfect human of the purest blood in order

to develop the most capable prescience. The Reverend Mother explains to Paul why pain is used to

determine if one is human, “You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an

animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might

kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."(6) It is this scheming for the future which separates

humans from other animals. The Reverend Mother continues, “A human can override any nerve in the

body."(6) A human’s capacity for absolute control of the body is another distinguishing factor. This

ability is displayed both in Paul’s testing with the Gom Jabbar and in The Road when the man climbs up a

flight of stairs to protect his son, despite having been shot in the leg with a still-protruding arrow. When

the future demands absolute control, only a human has the understanding to maintain it.
 In both depictions of humanity, the most persistent animal trait is fear. Fear is a powerful

hindrance to humanity because it is capable of overwhelming people and clouding their judgment,

which can have fatal consequences. Worst of all, fear can cause a person to submit.

Fear is at the heart of humanity’s corruption in the wasteland gangs of The Road. The fear of

starvation and death drives out the compassion for others in favor of animal ruthlessness. Consumed by

the influence of the fear, the packs are comprised entirely of animals. The tottering old man, too, owes

his condition to fear. Upon seeing him, the boy runs up and touches his shoulder, saying, “He's scared,

Papa. The man is scared.”(100) The old man has lived with fear as his constant companion. Nearly blind

and surrounded by cannibalistic bands, the fear has turned him into a passionless shell, neither excited

to live, nor eagerly awaiting death. The most profound effects of fear, however, are seen in the boy’s

mother.