Jiang 1

Yunhan Jiang

Writing 39B/RA Final Draft

11/14/2018

Professor McClure

Walkers in the ruin

In the book The Road, Cormac McCarthy compiles and depicts a world full of ruins and

bloods to his audiences. He writes down the tragic, post-apocalyptic world in order to warn

the people living in the real world. The book is filled up with depressing atmosphere, even

when conversation occurs, because of the lack of quotation marks. Sentences are short, with

less connection between each other, and only a little of relation exists between chapters. Such

a fragmented structure hints the fragile world perfectly. Polluted environment and distorted

humanity are exposed nakedly to audiences, stimulating their thoughts through the despair

status. Detailed depictions of environment reveal a loss of civilization, and those cannibals

reveal the lack of moral and humanity. Humanity -- the basis of our society -- becomes

completely different in this book. For audience, The Road is easy to read, but definitely hard

to digest the thoughts of McCarthy toward mankind.

As a horror story, the monster in The Road is the world itself. Father and son try their

best to survive in a world lack of food, health, and protection. Crisis hides everywhere. Their

life are threatened by every single object, and they have to pay extreme attention in order not

to be killed in just one moment. H.P.Lovecraft once mentioned in his book, “The oldest and

strongest emotion of mankind is fear; the oldest and strongest fear springs from ignorance”
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(H.P.Lovecraft page 1). In a chaotic world, everything can happen, no matter how freak it is.

McCarthy does not add monsters or disasters into his book for the frightening effect. Instead,

human themselves become the biggest threat. Once in an interview of The Wall Street Journal,

McCarthy mentioned conversations he held with his brother about different kinds of

apocalypse. One scenario he focused the most was about survivors turning to cannibalism:

“When everything’s gone, the only thing left to eat is each other.” The relationships between

man and man, woman and woman, or strangers and strangers are unusual but realistic. No

one knows how a man will change under great pressure of survival, but everyone understands

clearly things will become chaotic under a condition of lawless and loss of humanity. In

ancient era, such as ancient Greek and ancient Egypt, there were slaves who fought in the

arena for pleasuring people at high level. Even at present, bullying and humiliating exist in

our society, especially when people need to express their pressure. Although in our

well-developed and harmonious world, people cannot stop their selfish and violent behaviors,

it is obvious what will happen at that situation. McCarthy definitely sees through human’s

essence, and writes down the “cannibal world” for denouncing phenomenon happening at

present.

Living in such a world like this, men have no choice but make decisions. Although

McCarthy depicts vividly about the environment, the attraction of The Road is not the impact

of post-apocalyptic landscape -- similar scenes are not uncommon in literature and film, such

as ‘I am Legend.’ The true charm of the novel is humanity, the instinctive reactions among all

survivors. Stepping on the edge of extinction, human who lives in that world separates into

two kinds -- the good guys and the bad guys. The former hides carefully, survives hardly, and
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has no willing to show up to strangers. On the contrary, the latter drops the last burden known

as humanity. Without the constraint of law and moral principles, “bad guys” become

aggressive and brutal. They plunder and attack on every human they find, even eat them

mercilessly. The world just becomes a desert, an endless desert, with crisis hiding everywhere.

It is not only about the world, but also about humanity. Some people tenaciously keep and

protect their humanity, with someone gives up quickly. Also, some people seize the chance

and turn themselves into real monsters. To comment pessimistically, human and humanity in

this world fallen to an extremely rare and cheap level.

The two protagonists, father and son, are two steady survivors fighting for their present.

Father represents as the ordinary people -- while facing problems, he acts calmly and cruelly.

The dark side of humanity hides deeply in his mind, and desperation roots hardly in his body

because of the loss of wife. Meanwhile, he also has warmth, which only shows up when

communicating with his son. The son, however, contains most of the brightness of humanity,

although he is born after the apocalypse. He is pure and sympathetic, trying to help every

mankind through their trip. Father’s love connects two protagonists tightly, showing a sign of

humanity among the cruel and hopeless world.

Although there are enough sparkling depictions about relationships between different

peoples, the true charm of the novel is the humanity, the emotion, the connection between

father and son, which is almost an instinctive orientation of a father. Father in this novel acts

a double-face-person. The loss of wife becomes his biggest burden, and keep pulling him

deeper. But his son acts as a redemption, a lighthouse which disperses the entrenched haze in

his mind. Son is always cheerful, sanguine and mercy, and that’s how he cures his father. In
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such a world been crowded by loneliness and endless despair, father and son become the only

sustenance of each other. In the book, there is such a sentence tells father’s feeling about his

son: “If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.” In father’s mind, son is a representation

of God. He puts his faith on his son and acts well in front of his son, in order to represent his

devotion. More than The Road, I once watched a film which also talked about a story

between father and son named “The Pursuit of Happiness”. Such stories often make me

associate with my family, thinking the relationship between me and my father.

Naked humanity in this book is not only exposed on those cannibals, but also exposed

between strangers. At the beginning, they find a man hit by lightening. Having a serious

injury, the person has no ability to survive. At first he just walk tenaciously, father and son

follow behind him until he has no more power and sit in the road. As the incarnation of

sympathy, the boy asked his father to give some assistance to the poor guy, although he

already knows nothing could save the man from dying. However, father refuses with no

hesitation, showing his ruthless to the reality. The loss of a life causes the boy cannot control

himself from crying. At that night, during a conversation, father explains to the boy, “There’s

nothing we could have done. He’s going to die. We can’t share what we have or we’ll die

too.” The boy understands the rule, but dedicates their supplies again when they meet an old

man. Although the old man receives the treats from the boy, he still has a distrust toward

them, and does not give them his true name. The old man explains he does not want others to

do something on his name, even he already has nothing to lose. However, the old man’s

candor and honest touch me, which sublimate his image into a more vivid form. He does not

camouflage his thought, so he does not pay attention to his wording. He does not request the
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boy for help, so he gives nothing to them. He does not beg the father to keep him, although

the warm-hearted boy might help him. He does not want do be a burden, or to interrupt others

so he chooses to keep his dignity till his final hour. As a man with nothing, he does not want

to have connection with others, no matter how they are. Is this the mental situation of a

human after suffered huge despair? Or it is just because he reaches his final hours? The old

man’s reaction toward father and son is intriguing, as it represents rationality and dignity of a

gentleman, although neither of them can be helpful for surviving.

Works Cited

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Jurgensen, John. “Hollywood’s Favourite Cowboy”. The Wall Street Journal. 13 Nov. 2009.

Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. With a New Introd. by E.F. Bleiler. Dover

Publications, 1973.