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, the two

protagonists have to 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 Supernatural Horror in Literature, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind
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is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Lovecraft page 1).

In a chaotic world, everything can happen, no matter how freak it is. No one knows how the

world will become, as every single symbol of order already disappeared. To the readers, they

also worry about if the pressure on the father’s shoulder would change him into a survivor

stepping his feet on humanity. McCarthy does not add monsters or disasters into his book for

the frightening effect. Instead, survivors who drop their dignities turn themselves into

monsters. 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 human’s

mind would be twisted under great pressure of survival, but everyone acknowledges things

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

Living in such a world like this, men have no choice but make decisions. 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 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
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real monsters. However, the irony is those people who drop their suppression, survive easier

than those people who protect their dignities. In the real world, such situations also exist

generally. In ancient era, such as ancient Greek and ancient Egypt, there were slaves who

fought in the arena for pleasuring people at high level. Slaves were innocent, while the ruling

class treated normal life as their toys. 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. McCarthy, the straightforward writer, exposes the dark side of human nature nakedly

in his book, trying to communicate with his audience about the value of kindness and equity.

“McCarthy finally concludes in The Road that we should cherish the world of relative

security in which we live” (Hardwig page 49).

Under the cruel reality, 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

full of sympathy, trying to help every mankind through their trip. “For them, McCarthy

resorts to a picture of redemption, redeeming a world that can no longer be redeemed”

(Rambo page 100). Boy is not experienced enough for surviving in the despair world, so
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father decide to be his lighthouse in the darkness. Father does all the dirtiness, such as

making cold-blood decisions or plundering from unarmed people. He entirely protects his son

from becoming evil, and blocking the evilness away from his son so that they cannot stain

son’s purity. In such a world been crowded by loneliness and endless despair, father and son

become the only sustenance of each other. The consanguinity love connects two protagonists

tightly, showing the sign of humanity among the cruel and hopeless world.

Son in the story acts as the carnation of redemption, the oasis in desert which disperses

the entrenched haze in father’s mind. Son is always cheerful, sanguine and mercy, and that’s

how he cures his father. At the beginning, they find a man hit by lightening. Having a serious

injury, the person has no ability to survive. 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 rejects with no hesitation, showing his ruthless to the reality.

The loss of a life causes the boy cannot control himself from crying. However, at that night

during a conversation, father explains to the boy:

“He's going to die. We cant share what we have or we'll die too.

I know.

So when are you going to talk to me again?

I'm talking now.

Are you sure?

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Yes.” (McCarthy page 52)

The boy is not foolish, he knows all the rules to survive in the post-apocalyptic world.

However, he refuses to follow the rule; he refuses to accept the reality. The boy choose to

keep his sympathy and humanity in order to show his determination against the despair world.

He then dedicates their supplies again when they meet an old man. Although the old man

exposes his hostility through his language, and does not appreciate them, boy never regrets.

His willing of helping strangers does not come from vanity, but comes from his

understanding of morality.

Father in the story is driven by responsibility of protecting his child. Father in this novel

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

deeper. Under such pressure, father transfers his entire focus to his son. Son not only

represents the redemption to the whole world, but also acts as the redemption of father. 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” (McCarthy page 5). 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.

“The father's sole remaining referent of sacred idiom is his son. In sustaining his son's breath,

he sustains not only his own capacity for life but for some belief in life's continuance, in the

value of life” (Schaub page 158). All adults know that there is no possibility for the world to

become normal again, so a lot of people give up their determinations of living. Surrounding

by the endless despair, father transforms his will of surviving to “protect my son”. That’s why

a contradiction exists in father’s character, as he uses the responsibility of a father to justify

himself as one of the “good guys”, but he still harm other survivors. It is the only way for the
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father to get rid of the self-condemn about hurting others. His wife failed to do so. She so she

could not survive to the end.

The true charm of the novel is detailed depictions of the humanity, the emotion, the

connection between father and son. 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.

The very pure emotions between father and son, parents and children, are the highlights

existing in humanity. Such firm and steady emotions stabilize the relationships between

people, and breed warmth in human nature.

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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.

Rambo, Shelly L. Studies in the Literary Imagination. Fall2008, Vol. 41 Issue 2. Georgia

State University, 2008.

Hardwig, Bill. Studies in American Naturalism. Summer2013, Vol. 8 Issue 1. International

Theodore Dreiser Society, 2013.

Schaub, Thomas. Renascence. Spring2009, Vol. 61 Issue 3. Marquette University Press, 2009.