If the world were to end how would you react? Would you protect yourself and your loved ones at any cost or would you choose not to fight against the hopelessness? The Road by Cormac McCarthy depicts a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world trying to navigate the desolate land of was once the United States to seek refuge on the coast. Throughout the book we get to see the father sacrificing everything to make sure his son survives, but he isn’t the boys only parent. His mother killed herself before her husband and son set out on their journey. Despite the fact that the young boy’s parents reacted completely different to the situation, they both have a profound love for their son.
The man’s sole purpose of life is to live so that his son can survive. The boy is too young to take care of himself and he heavily relies on his father for food, water and shelter. When the man and his wife are talking about the end of the world and how they are going to handle it she says, “the one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself”(48 McCarthy). She criticized him for using their son as an excuse to live. The woman is extremely cynical and judges the man for his choices. She knows that the only reason the man would stay alive was so that their son can survive. She argues that, “No, I’m speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it… (93 McCarthy)”. The woman kills herself because she gives in to the despair. Unlike the man, she doesn’t have hope or faith that they will survive, she believes they are doomed and would only be living to survive which isn’t a life at all. She doesn’t kill herself because she doesn’t love her family, it’s because she could not bear to watch anything bad happen to them. At one point the man tells his wife that he can not do it alone and she responds with, “Then dont. I can’t help you. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I dont dream at all” (114 McCarthy). When the boy was born the woman refers to her heart being ripped out of her chest. The woman does not want to bring a baby into a dead world. There is no hope, there is no food: there’s nothing.. This speaks the theme of the futility of being alive on a planet that is no longer viable for human existence.
Throughout the story we see how much the man loves the boy. He often speaks of his son as a christ-like figure and even an angel sometimes. The boy represents the only hope in this world for the man and he would do anything in his power to do so. He found his purpose in his son. “And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.” (216 McCarthy). At one point in the book, the man contemplates if he could kill his son to prevent him from dying in a worse manner. “They lay listening. Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesnt fire? It has to fire. What if it doesnt fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly” (172 McCarthy.) The man realizes that he may have to sacrifice what he loves most in the world for the greater good. The man shows his love for his son by taking care of him and providing him with everything he needs. “The father’s loving efforts to shepherd his son are made that much more wrenching by the unavailability of food, shelter, safety, companionship or hope in most places where they scavenge to subsist.” (Maslin) The love that the man has for his son makes it even more heartbreaking to watch them go through this struggle but it’s also comforting that faced with the worst fate, the man still has unconditional love for his child.
Despite the fact that each parent shows their love in completely different ways, they both love their son. His mother simply couldn’t watch her child go through absolute hell so she chose not to. She was realistic about what was going to happen to them. She realized that there was no way that they would all have a happy ending together. On the other hand, the man is more optimistic. He has faith that him and his son will survive, but to what extent? He was willing to put his son through terrible things even though he tried his best to conceal it from him, you can’t protect him from the world he lives in. In the end everything seemed to work out for the boy even though the man died, he found a family to provide him safety. Both of the boys parents love him despite the different ways they showed it in the book.
