The Journey of The Road
Would you go down fighting or just give up? In the novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a father and son try their best to survive in a post- apocalyptic world. The goal on their journey, through this horrible world, is to reach the coast. Along the road lies groups of blood cults looking for their next victims, the constant struggle of finding food and having enough resources to survive. Knowing these conditions, the father still chose to attempt to survive and give his son a chance. However, the mother was terrified of this new world and decided to take her own life rather than taking this journey with her husband and son and trying to survive. She saw no future in this new world. The father just wants his son to experience life and live even though they are living for nothing. The purpose of the journey for the father and son was to keep moving because you can either sit there and wait to die or keep moving and try to live as long as possible.
Very few things remain on this post-apocalyptic earth, however, people still don’t want to leave it. People choose to live through the hell instead of just giving in and dying. When the son and the father run into an old man along the road, the old man said, “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.” (McCarthy 169) The old man is telling the boy and the man the truth about this world. This world is like living in hell but to some it is still considered to be better than death. People keep moving along the road even though no one wants to be here. In the article, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature by Joe Fassler, he states, “The Road is ultimately about a father sacrificing everything for his son—keeping on and surviving despite a nightmare landscape, and only for his son’s sake.” The father kept himself going and made the journey to the coast just to make sure his son was okay. The father knows the world is horrible, however, he doesn’t want to leave it knowing his son is still alive. He chose to battle through the journey unlike his partner.
The mother saw no future in this new world. She hated everything about it and the danger that awaited her in it, “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 won’t face it.” (McCarthy 56) The mother doesn’t even want to start the journey because she knows eventually she will face the harsh realities of this new world. She saw no purpose for life anymore and that life was dead on earth. She believed that ending her life was the best option. To keep living for her was a false hope and she saw nothing but a miserable future ahead that would lead to disappointment. The father recognized this when they reached the coast for the first time, “He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.” (McCarthy 215) The boy imagined he would be seeing a blue sea once he reached the coast, not a grey sea that just left him disappointed. The only good thing left in this world is that you’re alive and that you are still moving because everything around you will just leave you disappointed.
The father created the goal to reach the coast to give the boy a sense of hope. He wanted to give them a reason to keep on moving along the road even though they are living for nothing. The father knows that the world is over and that the coast will be no different, “He said that everything depended on reaching the coast yet waking in the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it.” (McCarthy 8) The father just wanted the boy to experience life while they made the journey to the coast. The father knew that there’s nothing good left in this world, however, he battled through it for his son’s sake. He just wanted to give his son a chance even though he understood how bad the situations is, “And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (McCarthy 130) The father compared himself and the son to wild animals and that they are living on borrowed time because the world ended a while ago. There is nothing left to live for and the only thing left is sorrow.
The purpose of the journey for the father and boy was to keep moving because you can either sit there and wait to die or keep moving and try to live as long as possible. Some people shared the same view as the father, to keep moving and try your best to survive even though nobody wanted to be there. Some people also had the same view as the mother, kill yourself before you face the realities of this new world, and bring about your own death before it is out of your control. Even with this tortured reality, the father still chose to face the battles along the road. The father wanted his son to experience life and created hope in this new world even though he himself saw it as a disaster.
