THE ROAD —- Growing Up in A Nutshell

Posted on May 22, 2019 by 20tangd

Even though the novel THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy may not be the most accurate and classic post-apocalyptic novel due to the world it describes being too fictional that human exists even though every other species has gone extinct, it is definitely a novel that reflects on growing up and the relationship between parents and children. In the novel, the boy learned to be independent, experienced leaving his dad whom he loves, and he and his dad developed gaps due to their different values and identities.

The son and the dad in the book are nameless, which suggests Cormac McCarthy intended to uses them as universal examples for a parent and a child. The son in the novel grows significantly more independent as the story progresses. Being independent is an important aspect of being an adult. The boy shows his independence in his language. After he and his father left the bunker the boy questioned his dad about what their “long term goal” was (McCarthy 160). The phrase “long term goal” is not what a child would use normally. Let alone a kid that has grown up in the ashes and has never been educated formally. This phrase is not here for nothing. In the real world, there are examples that a parent would be surprised by a child’s mature action; Many readers should have experienced, as children or as parents, similar occasions. Cormac McCarthy put this language here to indicate the growth of the son. Different from his father, the son’s maturity hasn’t taken away his ability to empathize yet. People in the world of the novel shows an extreme lack of empathy. They always put themselves first before others, which is going to be true in an uncivilized world with extremely limited resources. The boy, however, possessed some empathy from some mysterious place. Near the end of the book, a poor guy took away all the stuff that the man and the boy had. The man commanded him to give them all of his stuff with what he stole. The man didn’t think he killed the guy, but the boy reminded him “But we did kill him” (McCarthy 260). People, like every other creature in the world, are born for themselves. Being able to put themselves into other’s shoes is an important skill that a person in a civilized world should learn. From the beginning of the book, the boy has had this ability, but this was the first time that he was able to convince his father to do something, and the man put the the thief’s things back onto the road. The boy is now able to do something with his empathy, which is a sign of having a matured mind.

When people grow up, they always have to face a step of leaving the people they love, especially their parents. Leaving parents can be heartbreaking, but people have to face it, and often a parent will encourage a child to leave them. This phase is also represented in this novel, though in a more dramatic way. The force that separated them was death. When the man was dying, he didn’t want his son to stay with him untill his last minute. Rather, he told the boy that “[The boy] needs to go on, I can’t go with you. You need to keep going. You don’t know what might be down the road. We are always lucky. You’ll be lucky again. You’ll see. Just go. It’s alright” (McCarthy 278). The boy’s reaction was natural, he didn’t go. They are carrying the fire, just like people carrying the torch of the Olympics that they pass on. The man, like every parent, asked his child to leave him and keep carrying the fire into the unknown even though the parting must have hurt him and his son. If everything stays the same, no one would want to and need to leave the person they love, but the world is not like this. Leaving is an unavoidable stage of growing up, and THE ROAD shows this.

Growing up is not always a smooth process. Each individual has different values and identities. This is especially influential in a parent-child relationship because the relationship is usually very close and the age difference is usually very large. The man and the boy both value different things, and Cormac McCarthy amplifies this by putting them into a world that is always full of pressure and decisions that were to be made. Any differences they have are going to have a big impact on their relationship but the man always forgives the son. The New York Times article Left Behind describes one example, “The son, born after the sky opened, has no memory of the world that was. His father gave him lessons about it but then he stopped” (Kennedy). Their generational gap is so huge that the man could not really give the son a sense of what the past was. In real life, it is also hard for a parent born in the 1980s to teach a child that was born in the 2010s how a floppy disk worked or what a flip phone could do. Beyond the generational gap, the boy also had different beliefs to the man because the boy was protected and the man was protecting. The boy never wanted to take the pistol —- a tool the man used to protect his son. When the man went onto the ship to collect supplies, he gave the pistol to the boy. After he came back he asked the boy for the pistol but “the boy froze. He looked terrified” (McCarthy 232). He threw the pistol away because he was the one that was being protected and he didn’t want to accept the benefit to surviving of the pistol is higher than its negativity of killing. After the man found the pistol, “he aligned the cylinder for the true cartridge to come up” (McCarthy 233). He is always ready to protect his son despite the fact that the son made a mistake to him. In the real world, every child has let down their parent, but their parent usually chooses to not blame the mistake on their child and keep loving their child.


THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy is a work that reflects the process of growing up. Cormac McCarthy wrote at the beginning of the book that it is dedicated to his son John Francis McCarthy, which suggested that the book is about a parent-child relationship. Throughout the book, Cormac McCarthy has placed many elements into the novel to imply to us that this novel is not about the fact of the world ending, but about a story of growing up, that has been dramatized by the post-apocalyptic world.

Work Cited

Kennedy, Willam. “Left Behind.” Sunday Book Review, 8 Oct. 2006.

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141 Responses to THE ROAD —- Growing Up in A Nutshell

  1. 20tangd says:
    May 22, 2019 at 11:27 am

    This is not my favorite book, but I think this essay is good. One thing I can feel is that this book is more about growing up, so that’s what I focused my essay on. I connected essential parts of growing up in our real life with the plots in the novel. I like the line “People, like every other creature in the world, are born for themselves.” I should have more sources to support my points but I couldn’t find any.

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