The Value of a Child

You’re in a post-apocalyptic scenario, you wake up and feel like everything around you is the same, it doesn’t phase you. Then you step outside your house, breath the air, look around, and suddenly notice that everything is different. There is no one walking the streets and ultimately no life to be perceived. It’s just you and your son, you have to do everything to protect him. In The Road by Cormac Perry, it is perceived to many readers that the man takes care of the boy. If you dig deep to understand the whole story, you can find that there are many instances of the boy being the fatherly figure and keeping him sane. The boy is constantly there to support and help his father, whether it is just his presence in the moment or the physical struggles that a post-apocalyptic scenario bears on them. The view of society’s standards on fathers being the leader and the mature one is challenged in this novel which brings light to the importance of the boy. The boy is the only thing that keeps his father sane, his maturity, protective instincts, and caring personality is the reason that they survived as long as they did. The boy is not the fatherly figure in this novel but rather is the rock that holds everything together.

Throughout the novel, ages of the man and the boy are never revealed. It can be depicted for the boy to be around ten years old due to his personality and his childish actions. The boys maturity and humbleness for his childish perception is astounding. He shows much maturity in how he approaches his life scenario. The post apocalyptic life he lives in is brutal and terrifying, through these negative events that he encounters we see many instances of him being the bigger person and persevering through them. Kids in his scenario would not take it lightly, the boy shows emotion yet keeps himself humble through it all. When the boy enters the abandoned house with his father, he recognizes and feels bad for whoever’s house it previously was. He not only thinks of the people on the road who are less fortunate than him but he feels for them; moreover, he recognizes how he also could’ve been in that scenario and is grateful that he has a chance at a better life. The boys caring and mature personality is unwavering, essentially having a more complex and developed look on life than his father does at times.

The boy is constantly showing care and gratitude to the positives that come his way. As previously written, the boy feels for and recognizes the significance of the abandoned house that they encountered and lived in. He finds value in having more freedom than the people shackled in the road but is empathetic towards what they are going through. One specific instance of the boys caring and loving attitude shining is when he sits down at the table with his father. “The boy sat staring at his plate. He seemed lost. The man was about to speak when he said: Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didn’t get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with god.”(McCarthy 146) When the boy and his father are in the bunker, the boy has trouble picking what to eat first. He sits there staring at his food before realizing that there’s something missing. He asks his dad if they can recognize the soldiers who never were able to eat this lovely food. They sit together and say grace to recognize those who blessed them with this food. His fathers lack of consideration and the boys recognition for those who were not able to eat this food was something only someone who is genuinely caring and mature could understand. The boy values the importance of caring for other people which is what his father seems to lack; however, the father is caring and mature but not to the level that his son portrays.

The substitute of a mother in this novel brings their father-son relationship tighter. They are all each other have and can’t trust anyone other than themselves. Whenever one of them is in trouble or needs help, they sense it, they feel it. There instincts are connected in that they both are interconnected. Since they are all they have, both of them understand each other like no one could  ever grasp. When the father walks into the house that has old clothes and people crouched, peeking at them the man immediately gets out of there. “He Turned and grabbed the boy. Hurry, he said. Hurry. He’d dropped the lighter. No time to look. He pushed the boy up the stairs. Help us, they called.”(McCarthy 111) The man and the boy encountered many naked men and women in the house, one of which was legless to the hip, and his limbs at the bottom were burned black. The boy was frightened and was warning the man the entire time to leave. Once they see the naked people, they run. They got out of the house as fast as they could so they wouldn’t be harmed. A form of realization for the boy was that he had predicted something wrong was happening. He kept telling his dad that “we should leave”, forewarning his father of the dangers ahead. His protective outlook on this scenario shines light to what his personality is like. He recognized something was wrong but his father’s stubbornness caused them to be put in harm’s way.

The boy is the glue that holds his father together, without the boy the man is nothing. Everytime something bad happens to either of them, they turn to each other for hope and guidance. The boys maturity, protective instincts, and caring personality is the reason that they both survived in that life scenario. They would do absolutely anything for each other, which brings me to why the man tries too hard to provide for his son. He is constantly seen putting his son in dangerous situations in attempt to better their lives and get them proper necessities. Whether it is them entering the house with the naked people, having many close calls with the men on the road, or the nights where they light a fire to keep themselves warm but putting them in harm’s way. The boy may not represent the fatherly figure that he plays out to be, but his presence and guidance leads to him showing maturity and responsibility in a role that many people at his age could not display.

Work Cited”Blog Post One: The Old Man.” Stoneridge School, Dystopian Literature, edtech.stoneridgeschool.org/wordpress/dystopian/2014/09/10/the-road-blog-post-1-the-old-man/.