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Justin Aranda

Professor McClure

Writing 39B

14 November 2018

The Importance of Hope in The Road

Cormac McCarthy is the author of the novel, The Road, and it details a story that follows

a father and son’s journey South in a postapocalyptic version of America. Through the use of an

array of rhetorical devices, the horror genre conventions, and American culture, McCarthy

constructs the environment of his novel and the people living within that environment into the

monsters of the story. The two monsters he has created are embodiments of our fear of a post-

apocalyptic world and our disgust toward the darker side of human beings. By doing this,

McCarthy reveals to the reader that even in the worst conditions, human perseverance and hope

can still prevail. Yet, by bringing attention to this message, it reveals the message’s complication

which is that in order to be humane, you must make hard decisions that render inhumane results.

McCarthy’s message is unveiled to the audience through the interactions between the father and

son, the creation of monsters in his novel, and the use of scholarly evidence.

McCarthy turns the gloomy desolated environment and the immoral people living in that

environment into monsters. Monsters are seen in many genres beyond horror, but what’s unique

about a monster in a horror story is that it is considered a “disturbance of the natural order”

(Carroll 52). In the article, The Nature of Horror, by Noël Carroll, he explains the guidelines of

the horror genre and how horror appeals to people. He writes that “[i]n examples of horror, it

would appear that the monster is an extraordinary character in our ordinary world . . .” (Carroll

52). Using these guidelines and observing The Road, it seems prevalent that the environment and
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people within it are the monsters of the story. The world the father and son live in is filled with ill

moral people and plagued by starvation, hypothermia, and destruction. This can be seen in

phrases like, “ . . . everything dead to the root along the barren bottomlands,” (McCarthy 20) or

“The reptilian calculations in those cold and shifting eyes. The gray and rotting teeth. Claggy

with human flesh.” (McCarthy 79). Both descriptions of the environment and the people within it

use dark imagery to convey how disgusting and ill-looking they both are. The environment and

the people in it are “disturbances of the natural order” because there is nothing ordinary about a

desolated, cannibal filled version of our world. They are the monsters of the story because they

are terrifying exaggerations of our fears of the ordinary world.

The monsters in The Road symbolize people’s fear of what our current world would look

like if it were stripped of civilization, life, and morality. Along with being abnormalities in the

ordinary world, monsters in horror are meant to embody and invoke fear into the audience. In

Magistrale and Morrison's paper, A Dark Night’s Dreaming, they describe what a monster should

symbolize in a horror story. They state that “[t]he horror monster sometimes embodies the worst

aspects of [ . . . ] social and personal contexts and always represents something threatening”

(Magistrale & Morrison 3). In The Road’s case, the monsters embody America’s societal fear of

the end of the world and the darker side of human beings. Whether it be stumbling upon a cellar

with human livestock jammed into it (McCarthy 116), or discovering a newborn baby roasting on

a skewer over a fire (McCarthy 212), the monsters always present themselves as a threat by

embodying these fears. More specifically, they are a direct threat to the lives of the father and

son. Because the monsters depict the worst aspects of our current world and human beings, they

represent the evilness of our world. But in order to combat this idea, McCarthy utilizes the father

and son.
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The father and son are used to represent the good values held within our current society

and their interactions with the monsters show the clash between good versus evil. In the novel,

the father and son seem to distinguish themselves as the “good guys” and everyone else that isn’t

is identified as the “bad guys.” They refer to themselves as the good guys because they attempt

to maintain the values and morals held by the pre-apocalyptic world and they refer to the others

as bad guys because they break those values and morals held by the father and son. The father

and son hold themselves to a higher moral standard so that they can feel human and carry-on the

values that were lost in the apocalyptic event. In Sauder and McPherson’s paper, titled The Value

of a Negative Case, they further support this idea by stating, “[t]hese [moral] holdovers from the

pre-apocalyptic world may be anachronistic, but they also function to maintain the selfhood that

[ . . . ] is distinct to humankind” (4). Knowing all of this, the entire book can be seen as a clash

between good and evil. The good guys, father and son, are constantly battling the bad guys, the

environment and cannibals, to fight for their survival. Yet more importantly, the survival of the

good morals and values held by the pre-apocalyptic world. But despite promoting themselves as

the “good guys,” the father and son find themselves constantly fighting over what is right and

what is wrong. The son’s innocence clashes with the father’s desire to keep the son safe which

reveals the struggle of maintaining good morals and values in a post apocalyptic world.

By implementing the idea of humanity in The Road’s environment, McCarthy tries to tell

the reader that even in a world filled with death, dishonesty, and fear -- hope has the power to

push individuals to persist. Being that the father and son represent hope and humanity, while the

monsters represent everything but that, McCarthy is trying to show us that as long as hope exists,

there will always be a will to survive. Parallel to my thinking, Marcel Decoste, Head of English

at the University of Regina, believes that “[t]he substance of McCarthy’s tale is this pair’s
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struggle for survival, not just of the body, but of ways of relating [to] being human. To persist

without succumbing to the life-preserving habits of violence of those they encounter on the road

seems a marvel” (2). Using his insights, I discovered that the father and son are being used to

show that the renewal of the pre-apocalyptic world can be achieved as long as there is hope. This

hope is created through their need for each other’s presence. As long as the father is around to

make the tough decisions for the boy, he can still survive. And as long as the boy is still alive, the

father still has a reason to live. They both feed off each other’s presence and create hope for one

another. Being that they have hope on their side, they have the power to persevere and survive

through all obstacles. This in turn allows them to have the willpower to carry the good

wholesome values of the pre-apocalyptic world, the values that represent the best part of

humanity. Holding onto these values allows the two characters to feel human again. By having

hope in each other and sticking by their moral code, the father and son are able to continue to

survive, regardless of the disturbances in their world.

The complications of McCarthy’s message is the irony of the idea that in order to be

humane, you will have to make decisions that will render inhumane outcomes. McCarthy’s main

message is that hope can power an individual to strive in even the worst conditions. This is

prevalent in the book when the father and son make decisions based on their moral code. But

abiding by this moral code proves to be a struggle for the father and son because the morally

right decision ends up rendering unfortunate outcomes. For example, the father, despite his

internal resistance, is forced to kill the cannibal that runs up on them to protect his boy and

himself. (McCarthy 68). The environment has forced him into a situation where he needs to

commit an inhumane act to maintain his established moral of doing everything in his power to

keep his boy safe. The dilemma here is that the father and son are struggling to hold onto their
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moral code because they are constantly being torn by the hard decisions they need to make in

order to survive. As described in the paper, Hospitality in Cormac McCarthy's ‘The Road, the

father and son “feel the weight of an impossible hospitality mandate” (Snyder 2). It seems that

the father and son want to exemplify good values and be nice to others, especially the son. But

the monsters in the novel force them to commit horrid actions that they despise. This idea is

further supported when we look at what the father and son represent in terms of humanity. The

father represents the necessary evil of being humane because he is the one that is willing to

commit murder or flee helpless victims in mind of the greater good. The son represents the

pureness of humanity since he is always wanting to save people because he believes that

everyone is good on the inside. By having the son and father interact and make hard decisions,

we get to witness the struggle of trying to maintain the values of humanity. This ethical dilemma

of having to be inhumane in order to be humane reveals why the father and son struggle so much

to abide by their moral code.

Through the father’s persistence to maintain the “fire,” and protect his son, it is further

revealed that they are struggling to keep humanity alive. In the book, the phrase, “carrying the

fire” is constantly being used by the father and son. For example, after escaping a run in with the

cannibals the father reassures the son that they are “the good guys” and that they are “carrying

the fire.” (McCarthy 136). Seeing how the phrase is used in the book, it can be inferred that the

symbolic meaning behind the word fire is the desire to keep going and persist. So by stating that

they carry the fire in the book, they are metaphorically carrying and maintaining the foundational

values and morals of the past civilization with them. That being said, they seem to be apart of a

very small portion of their world that is willing enough to carry on the standards of humanity.

This makes their fight to maintain those standards much harder because just about everyone else
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is out to either torture, kill, or eat them. It’s also important to note that the father makes it his

only job to protect his son at all costs, even going as far to say that, “All I know is the child is my

warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke” (McCarthy 3). This statement

implies that the father is the protector of the child, a piece of humanity, and it is his God-given

duty to keep him safe at all cost. It is because of this rooted belief that he comes into conflict

with the inhumane actions occurring around him and consequently, struggles to uphold his belief.

As him and his son try to carry the “fire,” they struggle to abide by their moral code, and in order

to protect his son, he has to break that code to keep him safe. This is the dilemma the father and

son face and why they struggle so much to keep humanity alive.

To conclude, The Road is an emblematic novel that touches on many concepts such as

spirituality, morality, violence, love, and more. His use of the horror genre allows him to elevate

the meaning behind his book and better the delivery of his book’s message. The book highlights

the ideas of consumerism and capitalism and how those two factors could possibly lead to the

destruction of American culture/society. Additionally, McCarthy uses God to show the

importance and impact of faith in a situation that seems to have no hope. The novel reveals that

the only thing that will keep American culture alive once the world is destroyed is people’s

willingness to maintain core values and not let the environment or negative influences poison

their mind.
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Works Cited

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.

Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 46, no.

1, 1987, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/431308.

Tony Magistrale and Michael A. Morrison, eds., A Dark Night’s Dreaming: Contemporary

American Horror Fiction (Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1996), 141 pp. Print
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Sauder, Michael, and Chad Michael McPherson. “The Value of a Negative Case.” Sociological

Forum, vol. 24, no. 2, 2009, pp. 474–479. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40210418.

Snyder, Phillip A. “Hospitality in Cormac McCarthy's ‘The Road.’” The Cormac McCarthy

Journal, vol. 6, 2008, pp. 69–86. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42909384.

DeCoste, D. Marcel. “‘A THING THAT EVEN DEATH CANNOT UNDO’: THE OPERATION

OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES IN CORMAC MCCARTHY'S ‘THE ROAD.’” Religion &

Literature, vol. 44, no. 2, 2012, pp. 67–91. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24397670.