Both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Dune by Frank Herbert are set in inhospitable

environments and deal, at least partially, with the nature of humanity. McCarthy, in his post-apocalyptic
land of gloom and ash, presents a first-hand exploration of humanity. From a traumatic past, a father
and son head south to escape the oncoming winter. In addition to closing in on their heading, their
journey explores what it is to be human and that which may or may not separate humans from animals:
necessary sacrifices, fear, obligation, complex emotion, adaptation, and religion. Herbert’s Dune takes a
somewhat more objective view of the world, with young Paul Atreides’ teachings educating him on the
observations of others, while also presenting Paul’s own observations. Additionally, contrast is
presented through omniscient observation of Paul’s enemies, and through passages from literature in
the Dune universe. Dune presents Herbert’s own interpretation of humanity through fear, obligation,
adaptation and religion, in addition to distinguishing humans from people, and both from animals. From
Paul’s position as a leader, we see what it is that influences humans on a large scale, in addition to the
influences on the individual presented in both Dune and The Road.

Perhaps the most integral question to be answered when considering humanity is: What
separates humans and animals? After all, humans are animals. Where does the animal end and the
human begin? Cormac McCarthy shows through desperate survival three sides of humanity. In The
Road the survivors can be categorized in three ways: those who abandon the constructs of humanity in
order to survive, those who maintain the constructs of humanity as best they can, and those who drift.

Many of the survivors in The Road have made it as far as they have by forming gangs and
prospering by exploiting other survivors. The father and son encounter a member of one such gang as
he abandons the group to urinate mere feet in front of the pair’s hiding spot. McCarthy describes him,
“Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull looking out the
eyeholes.”(37) The man, like the other gang members, has abandoned human morality in favor
of brute survival. The eyes are commonly called the window to the soul, and McCarthy
describes this man’s soul as wholly animal—focused on nothing but self-preservation. These
people do not form gangs because they appreciate company, or even favor the company of
their comrades; they join because of the same mechanism which causes wolves to form packs.
Strength and security come with numbers. Upon entering the basement of the hub of one such gang
the man finds that “huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying
to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to
the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt.”(67) These packs survive by cannibalizing
their victims. All semblance of human decency is void in the presentation of the pack human. In
another instance, they discover the cooked remains of a fetus, miscarried but reclaimed for the meager
nutrients it could provide. McCarthy presents an interesting concept with these roving, animalian
groups; as these people are still human, it is a component of what it is to be human to be able to revert
near entire to animal instinct, in the process abandoning what some would call human virtues.

Not all of the survivors are bereft of virtue and morality, however. The unnamed father and son
lack only human creature comforts; in mentality their code of ethics is complete. They enter hidden
shelter and discover the food reserves of an enterprising survivalist, who was taken in the destruction,
completely untouched. The boy is conflicted about eating the food of another because the food was not
intended for them. After the father explains that the survivalist would want them to make use of the
food, the boy asks, “Do you think we should thank the people?” “The people?” asks the father. “The
people who gave us all this,”(88) the boy clarifies. He goes on to thank them and says, “ 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.” Before finding this cache of food the boy and his father were near death from lack of
food, yet the boy says they wouldn’t touch the food if its original owners were still around.
Adherence to principal over penalty of death is distinctly human. Despite the conditions
morality is not dead among people, and truly it thrives in the boy and his father.

Impartial to morality is the third category of survivor. These types are represented in
the old man whom man and boy meet on the road. The man seems to be wandering aimlessly
and the boy’s father asks him how he lives, “I just keep going,”(105) answers the old man. The
father questions him about his apparent disinterest in speaking, something a man on his own
wouldn’t have much opportunity for on the road. The older man says, “I think in times like
these the less said the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met
on the road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we don’t.”(108) The
aged man says that he is not a survivor; he just keeps going. Men like he have no ambition;
they see themselves as having been overlooked by the destruction, “I might wish I had
died,”(105) says the old man. In a world split by creedless cannibals and the morally righteous,
there exist the aimless wanderers who go on simply because they exist.