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Kevin Pham

Professor McClure

Writing 39B

28 October 2018

The Loss of Morality in the Apocalypse

Cormac McCarthy’s ​The Road​ follows the story of a man and his son trailing through a

post-apocalyptic America as they fight off below-freezing temperatures and maniacal cannibals

with what little resources they have. McCarthy’s unorthodox writing style adds a unique twist on

the reader’s perception of the text by placing less of the focus on the story’s world (as would

most post-apocalyptic novels) to putting it on the interactions between characters in the world,

both the good and the bad. What starts off as being a tale describing the everlasting bond

between father and son slowly becomes an interpretation of the horrific side of human nature in

our selfish conquest to better ourselves at the cost of others. This focal shift relates to the state of

America during 2006, the year in which the novel was published and an era where xenophobia

was very prevalent due to terrorism. Emily Lane, a reporter who earned her Masters at the

University of New Orleans, wrote about the historical context behind ​The Road​ and McCarthy’s

message in her essay comparing the novel to Dante’s ​Inferno: ​“In a country that… publicly

proclaims a slew of countries as the ‘axis of evil,’ and must defend itself against vague

weapons…, it is feasible that Americans in 2006 feared human-inflicted destruction of the U.S.”

(Lane). As such, McCarthy contrasts the familial trust between the father and the son to the

hostile distrust between the father and other individuals through the use of the horror genre and
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vague descriptions to reflect and discuss the isolation of American society and its people from

the outside world due to emergence of threats to the nation’s security.

Before providing evidence to support my thesis, it is important to note that by

interpreting ​The Road​ as a horror novel, then there must be a monster present; that monster is

purposefully kept ambiguous as the monster is only given in the point of view of the father and

son. McCarthy shows that, while the cold winter and lack of food impair the man and the son’s

survival, other humans remain as the primary threat of the novel, as depicted by how he

describes the protagonists’ fear when they first meet a group of bandits. “The boy was frozen

with fear. [The man] pulled him to him. It’s all right, he said. We have to run. Dont look back.

Come on… The boy was terrified. Run, he whispered. Run” (McCarthy 61). The boy is shown

to be powerless, further emphasized by McCarthy’s use of alliteration in describing his shock.

The following sentences focus primarily on the father’s point of view, signifying how the son has

lost control of himself and unsure of what to do next. Furthermore, the man’s stress is shown

through his dialogue, where he yells quick commands to the boy rather than continuing to

comfort him. The short sentences describe the situation as being happening in seconds, further

adding to how deadly of a situation they are in. After escaping the group and killing one of the

bandits, the father finds that they had eaten their dead ally. Based on this description, the

cannibals match how Noël Carroll, considered to be a leading figure in contemporary philosophy

of art, describes the art-horror monster in his essay “The Nature of Horror”​ p​ ublished in the ​The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.​ “And, moreover, it is crucial that two evaluative beliefs

come into play; that the monster is regarded as threatening and impure” (Carroll 55). In using

Carroll’s definition of describing the cannibals, they are indeed threatening to our protagonists
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(which then makes us fear them) and are indeed impure due to how quick they are to eat one of

their own. While the monster is portrayed by humans in the novel, McCarthy ensures that the

father, while somewhat impure, is not a monster or at least to the same degree.

The man can be described as being monsterlike however morally good due to his

impurity shown through his actions, expressing the xenophobic tendencies of Americans

post-9/11. McCarthy shows his impurity by manipulating the horror genre and its expectations

and blurring the lines of what is the monster. One of the first individuals the man and the boy

meet is a burnt man on the verge of death, whom they past by without saying a word or offering

anything to help him. McCarthy sets up the scene in a way where it appears that our protagonists

may be in danger. “Bye and bye they came to a set of tracks cooked into the tar. They just

suddenly appeared. He squatted and studied them” (McCarthy 49). Here the sudden shift in tone

adds a sense of uneasiness to the passage, making the reader unaware of what is about to happen.

In addition, McCarthy keeps the pronouns very ambiguous, making it difficult to discern who is

doing what, adding to the fear. On first read the reader would expect the unknown individual to

be dangerous due to the extreme precautions the man takes and what they know of the story’s

world. McCarthy plays into those expectations and reveals that the unknown figure is anything

but a threat. He describes the burnt man as being helpless, especially with the line “As they

passed by he looked down. As if he’d done something wrong” (McCarthy 50). Despite being

clearly harmless, the father still sees the burnt man as a monster, walking by him while providing

no sympathy in contrast to his son’s reaction. This makes the man appear heartless and impure

for the sake of protecting his son. The man’s decision to walk by also reflects present-day

Americans and their xenophobic tendencies such as ignoring or harassing people of different
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cultures from them because of recent terrorist attacks. Stephen T. Asma, a professor of

Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, describes monsters in a similar fashion in his book,

On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, ​stating some to be “ the most extreme

personified point of unfamiliarity; they push our sense of abnormality beyond the usual

anthropological xenophobia.” The father walks past the burnt man because of this fear of

unknown individuals, even if he is aware that he poses no threat. It becomes overall safer for him

to neglect the burnt man. The son however, responds differently by wanting to help the burnt

man due to his innate purity and naivety.

The boy represents the new and essentially pure generation born during the 21st century,

one free of the cultural stigma built up in older Americans and can look past differences between

people. The boy is shown to be pure not only by his father describing him as being the voice of

God, but also by his selfless nature, most notably in wanting to help and share with others

despite having no information on the type of person they are. In one scene, the boy discovers

another lonely child in a town and constantly begs his father to find and help the child, in which

the father rejects his requests. McCarthy barely describes the lost child, giving little to no

information other than the clothes he wore and that he was about the same age of the boy. It

implies that there was very little difference between them. This contrasts with the scene

mentioned previously with the burnt man who was described in great detail. Where the boy was

willing to help the lost child regardless of what they were like, the man ignored the burnt man

even knowing he was a victim. While the boy starts off pure in the story, he is slowly being

conditioned into being just as heartless as his father.

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Because of the strong familial bond the father and the son have, the son puts full trust in

his father and starts to pick up on his habits, similar to how parents act as one of the primary

influencers on their children’s personalities. This is portrayed throughout the entirety of the

novel as the father continues to do questionable things, however justifies his actions by calling

the two “the good guys,” leaving the son to believe his father’s ethics to be correct or moral. In

the scene following the the man and the boy’s encounter with the cannibals mentioned earlier,

the boy ignores his father due to being frightened after witnessing his father kill a man right

before his very eyes. The father explains to the boy why the murder was not only necessary, but

justified by referring to religion. “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by

God. I will kill anyone who touches you” (McCarthy 77). The father’s statements appear

contradictory or illogical considering it goes against one of the principles laid out in the Ten

Commandments by stating he would be willing to commit murder in the name of God. McCarthy

intended for the father’s purpose to appear self-contradictory to have the reader question whether

or not his actions are truly justified or if he is making excuses due to the trauma caused by the

apocalypse. Erik J. Wielenberg, a professor of philosophy at DePauw University, commented on

the man’s thoughts with respect to societal beliefs in his essay “God, Morality, and Meaning”

published in the ​Cormac McCarthy Journal​. “It is when we suffer that we most need belief in a

loving God to keep ourselves going. … It is precisely because of this that [the man] needs to

believe that he is on a divine mission" (Wielenberg). Here the man reflects the mentality of

Americans in the wake of terrorism who believe to be morally correct in their actions, unaware

of how their fear of an external threat had brainwashed them, forcing them to find a scapegoat.
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Works Cited

​ xford: Oxford
Asma, Stephen T. ​On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. O
University Press, 2009. Google Books. Web. 28 Oct. 2018.

Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” ​The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,​ Vol. 46, No.
1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59.

Lane, Emily. "Hell On Earth: A Modern Day Inferno in Cormac McCarthy's The Road" (2010).
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations.​ 1127.

McCarthy, Cormac. ​The Road.​ New York: Vintage International, 2006. Print.

Wielenberg, Erik J.. “God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's ‘The Road.’” ​The
Cormac McCarthy Journal​ Vol. 8, No. 1 (Fall 2010), pp. 1-19.