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Literary Analysis of McCarthy's The Road

The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy depicts the journey of a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. McCarthy uses religious symbols and allusions to explore the cyclical nature of humanity and the ambiguities of God. He suggests destruction paves the way for regeneration and that humanity can find connection with or without God.

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Gatun Mosawan
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3 views2 pages

Literary Analysis of McCarthy's The Road

The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy depicts the journey of a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. McCarthy uses religious symbols and allusions to explore the cyclical nature of humanity and the ambiguities of God. He suggests destruction paves the way for regeneration and that humanity can find connection with or without God.

Uploaded by

Gatun Mosawan
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Sillatoc, Vincem M.

STEM 11- B
21st Century Philippine Literature (Creating representation of a literaty text
by applying multimedia and ICT skills)

LITERARY ANALYSIS

THE ROAD
Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road depicts a noir journey of a father and his son
and their survival in a society descended into barbaric chaos. McCarthy reveals the
cyclical nature of humanity and the ambiguities of God by examining their
expedition with religious motifs and allusions; he thus suggests a cycle of
destruction that paves the way for regeneration and perhaps delineates the
empowerment of humanity through connection, with or without God.
McCarthy employs religious allusions to explore the meditation on the cyclic death
and rebirth of the human condition. The man, “sunken haggard,” walks behind the
boy, sensing “some new distance between them” (McCarthy 191). McCarthy
creates a “new distance” between the young boy in front and the “sunken haggard”
man in back to depict both their physical and symbolic differences. From their
opposing physical characteristics, youthfulness versus “haggard[ness],” to their
positions, front versus back, the boy’s forward altruism and the man’s suspicions
draw diverging religious parallels to the New and Old Testaments, compassion and
“sunken” degradation, respectively.
Because the Old Testament gives birth to the New Testament, these religious
resonances imply that the “new distance” is a symbolic continuum from man to
boy, rather than a polarized disconnection. Similarly, McCarthy depicts a cyclical
nature between the father and son; the man’s foreshadowed death brings forth the
boy’s emblematic Jesus-like rebirth to connect with other “good guys” and
ultimately carry the fire of future civilization.
McCarthy employs symbols of light, ash, fire, and motif of grayness to not only
explore the ambiguities of the good and the bad but also illuminate love and hope
as a source to reconcile the need to survive with the desire to preserve morals in
the story.

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