Huzaifa Ali
Mr. Babur Khan Suri
God and Goodness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road offers many dissenting interpretations to the
critics. For me, The Road is a tale of God and Goodness in a world that has
literally become hell. A world where suicide is a rational and ethical act to
commit (Noble 100). It is “barren, silent, godless” (McCarthy 3). It seems that
God has forsaken the world. This point is emphasized by the narrator at
various points.
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief
moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of
the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in
their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And
somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their
cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with
which to sorrow it. (McCarthy 77)
The darkness has engulfed the whole universe, and it seems that light only
has borrowed time in the lives of the man and his child. The “absolute truth
of the world” has been revealed to the man. However, I still insist that The
Road affirms the existence of God and Goodness. It is through the boy that
the man upholds the paradoxical faith like Abraham and gains the motivation
to act morally.
Sometime after the apocalypse, the wife argues with the man to
commit a collective suicide since “it’s the right thing to do” (McCarthy 33).
She reminds him of the danger on the road: the possibility of being raped
and killed (McCarthy 34). The man cannot convince her otherwise with solid
reasons. As Noble (100) comments on the scene, “the man … agrees with his
wife that their situation is not only hopeless but also horrible.” The rational
ethics of the wife pushes her toward nihilism wishing for “eternal
nothingness” after the end of her life (Noble 100).
This episode is significant to realize the paradoxical faith of the man for
a better future for his boy. Just like Abraham believed that Isaac would be
sacrificed and saved simultaneously, the man acknowledges the absurdity of
his own situation. In his weakest moments, he is driven to curse God longing
for a “neck by which to throttle (him)”, for leaving a cold earth to live in
(McCarthy 6). He, however, assures his son and himself of a brighter future in
the South (Noble 102). The counter questioning by the boy involves a terse “I
know” (McCarthy 20, 51, 114). It reveals the irrationality of the man’s beliefs
that was already exposed to the reader through his argument with the wife.
The paradoxical belief is a choice, and it emanates from some sources that
surround the man in his journey on the road. These sources are crucial to
understanding the thrust of the narrative as a whole and the motivation of
the man to submit himself to a paradoxical belief.
The first of these is the belief in God. Despite his anger toward God,
the man’s thoughts are dominated by religious language especially when he
is thinking about the boy. The man likens the boy’s hair to a “Golden chalice,
good to house a god” (qtd. In Josephs 137). Similarly, Josephs interprets the
motif of the fire in the novel as literally linked to the “presence of God”
rather than to a metaphorical Promethean spirit (Josephs 138). Near the end
of his life, the man sees that “There was light all about him” (McCarthy 169),
prompting one to consider the role of the boy as a spiritual guide for the
man. It also leads to the conclusion that God is present for the man and
motivates his actions.
The boy also acts as a catalyst of moral uprightness for the man. 1
Hillier traces the moral sources at the disposal of the man. However, he
gives undue weight to the literary works of Wordsworth, Dostoevsky, and
Ovid (Hiller 263, 266, 268). He neglects the encounter with a little boy whom
1
The second source for his belief supplemented by literature as emphasized by Hallier.
the man chooses not to help despite his son’s constant pleading. The boy
also pleads with him not to kill the thief who stole their supplies (McCarthy
157). The man relents to his nagging and leaves the thief some clothes
(McCarthy 159). However, he does not reminisce about any story about
Goodness and morality when he was acting out of kindness. The man softens
up as the story goes on and shows moral development through his son’s
interventions (Hillier 269). The incident with the blind old man, Ely, is
illustrative of this point. The man is initially not interested in helping him out,
but the boy’s constant prodding makes him relent to the demands of the
ethical (McCarthy 95-97). Hillier (269) notes the reference to the Ovidian
story that marks the pivotal point in his decision. But, I think, the most
important element in his decision is the Goodness that the man sees in the
boy. It is borne out by his previous encounters and his moral development as
the story progresses. In a frank conversation with Ely, the man asks him if he
thought the boy was an “angel” or a “god” (McCarthy 104). It means that the
man is convinced that the boy is a manifestation of Goodness or a spark of
divinity. The point also lends credibility when we consider that the boy was
an “alien” to the world of the man, born after the apocalyptic event
(McCarthy 90). It seems incredulous, if not impossible, that the boy would act
morally or exhort his stern father to do so having little to no moral edifice
around him.
The preceding discussion leads us to appreciate the man’s remarks
about the boy. Right after the narrator’s comment about the “barren, silent,
godless” landscape, we are led into the man’s thoughts, “He knew only that
the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never
spoke” (McCarthy 2). It happens early on in the narrative and sets the tone
for the paradoxical faith of the father and his duty to his child who is the
proof of God’s existence in this “godless” world. If The Road confirms the
existence of God and Goodness, then the end of the novel should appear as
deus ex machina but for the right reasons (Noble 107). 2 The reference to the
Ovidian story seems apt here because, in the original story, the old couple is
rewarded by the gods (Hillier 271) while Ely could not offer anything in
return. The appearance of Parka-man, his family, and especially a tender
mother at the end is the reward from God for showing moral uprightness,
and, most important of all, believing paradoxically in the face of the absurd.
The reward to the man and the boy also affirms the existence of God and,
thus indirectly, of Goodness in The Road.
References:
Hillier, Russel M. Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Souls at Hazard.
Palgrave McMillan, 2017.
Josephs, Allen. “The Quest for God in The Road.” The Cambridge Companion
to Cormac McCarthy, edited by Steven Frye, Cambridge University Press,
2013, 133-145.
Noble, Alan. “The Absurdity of Hope in Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road.’”
South Atlantic Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 2011, pp. 93–109. JSTOR,
[Link] Accessed 13 May 2024.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. 2006.
2
We can counter the sceptics by alluding to the fact that Ely survived despite being an old
frail man and his ambiguous admission of other good people who helped him (McCarthy 102-
103).