Father And Son Relationships In The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is a novel about surviving in a world full of brutality and lost hopes. By using a father and a son, the author created a world presenting the struggles of surviving in a post- apocalyptic wasteland. Both of the main characters posses certain positive traits that aid and hinder their journey through the south. Specifically through the depiction of the father and son relationship, McCarthy illustrates the redemptive power of paternal love and trust. To start with, one of the major themes of the novel is paternal love. This theme is omnipresent because of the relationship of the two protagonists. Before the man’s wife commits suicide she states, “the boy was all that stood between him and death” (McCarthy 25). The only reason keeping the father from committing suicide, like his wife, is his son. Even though he expects his own death, he still tries to live in order to make sure that his son can live. During the father and the son’s journey they would always have some brief conversations and one of them is when the father states, “My job is to take care of you” (McCarthy 65). Specifically, this line takes place after the father shoots and kills a man who threatens hurt his son using a knife at the boy’s throat. For the father, the
By using two of the major themes, paternal love and trust, he shows his reader a clear bonding between the father and the son. The father sees hope through his son. Throughout the book all the father does is to take care of his son and make sure no one harms him even if it means committing murder. However, the son questions his trust in his father after killing a man to protect him, but still ends up trusting him because of survival purposes. Similarly in society, no one can live alone. Human beings necessarily depend on one another to survive and are not built to stand on their