Survival In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

Survival; the sole instinct that drives humanity at its most base core. The sole instinct of survival has shaped us as a civilization from the dawn of time. However, what happens when this tremendous instinct is challenged by insurmountable odds? Thus is the question posed by author Cormac McCarthy in his novel, The Road: a tale of a man and his child, struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Throughout the novel, the Man, the primary protagonist, is forced to make ever more morally questionable decisions in his quest for survival in the harsh world he is forced to live in, yet, in this desolate world, one question hangs in the air throughout the novel: is any of this worth it? Is it sometimes better to just give up? Critic Roland
Whether the Man struggled to survive and help his son or not is irrelevant in the grand scheme: he still winds up a corpse like any other. Nevertheless, McCarthy tends to paint these people who have “given up”, or committed suicide, in a somewhat negative light, implying that they didn’t have the strength to hold on to the vain hope that humanity might survive against the impossible odds. Ultimately, the question serves to enhance the overall sense of dread and desparation the novel instills in the reader, and enhances McCarthy’s message of perserverance and strength. As McCarthy’s “Man” put it, the “bravest thing he ever did” was getting up in the morning: tackling insurmountable odds in a fight he knew deep down was pointless, yet continuing to struggle in hopes of a better future for those he leaves behind after he passes. McCarthy shows that, regardless of how hopeless a situation may be, the value of hard work, perserverance, and benevolence can always be appreciated, but whether or not they serve to help mankind survive in the face of insurmountable odds remains to be seen. In the end, McCarthy uses this sort of duality between despair and hope to show the benefit of both aspects of thinking, where the practical despair of the situation the characters face might encourage suicide as a shortened path, free of pain and struggle-- after all, why suffer in a situation where,