The knowledge that each life has an
end can be the defining future of the human condition. As death is an uncomfortable
subject, it must be confronted sooner or later. Nothing can fully prepare a
person for it since it can unfold relentlessly or strike unexpectedly, even if
survival is endeavor. Cormac McCarthy catastrophic fiction The Road illuminates the literacy work as a whole by implementing
the hope of survival post apocalypse events as unfolding the steady demise of
the father, day by day until his journey comes to an end.
After years of exposure to danger,
coldness, and days that only grew darker, the father deceits the reality that
he is slowly dying from his son. He does this with the purpose to give hope to
his son, whom has been his primary concern since the he was born. McCarthy uses
this to help develop the relationship of the son and the father as a mutual
one: The son is the father's reason to keep struggling through the bitterness
of the dark days and the father is the son's guidance to survival. As they keep
going on their journey, the man “woke in the cold dark coughing and he coughed
until his chest was raw,” (186). As the novel progresses, the father’s health
only gets worse. He is aware he is dying; however, he keeps enduring the
hardships of his health to provide what his son needs to survive: hope. While
the novel develops, the fire which consumes the life out of nature and slowly
deteriorates the world can be incorporated to the father’s condition as he slowly
approaches his demise. However, the meaning of fire is far more complex than
what it was intended at the beginning. It comes to stand for the hope of
survival to both of the main characters. The author creates various comparison
of the father’s life equivalent to the fire been comparable to his life slowly extinguishing,
like a flame which eventually will be burnt out. It can also be assimilated to,
“The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out
leaving a faint pattern […] like the shape of a flower, a molten rose,” (47). The burning paper is meant to represent the
father leaving the hope in his son’s heart, the shape of the rose, needed for
survival. This concept can be contemplated in this literacy work. Even after
the father dies the son promises, “I’ll talk to you every day, he whispered, and
I won’t forget, no matter what,” (286). The intensity of the struggle to keep
his son alive forces the father to make meaningful pessimistic choices, and yet
loving. The son comes to grasp his father’s efforts as the father dies, and
realizes he must keep pursuing survival as his father taught him. The trust he
had in his father comes to contribute as the meaning of the work is played out
through the relationship of boy and man. A meaning which he promises he won’t
forget. McCarthy develops the boy as an
extension of hope in a world that has been devoured in adversity.
Nowadays, one can endure hardships
when they have learned the meaning of life, especially when learned from a
loved one. What one comes to know is what will define the future of that human
being or of another. In the case of some people, or many, the realization of
the hope they have in life is only recognized when a loved one dies. A death
can push a person to strive to fulfill the wish of the person they lost, and in
many cases, they live up to that wish.
