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Christina Dinh Vu

Professor McClure

Writing 39B

14 November 2018

Moral Conflict within ​The Road

In the novel ​The Road​, Cormac McCarthy, an established American author who has won

the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, depicts the journey of a man and his

son across a post-apocalyptic world (“Biography”). The main characteristic of the horror genre is

the monster, a being that is “threatening ​and​ impure” according to Noel Carroll’s “The Nature of

Horror” (55). Within the novel, these traits are apparent in the “bad guys” as well as in the

protagonist—the man—himself (McCarthy 77). However, the real monster is the ghost of what

has been left behind by the previous world, a darkness that immerses itself within these

characters. It takes the form of selfishness, greed, and destruction, and it creates a sort of moral

conflict within the survivors of the post-apocalyptic world. Alan Noble, an assistant English

professor at the Oklahoma Baptist University, brings up a statement that people “act in faith”

however unreasonable their decisions may seem to others (108). McCarthy relays this message

from his novel to his readers, which is the importance of faith that aids us in survival through

extreme circumstances. He also stresses the importance that the people who are able to survive

under extreme circumstances are those who are able to prioritize their own needs before others

rather than being “kind,” and the man wholly represents that. McCarthy emphasizes his message

by fulfilling horror expectations through setting and tone as well by diverting from horror

conventions through the presentation of his protagonists. By both appealing and diverting from
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the conventions of the horror genre, McCarthy aims to question each individual’s morals and

faith and reveal the anxieties and complications of choosing the “right” thing to do.

The monster in​ The Road​ is the evil that remains from the pre-apocalyptic world, which

is apparent in the majority of the characters encountered throughout the novel, including the man

himself. Although the “bad guys” represents the monster, McCarthy goes into more detail of the

man and his complexities so I will be focusing on him throughout this essay. In the novel, there

was a particular instance where the man and the boy encounter an old man. While the boy had a

natural instinct to feed and care for him, the father was reluctant to give him food despite how

helpless the old man was. However, the father eventually ends up giving the old man food and

allows him to camp with them overnight (McCarthy 163-165). Despite this act of hospitality, the

man’s behavior toward the old man remains unfeeling and unsympathetic, something that

surviving in a desolate world has brought upon him. However, the readers can infer that the

father does not intend to be unreasonably cruel toward the old man; he simply values his son’s

life more than another stranger’s. Noel Carroll, a distinguished professor of philosophy at

CUNY, states that monsters are “threatening ​and ​impure” where impure is defined as

“categorically interstitial, categorically contradictory, categorically incomplete, or formless”

(55). The monster, the gradual loss of goodness, is considered “impure” because it is “formless,”

and its darkness threatens other characters’ safety (55). In the post-apocalyptic world, each

survivors’ sense of selfishness, greed, and survival has overtaken their sense of morality and

faith in one another. Despite this, the man displays a complexity of moral conflict that isn’t

outwardly shown by the “bad guys” (55). This complexity within the man, being selfish but also

prioritizing his son’s needs, demonstrates both the monster yet also compassion. This internal
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conflict within the man is what McCarthy is trying to emphasize to his readers. By creating an

anti-hero and incorporating the monster within the protagonist himself, McCarthy conveys the

similarities between the man and the individuals of our society.

The monster is a metaphor for the loss of morality within the society as a whole and the

complications that occur within it. McCarthy emphasizes how each person within our society

may make decisions that are moral, but those choices, whether perceived right or wrong, always

have some sort of complication within itself. There is one scene in the novel where the father and

the son found the thief who stole all their belongings on the beach. Upon discovery, the man

forced the thief to give back all their belongings and remove his clothes. The son begged his

father to let him go because he was worried that the thief would die (McCarthy 255-257, 259).

McCarthy created the man’s character in order to show the complications in choosing his son

over anything or anyone else in this desolate world, resulting in him being cautious and heartless

to whoever they encounter. In the introduction to the novel “A Dark Night’s Dreaming,” Tony

Magistrale, an English professor at the University of Vermont, and Michael A. Morrison, a

physics professor at the University of Oklahoma, describe how the monster “embodies and

manifests the fears and anxieties of its age” (4). The “fears and anxieties” is reflected by the man

and desolateness of the world, which is the gradual loss of morals due to his own needs (4). By

creating a character and depicting his priorities while living in an extreme world, the audience is

able to perceive how choices are determined by personal value and the problems that arise from

those decisions.

McCarthy implies to the reader the complications of choosing the “right” thing and the

importance of faith in our decisions. Throughout the story, the man has repeatedly told his son to
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“carry the fire” (McCarthy 278). Near the end of the novel, the man says, “[g]oodness will find

the little boy,” revealing that the reason he can not kill his son is because of his faith in the boy.

This act of faith of prevailed through all his worries about what would happen to the boy when

he passes away. Although he does not see what would happen to the boy, the man believes that

the boy will be able to survive without him. Throughout the novel, there has been moral conflict

between the man and the son due to their differences in value and how they perceive the world.

However, McCarthy shows how the man acknowledges the boy’s sense of compassion and

kindness despite their differing views, hinting that the man is not totally incompassionate and

senseless. Instead, the man chooses to be heartless toward people other than his son, prioritizing

the boy’s needs. Alan Noble, an assistant English professor at Oklahoma Baptist University,

states, “[t]hrough his characters McCarthy gives us a vision of absurd faith, and in so doing

suggests that regardless of how horrific our situation might be, we can act in faith... we can

choose to have hope… although such a hope is irrational by ‘human calculation’” (108). Despite

the horrible events that the protagonists have encountered, their belief and hope that goodness

will come to them convey a message to the readers: there will be difficulties and obstacles in our

“moral” choices; however, faith reinforces hope within our decisions in order to keep us

believing.

McCarthy both appeals to the conventions of the horror genre as well as diverts from it in

order to articulate his message of moral conflicts and how each person within our society may be

inherently good. In this paragraph, I will focus on how McCarthy appeals to genre expectations

through the setting and tone. McCarthy creates a desolate post-apocalyptic setting that appeals to

horror conventions that build upon the man’s character and values. McCarthy oftentimes
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illustrates the setting by taking anything that had color and describing it as “gray,” thus creating

an image of a wasteland. At the beginning of the novel, McCarthy introduces the setting and the

characters: “With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road

and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless” (2). Instead of

illustrating a scene where the first morning light creates a feeling of a new start to a new day,

McCarthy alters it to be grimmer by describing it as “gray” (16). By doing so, McCarthy

emphasizes the destruction of the post-apocalyptic world and sets an ominous tone for the rest of

the story. According to Christopher T. White, an associate English professor at Governors State

University in Illinois, “[t]he repeated simulated experiences of darkness that the novel invites are

related directly to the heightened sense of suspense that predominates in our reading of The

Road” (537). The descriptions of ominous settings and events presented plays upon the

expectations of the horror genre; it creates a world that has been removed of color and light—a

wasteland—a sort of in-between of life and Hell. Because of this, the audience can infer that this

extreme setting shaped the man’s character and caused him to be harsh toward others; the man

has nothing in the world except for his son, and he is going to do his best to protect him.

McCarthy diverts from genre expectations through his presentation and nature of the

protagonists. The boy can be clearly defined as the hero since he has a natural urge within him to

give and share, while the man represents the monster because of his heartlessness toward others.

The difference in value between the protagonists is apparent and the nature of the characters

themselves play a role in diverting from the expectations of the horror genre. In traditional horror

films and novels, the hero is often portrayed as a strong and quick-witted figure who fights

against a gruesome monster and eventually takes the win in the end. The boy, however, is a child
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who is often scared and hates violence. Despite this, he has an unusual characteristic which is his

inherent goodness and an ultimate urge to exhibit kindness. On the other hand, the man holds a

darkness, the monster, within him but is compassionate toward the boy. By diverting from genre

expectations, McCarthy emphasizes the peculiarities of the protagonists as well as the

importance of their different values and characteristics. At the beginning of the novel, the man

and boy were searching an abandoned supermarket and found a Coca-Cola drink in an old

vending machine, which they shared together (McCarthy 22). The relationship between these

creates a moral conflict. Even though the man and the boy have been raised in completely

different worlds, they are able to be compassionate toward each other and build a relationship.

Despite the man and boy’s moments of compassion, McCarthy also depicts the contrast

between their perspective and values throughout the novel. These differing values also started to

create tension and mistrust in one other through their journey. In one specific scene, the

protagonists found the house that the man grew up in. Although the man was intrigued to explore

his old childhood home, the boy regarded it like any other abandoned building they have

encountered and explicitly said “I’m scared” (McCarthy 25). The man and the boy’s reactions to

the house are significant to the story, as it portrays the difference of the worlds they grew up and

memories created from it. The man wanted to explore his childhood home—or what was left of

it—since his childhood was particularly happy and memorable; however, the boy is afraid of the

remnants of the house because he never had a permanent home and only remember dark

memories of abandoned buildings. During their brief exploration of the house, the man “pushed

open the closet door half expecting to find his childhood things. Raw cold daylight fell through

from the roof. Gray as his heart” (27). The man eventually realized that the only things left from
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the previous world are its ghosts and memories. When the man tried to search for the things that

used to comfort him, he found none. The only things that have been left by the past are the ruins

of things that once existed. McCarthy depicts the harsh reality of the world in ​The Road​ through

this scene, illustrating the goodness of the previous world have long passed.

Overall, I found ​The Road​ to be especially interesting. While unsuspenseful for the

majority of the plot, analyzing this novel from a deeper level presented a new perspective that I

didn’t consider when first reading this. By playing upon the horror genre and the audience’s fear,

McCarthy creates a sense of awareness of our humanity and compassion for one another as well

as the importance of hope and faith.

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Works Cited

“Biography.” ​CormacMcCarthy.com​, www.cormacmccarthy.com/biography/. Accessed 28 Oct.

2018.

Magistrale, Tony; Morrison, Michael A. ​A Dark Night's Dreaming: Contemporary American

Horror Fiction​. University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

​ intage International, 2006.

McCarthy, Cormac. ​The Road. V

Noble, Alan. “The Absurdity of Hope in Cormac McCarthy's ‘The Road.’” South Atlantic

Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 2011, pp. 93–109. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4373

9125.

Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” ​The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,​ vol. 46, no.

1, 1987, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/431308.

White, Christopher T. "Embodied Reading and Narrative Empathy in Cormac McCarthy’s ​The

Road​." Studies in the Novel, vol. 47 no. 4, 2015, pp. 532-549. Project MUSE,

doi:10.1353/sdn.2015.0046