Morality, Spirituality, Humanity

The Road certainly raises a number of questions related to morality.  I’ve already discussed one in other posts -- is it worth it to survive?  The question is first raised in the passage when we learn of the wife’s suicide, when she claims that the “right thing to do” is to “take [the boy] with [her]” (McCarthy 58).  The father keeps on surviving and later claims that the “good guys… keep trying… they don’t give up” (McCarthy 144).  Despite all the pain.  Despite the constant horrors.  Despite the endless nights of “…blackness to hurt your ears with listening” (McCarthy 13).   Was it worth it?  The father ended up nothing more than a “gray and wasted figure” (McCarthy 304).  The boy gets to go on living, but there’s not much to suggest his life will be any better with his new guardians.  Still, the story ends with a (relatively) optimistic tone.  McCarthy never seems to directly answer this question; he leaves it to the reader. 

Personally, I believe there are only a handful of things to keep living for in the world of The Road: the short moments of happiness or reprieve, the memories of the past, and the hope of a better future.  I don’t think that the short moments are enough to justify an existence of constant starvation and fear.  Sure, they find a nice spot by a waterfall and a bunker, but the omnipresence of so many horrible things, from dead infants to gangs of rapists, counteracts those brief drops of something better.  In addition, the book repeatedly brings up the idea that past memories and good dreams are incompatible with survival.  They’re “siren worlds” (McCarthy 17).  “When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up” (McCarthy 202).   Relying entirely on past memories as a source of survival could be dangerous.  Hope is connected to birds by the ship they find.   Its name, “Pajoro de Esperanza,” translated from Spanish means “bird of hope.”  Notably, the ship is wrecked and rotting.  Earlier in the apocalypse, the father listened to “flocks of migratory birds,” but “he never heard them again” (McCarthy 54).  Their only hope of salvation, the sea, is “birdless” (McCarthy 230).  For the most part, hope has flown away.  What’s left is deformed and twisted.  For instance, the man from the truck gang had a “tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance” (McCarthy 65).  Getting back to the original point, I guess if you can find a way to keep hope alive and still survive, life might be worth it.  I’m not sure what I would do.

The father’s view of survival also connects to the issue of morality.  At first, he argues against helping people on the basis that they cannot afford to give up valuable resources.  For example, when they encounter an orphaned little boy, the father says “we cant… stop it… we cant [sic]” in response to the son’s pleading to give the boy food (McCarthy 90).  If the man that found the son after the father died had used the same logic, the boy would almost surely be dead.   Whether the situations of the father and the new man are identical in these instances is debatable (perhaps the father was running lower on food), but it still forces the reader to wonder whether it’s morally acceptable to abandon fellow humans.  This idea is raised on a more extreme and barbaric level when the father essentially kills the man who tried to steal the protagonists’ supplies.  The father’s heartless attitude towards others might have been part of what allowed them to survive for so long, but it calls into question how much of a “good guy” the father truly is.  McCarthy does seem to directly address this topic.  While the father is dying and becoming increasingly delirious, the “light [moves] with the boy” – it’s no longer emanating from the father (McCarthy 296).  If “carrying the fire” is what makes someone a “good guy,” then by the end McCarthy is saying the father has lost that status or never truly had it (McCarthy 86).  Between this development and the fact that the boy’s survival hinged on another person breaking the father’s code of justice, McCarthy suggests that even in the darkest of times we should continue to help others.

McCarthy addresses ideas beyond morality as well, such as spirituality.  The very end of the book offers a rather positive view of God: “the breath of God… [passes] from man to man through all of time” (McCarthy 306).  This is in line with the father’s belief that the boy is “good to house a God” (McCarthy 78).  As I discussed in my post about the characters, part of what keeps the father going is his connection to his God, which is largely facilitated by his relationship with his son.

Still, as the father gets closer to death, God seems to leave his view of the world.  He stands out on the road, looking at its “black shape running from dark to dark,” and hears a “distant low rumble” (McCarthy 279).   The author uses an extremely unique and uncommon word to illustrate what exactly is happening here; he writes “the salitter [is] drying from the earth” (McCarthy 279).  According to Barry Weber, salitter is a reference to the writings of Jakob Boehme, a 17^th century German mystic.  “Salitter, as used by Boehme, as used by McCarthy, is the essence of God. It is the essence of God which is ‘drying from the earth’ in this apocalyptic novel” (Weber).  This passage seems to suggest that the father thinks God has abandoned him and the world as he nears death. 

At the same time, as the father gets even closer to death the boy is back to being a “glowing… tabernacle” (McCarthy 292).   I’m not sure exactly what we are supposed to take from the father’s varying attitudes towards religion.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Overall though, I’d say that the major thematic take away is the positive notion that people can be infused with the “breath of God.”

This next idea is a bit of a stretch.  I’ve been holding onto this for a while, because I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.  Frankly, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.  When the apocalypse happened, the “clocks stopped at 1:17” (McCarthy 54).  I believe this is an allusion to Revelation 1:17 which reads: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last’” (Revelation).   If it is an allusion, it could be suggesting that the apocalypse was some sort of act of God.  Or, it could be related to the idea that God has abandoned the world, but will show up afterwards (as “the Last”).  Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  I’m inclined to believe it is an allusion, because it just feels sort of doomsdayish.

My largest thematic take away from the book was its warning about humanity’s influence.  This is directly related to the motif of fire I discussed in my last post.  In summary, fire represents both the ability to survive and the ability to destroy.  In the most recent section of the book, this idea is continued when the father finds a flare gun.  Its original purpose was to help people survive being stranded, yet, in this world, the father uses it as a weapon: he shoots a flare which makes a “long white arc” and then he can hear the man he hit “screaming” (McCarthy 281).   The motif of fire shows that humanity’s actions can go too far if we aren’t careful.  In our world, that could refer to the environment, violence and war, or other concerns.  Regardless, McCarthy’s final message is a warning that the world is “a thing which [can] not be put pack… not be made right again” (McCarthy 306).