The Road By Cormac Mccarthy: Layers Of The Fire That Supported Humanity

Keep on surviving, keep on walking. The Road by Cormac McCarthy told a dark tale about how fragile humanity is under extreme conditions. When I was reading this book, I always have thoughts coming up, if I confront with this situation, will I keep on walking, or fundamentally speaking, will I survive? Death could be really intriguing in this desperate situation. From starting of this book, the earth barely survived under a nuclear apocalypse. Under the city debris were just dead bodies, without any signal of life. Fallout blotted out the sky and covered the sun at daytime, and total darkness with bone-chilling temperature at night. Aftershock and fire frequently happened, and the earth was getting weaker, on the edge of collapsing. People survived have two options for them, yield to cannibalism, or become the food on the dining table of somebody else. In this essay, I will emphatically discuss one phrase with frequent appearance, The Fire.

Dignity is a highly debated topic under an apocalypse circumstance. “We don’t eat people, no matter what!” This is the bottom line of the father and son. “We are the good guys because we are carrying the fire!” This is the reason they have to continue their journey. During my time reading through this book, I was thinking about one probability, what if the father and son find a safe shelter for hiding and live undercover for their rest of lives? The answer is no. For them, there weren’t any safe houses or shelters for people still adhering faithfully to code of dignity and kindness. Even if the place is safe to live on, the dark side of humanity will lure them into an immeasurable abyss. Cannibalis, lack of trust, annihilated hope will encroach on their minds. The only remaining hope of them is the Southbound, the seaside as their motivation of moving on. No matter how will the seaside be like, it will be the straw they will catch at while drowning. “The Fire” is their spiritual dependence.

The second layer of “The fire” is hope. Hope, is an eternal topic of mankind. Although suffering from tribulation, an individual with hope is still indestructible and finally will get rid of darkness. They held the fire of hope, overcame numbers of rough obstacles with their frail and fragile bodies, even confronted with ruthless cannibals or facing desperation of hunger. “No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won’t face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I cant. I cant”. This conversation took place right before the child’s mother left them and walked into the deep dark winter night. This didn’t strike the father down, oppositely, it aroused perseverance within his mind. He is the last fortress of hope to his son. He had to live on, for the final destination, seaside.

Before the father’s decease, he passed “The Fire” to his son, “It's all right. This has been a long time coming. Now it's here. Keep going south. Do everything the way we did it. Keep the gun with you at all times. You need to find the good guys but you can’t take any chances. No chances. Do you hear? You have to carry the fire. I don’t know how to. Yes you do. Is it real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I don’t know where it is. Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it.” Although the father couldn’t make it to the end, he passed the fire of hope to his son, guiding the boy to the road of hope.

Kindness is also carried on with the fire. The boy, not only was the extension of the father’s life, but also the inheritance of kindness and justice for mankind. “We're starving now. You said we weren’t. I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving. But we wouldn’t. No. We wouldn’t. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. ” In this part of “Carrying the fire” I prefer to comprehend it as “kindness within humanity”. This boy suffered all kinds of hardships but still can retain the purist mankind. When he saw a man struck by lightning, he wanted to help. When he heard dogs barking from afar, he demanded his father to promise not to kill them. When he saw a child at his age ran from his face, he begged his father to adopt this kid and spare some food for him. Even when their food and supplies were being burgled, he didn’t want to hurt the thief and tried to forgive him. The son’s faith of kindness gave the father great relief and confidence, and the father preached to his son to carry on the fire, remembering himself as one of the “Good Guys”, and finally will meet other good guys to live on with. The trip is not just the journey of surviving through strife, it became a pilgrimage to cleanse the mind.

The fire of love. In this novel, McCarty used plenty of paragraphs to portray the power of love between the father and son. When confronted with predicaments, love bond them together to arouse their instinct to strife for life. “I will protect you. If anyone dare to harm you, I will kill him. Taking care of you is my duty, my responsibility, and the guidance of God.” In the desperate scenario of starving to death, they found an abandoned shop with a can of coke, he insisted his son to have it, but the son chose to share with him. When the son had a horrific temperature, the father stood by him day and night, seeing the son suffering from fever, he broke up and sobbed alone. He wanted his son to keep optimistic and pure, but mostly he wanted him to survive. He always encouraged his son to keep up and never give up, “My child, you occupied my heart, as always...”. In the father’s perspective, the son is his only hope, the one he only love, his angel, and his belief. Even right before his decease, he tried to comfort his son, “Even if I’m gone, you can still talk to me. We sure can”. When they are spotted by cannibals, the father gave his son his revolver and said, “If they find you, you have to do this. Put it in your mouth this side up, and pull the trigger.” This scene resembles me of a plot in Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. Seith even made up her mind to bury her own child rather than let them be enslaved. Cruel decisions have to be made, not for slaughtering, but for love. There’s only one bullet in the chamber, and he still gave his son the easy way out. This is the splendid power of love, natural but great. Finally he knew what the fire meant. It’s the spiritual dependence that helped him overcoming difficulties, it’s hope that motivated him to keep on walking, it’s kindness that kept his inner self pure, and love to sacrifice himself to let your beloved survive. With this fire, he can find a path to light, find his hope from desperation, find spring breeze in cold winter.