On Cormac McCarthy's The Road

No Life Without Legacy, No Legacy Without Death

Western civilization exists in its current state today due to the amalgamation of knowledge that our ancestors have passed down and archived throughout the ages. It is not exactly apparent what brought about the apocalyptic event in the world of The Road, whether it be manmade, or the result of the unstoppable powers of nature, or a combination of both. Despite this ambiguity, The Road infers that the legacies of Western civilizations are augmented, fragmented, and often lost as time progresses: yet whatever remains or carries on (physical or metaphysical), helps to build the foundations of future civilizations. The Road artistically references language, symbols, architecture, and history of class warfare to illustrate sympathetic instances where Western Civilization has experienced temporary lapses, collapses, and relapses. The Road also addresses the darker and more haunting aspects of civilization—within the context of the world they now find themselves in. The theme of legacy is very prominent in The Road: the remains of human civilization have been ravaged in a gigantic cataclysm and all that remains are remnants of the past, which the Man and Boy utilize and cannibalize to carry on. By examining how the novel explores the legacies of man and civilization, it will be shown that the rebuilding of civilization is still possible, even though the conditions present in The Road are amongst the most trying in human history.
The post-apocalyptic world of the road (located in the U.S) shares many metaphorical, literal, and analogical parallels with the Dark Ages proceeding the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The condition of lawlessness, famine, and tribalistic-anarchy. The highways of The Road, just as in the Dark Ages of Europe, which served well in the transportation of goods and people, have now become dangerous, riddled with barbarians, murderers, rapists, and thieves. The age of The Road is literally dark, where as the age after the fall of Rome is traditionally referred to as the Dark Ages, which is metaphorical rather than literal. Modern historic scholarship however, now refers to the fall of the Western Roman Empire as the great decline rather than a great fall, and that the Dark Ages are now referred to as the Early and Middle Middle-Ages. It appears as though The Road subtly refers to this redundancy of modern historiography: “… in that cold autistic dark with his arms out held for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination (13)”. In another passage there is mention of the word “Empire” with a capital E: “…The boy stood in hooded silhouette like a troll come in from the night. He seemed stunned by the heat. The man pulled the sheets off the long Empire table in the center of the room and shook them out and made a nest of them in front of the hearth” (175). For a novel that can be described as minimalistic, this passage is very peculiar in that there is a deliberate effort to bring attention to what type of table it is, since the table is described with extra detail, even though it is not necessary to describe it as anything more than a table. Also note that the table is spelled with a capital E, instead of it being simply lower case. The bases of which the laws of the Roman republic were called “The Law of the Twelve Tables”: this however, is not particularly useful in dissecting the meaning of this passage. In modern literary criticism, there is controversy that contemporary literary critics are becoming scanners rather than readers—in that they are focusing more on the words than the greater context. Perhaps McCarthy is having a post-modernist joke at the modern literary critic’s expense, dropping words like autistic in relation to sentences that sound like modern scholarly discourse related to the decline of Rome, and having capital E empire tables in the presence of a boy who resembles a troll. Autism and Trolls are words that are very prevalent in cyber-cultures today (and during the time McCarthy wrote this book). Regardless of McCarthy’s ambiguous intent behind the wording of some of these passages, there remain strong inferences that can be drawn between the Dark Ages and The Road. This at first doesn’t appear to be a very inspirational connection to make, but it is when you consider the slow and painful revival of Ex-Western Roman territories, despite being over-run with barbarian invaders and having most of its institutions destroyed, to eventually become the most powerful countries in the world. Although the world of The Road poses even greater obstacles toward renewal, it still however inspires hope that by knowing that there existed historical circumstances sympathetic to the post-apocalyptic world of the novel, that rejuvenation though unlikely, is possible.
Perhaps a more pertinent parallel with the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in this novel, is the vulgarization of language. After the fall of Rome, areas that used to be under the dominion of Rome that spoke Latin, slowly began to diverge from using Latin proper, and delineated into their own languages by the vulgarization of the language, which eventually led to the Romance languages we know today (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc). In The Road, we see a subtle, yet undeniable vulgarization of English. To give an apt example of this vulgarization, let’s take note of the contracted word “dont”, as it appears in The Road. At first it appears that “dont” is vulgarized from modern English, in that it is missing an apostrophe, but upon closer examination, we find that “dont” is purposefully written without apostrophe, while other words containing contractions are written just as we would write them today. Take for example the heated dialogue between the Man and a blood cult member:
To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore. They’ll just be soup. Are you a doctor? I’m not anything. We got a man hurt. It’d be worth your while. Do I look like an imbecile to you? I dont know what you look like. (55)
Notice how the Man uses Latinate words to describe the anatomy of the human brain. Also notice how the Man says “imbecile”, an English word derived from French, which is derived from the Latin “imbecilis” (OED). These peculiar choice of words exemplify that the rules of contraction are still in effect for some words like “they’ll, I’d, it’d”: but not for words like don’t. The absence of an apostrophe shows the slow vulgarization of the rules of language/grammar, as well as suggesting the possibility that the word “dont” is pronounced differently than “don’t”, since both the blood cult member and the Man are both written with dialogue that ignore rules of contractions for some words, while obeying the rules of contraction for others, possibly because the words do indeed sound different. It is arguable that the cross-bordering social institution of the Roman Catholic Church, which used Latin as its language of instruction and communication, is what brought Western Europe out of the Dark Ages. It gives a sense of hope for the vast populous of Anglo-America in The Road, that even though the English language may inevitably vulgarize (as history would strongly predict), English would be the shared linguistic branch from which any deviation would come from: thus keeping people bonded through language.

A symbol that is very prevalent in the novel (though never explicitly explained) is “the fire”. It is clear that the Boy and Man have an understanding between themselves of what “the fire” is supposed to symbolize or represent, yet the reader isn’t privy to the knowledge of what exactly “the fire” is supposed to mean: “And nothing bad is going to happen to us. That’s right. Because we’re carrying the fire. Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire” (70). Fire is a symbol for a multitude of things. There is the Promethean notion of fire as being stolen from the Gods, and used to ignite the spark of human civilization (which isn’t too far off to what paleontologists say). Fire as a natural entity, can be both detrimental as well as beneficial to human survival. The forests of The Road have largely been ravaged by fire (as evidence with all the ash and burned forests and trees), yet without fire the Man and Boy would not be able to survive in their hostile environment. What appears to be the most likely explanation as to what “the fire” represents is a code of ethics, as evident when the Boy claims that he and his father are the “good guys” because they carry the fire. He also uses “the fire” as a way of discerning whether others are good or bad, as evident when the Boy meets the father of the surrogate family that later adopts him: “How do I know you’re one of the good guys? You dont. You’ll have to take a shot. Are you carrying the fire? Am I what? Carrying the fire. You’re kind of weirded out, arent you? No. Just a little. Yeah. That’s okay. So are you? What, carrying the fire? Yes. Yeah. We are.”(238-239) The world of The Road is in desperate need of morals and ethics, and the moral legacy the Man (who no doubt got his morals and ethics from the cultures that proceeded him) has instilled unto his son has had a profound effect, something which he will no doubt carry on not only in himself, but spread to others (as he did for the man who later adopted him).
Civilization however, is not to be thought of as a purely progressive entity, and The Road explores this paradigm. One of the defining aspects of civilization is the division of labour, and that entails a certain degree of servitude. Architecture is an apt concept to explore this reality, since it is hard-labourers (and slave-labour as history has shown us) who build structures of great renown. Prior to the horrific scene where the man and Boy stumble upon the captive humans in the basement of a house, the narration makes key descriptions of the house before they enter it:
The snow was largely melted on the macadam and in the south facing fields and woods. The house was tall and stately with white doric columns across the front. A port cochere at the side… A tall hedge of dead privet. An ancient birdsnest lodged in the dark wicker of it… He held the boy’s hand and they crossed the porch. Chattel slaves had once trod those boards bearing food and drink on silver trays. (89-90)

The white Doric columns are an architectural legacy from the ancients. It is an architectural feature that has been fragmented from its origins (Ancient Greek temples), and has been transplanted into different architectural designs thousands of years later. The rest of the architectural features have heavy French influences: macadam, port cochere, privet. The word nest is also used in reoccurring imagery in The Road, such as the passage this essay went over earlier dealing with the Empire table. Nests are structures built from pieces of dead organisms such as trees, shrubs, foliage, and grass. Notice too that the birds nest is referred to as ancient, even though it is not from the ancient times we traditionally consider ancient times. This is an apt analogy for progression of civilization, that in order to facilitate a legacy, whether it be parental, civic, or historic: labour, consolidation of natural resources, and sacrifice must be implemented. There are however, instances in history where the balance of power has reached chaotic disturbances: such as the French revolution (hence all the French architectural influences). The human beings that are later found in the basement are a rendition of the old “skeleton in the closet”. The stately and aristocratic house harbours human beings literally used for cattle (which is foreshadowed by the mentioning of chattel slaves earlier in the passage). This is also in line with the often re-occurring literary dynamic of the upper-classes being parasitic to the lower. The Man and the Boy are caught in the middle and powerless to change the state of things in the house, so they flee for their lives. The fact that the house is described in unusually high detail, with French/aristocratic features, as well as a reference that it used to be a slave owning household, connotes that this stately house itself is a complex symbol of the inequality inherent in civilization—but in the total absence of civilization and law as we know it, the house and its inhabitants have turned feral and cannibalistic. Whether the inhabitants of the house are the descendants of the original owners, is not made known. This passage does not inspire hope, but rather serves as a traumatic and cautionary experience, to further entrench the resolve of the Man and Boy never to commit evil and lose their sense of humanity.
Like the nitrogen cycle, new civilizations often use the dead or destroyed remnants of previous civilizations to grow and nourish itself. Mushrooms (fungi) are an important part of the nitrogen cycle, and it so happens that mushrooms have an artistically symbolic relation with the legacy of human civilization in The Road. During a certain time in their travels, the Man and Boy come across morel mushrooms.
They pulled the morels from the ground…They ate the little mushrooms together with the beans and drank tea and had tinned pears for their desert. He banked the fire against the seam of rock where he’d built it and he strung the tarp behind them to reflect the heat and they sat warm in their refuge while he told the boy stories. Old stories of courage and justice as he remembered them until the boy was asleep in his blankets and then he stoked the fire and lay down warm and full (34-35)
Morel is an obvious paronomasia for moral. Foraging for mushrooms is a tricky and somewhat dangerous task. Before eating a mushroom, one must have certain knowledge of its type and toxicity, or else risk poisoning, intoxication, or death. This important knowledge of the edibleness of mushrooms is knowledge which is passed down: knowledge which has been affirmed by the trials and errors of ancestors. Morals have a similar dynamic. It is not coincidental that after eating the morel mushrooms, the Man tells the Boy moralistic stories of courage and justice by a fire. Morels are interesting fungi, in that they are known grow proliferate abundantly out of areas of forest ravaged by forest fires(Wurtz). In a world covered in ash and little sunlight, morels can still grow to nourish Man and Son. Morals too, deduced from stories of courage and justice, which often contain dark dramatic elements, can serve to nourish the soul and sustain the will to carry on.
In the trying world of The Road, food, good people, and hope are hard to come by. But if you know where to look, that which you seek can be found. The legacies of the past give guidance, vision, and navigation to set the course of the future. Legacy is the hopeful light which illuminates during dark-times. Legacy is the fire which lights the torch that has been passed down from our ancestors. Although the world of The Road is covered with ash, let fourth a phoenix rise from the ashes and usher in the new ages, and let the memory of our forefathers sacrifices be remembered.