The Road by McCarthy - Essay Example

THE ROAD The Road is McCarthy's apocalyptic tale of death and disaster. Since the is known for his western novels, this one appears to bequite engaging and radically different. The underlying theme remains the same i.e. the way we are moving ahead with greed, and violence, the world will soon become a wasteland, littered with death and darkness. In the two passages we have selected, the author is talking about this darkness in different ways. In the first passage, he is talking about refugees who are placed in a world that offers them absolutely no hope at all.

The author is not discussing the world that he has created, but if we examine closely, we can see that he is talking about the condition of refugees' today- in a world that has failed to offer them what they wanted. These refugees in every corner of the world are facing similar problems today. They are deprived of food and shelter and every country treats them as unneeded extras- a burden that they would want to shrug off as soon as possible. The author is shocked by the conditions under which refugees live in the world and he has placed them in a different landscape only to highlight their plight, which is a major issue that no one is willing to address.

They are people with no present and no future. They are living on bare minimum and the parallels that the author has drawn only helps us understand their condition with more clarity. The refugees are one of the most neglected sections of the world population. They have left their homes due to fear of war or persecution but their host countries are not interested in alleviating their pain or suffering. They are thus left to their own resources and many of them are dying in refugee camps due to sheer neglect.

In the second passage the author is talking about the death and last moments of the protagonist. The man knows that he is about to die due to sheer starvation, he can see his world slipping from his grasp and he wants to take one hard look at his son whom he will soon have to part with. The man is not willing to do because he knows his son is left behind but he must leave his world because his time has come and he can no longer endure starvation and physical weakness. There are no real parallels drawn here but the entire passage appears to be work as a warning for people.

The author wants to warn others that our world may soon become a destroyed landscape if we consistently engage in violence and greed. He is worried about the next generation. What will become of them He knows that the old generation has had its time and will soon be passing away. But the children we leave behind have to survive in the world that we have given them. We must think about what we have done for them, what are we passing on The author is trying to attract attention to the fact that the world that we create today is the world that our children will be living in tomorrow.

We must not destroy it due to our own vested interests and selfish desires. The author wants us to ponder the reality of our world today and see if it is really suitable for our children.