Tragedy and Horror in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

This essay analyzes the concepts of tragedy and horror in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', a post-apocalyptic story of a father and son's journey through a destroyed landscape. The bleakness and hopelessness of the landscape, the dying father, the good guys carrying the fire, the locked cellar, and the newborn infant roasted on a spit are discussed in detail.

Running head: QUEST FOR WISDOM
Quest for Wisdom
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1QUEST FOR WISDOM
Introduction:
Tragedy can be understood as any event that can cause great suffering and distress
among people, caused due to accidents, catastrophe, conflicts and crime. Many authors and
philosophers have discussed the impact of suffering on humans and how much of these
sufferings can be called senseless (Grubisic et al., 2014). The aim of this essay is to analyze
the concepts of tragedy and horror that has been described in the novel ‘The Road’ by the
American writer, Cormac McCarthy, which is a post apocalyptic story of a journey made by a
father and son over several months through a landscape that has been destroyed by a
cataclysmic event (Penhall & McCarthy, 2014).
Discussion:
Land covered with Ash and devoid of any life:
The story unravels as a post cataclysmic landscape caused by a massive extinction
that destroyed most of the human civilization. The utter bleakness and hopelessness of the
landscape has been portrayed as ash covered and also devoid of any signs of life. This
imagery shows the brutal horror after a tragic event of an unprecedented scale, as an earth
swallowed in darkness, and the surviving human race cowering and hiding in the shadows,
living on borrowed time. The lines “The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth.
Darkness implacable… Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to
sorrow it” beautifully and vividly describes this imagery (Bloom, 2014).
The Dying Father:
The tragedy and distress of the travelling father and son have been emphasized with
the imminent death of the father. This revelation has been shown as a great contributor to the
mental distress faced by both of them, as the father is worried about the wellbeing and safety

2QUEST FOR WISDOM
of his son, and the son is worried that he is going to lose his father soon. The son looks up to
his father as a guide and mentor, and losing him would be akin to lose all support and hope in
a hostile and barbaric world. The lines “What would you do if I died? …If you died I would
want to die too” describes such grief and distress (Pugh, 2017).
Good guys carrying the fire and safety from cannibals:
The horrors of this post apocalyptic landscape and the ensuing misery faced by the
humans have driven humanity towards its animalistic and primal behavior to ensure their
survival. Cannibalism is practiced by many surviving people and they pose an existential
threat to the father and his son. The father explains this horror and absurdity of the the
landscape, highlighting how carrying a fire (gun) is not an evil thing, but only serves to
protect good people from the cannibals. This shows how the cataclysm has completely
dismantled any modicum of civility and society, and survival is a mere battle to live each day
against the hordes of marauders and cannibals, which can be understood from the line “When
the shooting starts would you rather be armed or legal?” (Church, 2017)
The locked cellar:
During the travel through the vast wasteland smeared with death and horror, the father
and son comes across a locked cellar where people are kept as prisoners to feed the cannibals.
These people are strategically amputated, and their body parts consumed as food. Such a
horrific condition deeply scarred both the travelers, as they were not completely ready to see
such an evil and depravity humans are capable of. This shows how through these horrors, the
ugliness of the human greed can rear its head, eventually belittling humans as nothing more
than violent animals pushed to their very limits. Such as experience have been vividly
captured in the lines “The hundred nights they'd sat up arguing the pros and cons of self

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destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall” (Huebert,
2017).
Newborn Infant roasted on a spit:
One of the biggest scenes of horror described in the novel was that of a newborn
infant roasted on a spit. This utterly disturbing imagery attributed to the cannibalistic
behavior of the survivors which failed to spare even a newborn child from the hunger pangs
of the cannibals. It shows the extent to which people can lose their humanity, and how hunger
and permanent deprivation can destroy the façade of altruism. This depiction adds to the
desolate moral landscape of the surviving humans, showing the suffering of the human race,
revealing the utter frailty of life, as was depicted in the line “The frailty of everything,
revealed at last.” (Johns-Putra, 2016)
Conclusion:
In the novel, ‘The Road’, Cormac McCarthy paints a picture of a desolate, frail and
suffering humanity, living in a post apocalyptical world. The horror and suffering caused by a
catastrophe have driven humanity to its limits and have destroyed the values on which
civilizations flourished. Analysis of the story revels many of such depictions that shows the
impact of suffering and tragedy on human life, morality and existence.

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References:
Bloom, H. (Ed.). (2014). Cormac McCarthy. Infobase Publishing.
Church, R. (2017). McCarthy’s The Road. Reflexiones críticas sobre ficción especula tiva,
21.
Grubisic, B. J., Baxter, G., & Lee, T. (2014). The Cultural Logic of Post-Capitalism: Cormac
McCarthy’s The Road and Popular Dystopia. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Huebert, D. (2017). Eating and Mourning the Corpse of the World: Ecological Cannibalism
and Elegiac Protomourning in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The Cormac McCarthy
Journal, 15(1), 66-87.
Johns-Putra, A. (2016). " My Job Is to Take Care of You": Climate Change, Humanity, and
Cormac McCarthy's The Road. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 62(3), 519-540.
Penhall, J., & McCarthy, C. (2014). The Road. A&C Black.
Pugh, M. R. (2017). “There is no God and we are his prophets”: The Visionary Potential of
Memory and Nostalgia in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The
Road. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 15(1), 46-65.