Throughout the story, allusions to Christianity serve as a relic of the former world the father once lived in and reveal a key difference between the father and son and the rest of the people on earth. McCarthy depicts the father and son on a journey in a world where “temporal markers of past, present, and future no longer hold” (Rambo). Grounding the novel in a place lacking these “temporal markers”, McCarthy is able to highlight the concept of God, which he depicts as something without boundaries, specifically time. This establishment of God as a consistent being across time creates a manner in which the father and son can maintain an important element of the old world throughout the story. Later, the father highlights the rarity of religion in this new world, “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world” (McCarthy). By “the world”, the father alludes to religious ideals that once existed in his world, but are gone, being replaced with the cannibalism and savageness that plagues humanity. Here the father also effectively removes himself from the shifting world in identifying himself as the only “godspoke” man remaining. Overall, McCarthy uses allusions to religion to highlight how God is influencing the actions of the father and son, effectively differentiating them from the rest of the fallen world and giving a sense of the potential of goodness in humanity.
McCarthy’s allusions to God place an innate worth on human life, illuminating the uniqueness of the father and son as they condemn the inhumanness of cannibalism which suggests they hold a connection with God. With his references to Christianity, McCarthy effectively implies a “goodness of human persons as made in the image of God” (Lake). Although this implication is derived from a preconceived Christian belief as opposed to a delineation in the text itself, the influence of religion indicates a value placed on humans by God. McCarthy places this idea under threat later in the novel when the concept of cannibalism is introduced as a danger to human life; however, through the father and son’s actions, McCarthy maintains that loss of human life is naturally immoral. At one point, the father demonstrates the esteem he holds for his son’s life as he describes the boy as his warrant before God: “His love for his child and his hope that his son will find a better life are what fill him with the will to live” (Porter). Here, the father comes to represent God as he values his child’s life, just as God values the lives of his children. Throughout The Road, the child sometimes struggles to maintain the same will to live and value of his own life that his father holds, and as his father dies, he begs to die with him. The father, however, reaffirms that “the boy must keep going, he must keep carrying the metaphorical fire that represents the will to live” (Porter). Once again, the father maintains that the child’s life is important, evidently more important than the boy perceives it to be, illustrating an idea that God or a God-like figures do value us more than we may value ourselves. All in all, the allusions McCarthy makes to religion in The Road provide a link between the father and son and the former world as well as a fine distinction between the father and son and the new world.
The symbolism of light and darkness flows throughout the novel to illustrate the battle between good and evil. In the first lines of the story as the father wakes, McCarthy describes the gradual onset of darkness on the post-apocalyptic earth, “Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world” (McCarthy). From the beginning, a metaphor of blindness is used which “symbolically translates the confusion and hopelessness of his desolate world” (Sanchez). This initial metaphor foreshadows the evils the father and son will encounter as they travel the road and the struggle they will face to overcome the literal and psychological darknesses which loom overhead. The use of the specific word glaucoma, an incurable eye disease, also offers a potentially pessimistic view on the father and sons’ situation by assuming that the world is beyond repair and it will never regain it’s moral sight. McCarthy’s description also suggests that the father might have been more fortunate to have not woken up to reality, providing an additional insight into the father and son’s uncertainty they feel throughout the novel regarding whether their decision to live is justified. Following this awakening of the father, a dream is described in which the father and son enter a cave where they come upon a translucent creature who, after seeing their light, “turned…and loped soundlessly into the dark”(McCarthy). The immediate rejection of the creature to the father and son’s light embodies “those survivors who act mindlessly, privileging survival over morality” (Sanchez). Establishing that the creature possesses a pulsing brain and beating heart, McCarthy shows that even as the world ably understands the wickedness of the dark, it willfully chooses to remain immersed in it and aims to avoid any and all light or goodness. Depicting the father and son with a light also secures the father and son as “the good guys” and the power this light has on the creature indicates that the father and son have a potential to uphold their rare goodness.
An allegory of “carrying the fire” recurs throughout the story demonstrating the father and son’s fight in upholding the morals they believe in. One example arises when the son poses the question of whether they would ever eat anyone, even if they were starving. The father responds predictably with a firm “no” to which the boy adds, “Because we’re the good guys…And we’re carrying the fire” (McCarthy). This “fire” represents many things which fuel the father and son’s journey with a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Most importantly to the father, they are given the responsibility of “the people chosen by God to carry the light on through the darkness, to preserve humanity within as examples" (Søfting 711). This is because the father and son represent some of the few remaining members of opposition to immoral things that have become norms in the new world such as cannibalism. Recognizing this absence of any cultural prohibitions in the new world serves as an additional factor which motivates the father to continue on the road with his son and carry the light of humanity in an increasingly dark world. In the final hours of the father’s life as the son pleads to join his father in death, the father maintains that the boy must continue to carry the fire because good guys keep trying and don’t give up, even as the darkness around them threatens their light (Guo). If they were simply advancing their own ideas, the father’s motives would have likely caved at this moment. However, with this repetition of “carrying the fire”, the father again hints that they have been commissioned by a greater God figure to uphold the waning goodness in the world. For this reason, the son must stay on the earth despite his understanding that his future on the road will be accompanied by continued suffering. Overall, the allegory of “carrying the fire” is repeated to convey a message about the importance of promoting the light of goodness even in a hopelessly dark world.
The light and darkness in The Road along with the tribulations of the father allude to, and parallel the Book of Job in the Bible. Job and the father both experience severe hardship in their respective stories which comes to represent a figurative darkness hanging over their lives. On top of this, as the father dwells in physical darkness, Job also describes his own darkness, “let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therin” (King James Bible, Job 3:7). In this “solitary” night without joy, Job experiences the hopelessness and solitude both the literal and figurative darknesses bring. As the father and son travel The Road, this darkness-induced isolation is also pointed out, “They set out along the blacktop…shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire” (McCarthy). Here, the ash and gloom of the father and son’s travels demonstrate the trials they’re faced with as they battle the evil of cannibalism and also the mental struggle to maintain a will to survive. The loneliness that they feel through this struggle is acknowledged at the end with, “each the other’s world entire”, very similar to the alienation Job must have felt as he dealt with his own life-changing problems within his own dark mental state. The parallelism found between the father and son’s strife and that of Job highlights the physical, mental and emotional darkness found in the father and son as they travel The Road.
My first sentence of my conclusion is a restatement of my thesis but using slightly different language, but maybe not for the topics, I mean come on, how many different ways can you say symbol. My 2nd sentence is a one-sentence summary of Topic 1. My 3rd sentence is a one-sentence summary of topic 2. And if I have a Topic 3, my 4th sentence is a summary of that. My last sentence is an overall wrap up with a reference, possibly, to my opening line of my intro, but if not, it will expand and reinforce the meaning of my work.
Throughout The Road, the son emerges as the center of this light as he embodies a Christ-figure who offers hope in a world where morals and humanity are decaying. This optimism is manifest as the boy willingly helps Ely, graciously thanks dead people for food, and hopefully expects to find birds or fishes, even as he has only ever known natural sterility. These demonstrations of hope indicate an “internal force nourishing these dreams, separating the child from other faithless humans” (Sanchez). McCarthy not only sets the boy apart from the world around him, but also contrasts the boy’s perspective and actions with those of his father. While the father approaches each passerby on the road with suspicion and antipathy, the son strives to see their humanness and extend his compassion. Even when a man steals all their belongings, the boy laments the way his father rejects the man, and after they leave him to die in the road, the boy insists “He’s so scared, Papa” (McCarthy 259). The boy’s frustration from his father’s actions along with his sympathetic dialogue suggests that the boys immense empathy allows him to sense desperation in others (Sanchez). In describing the boy’s mindful perception of others feelings, McCarthy deliberately compares the boy’s nature to that of the similarly compassionate and hopeful Jesus Christ. These implications of the boy’s faith in humanity as well as the depiction of the boy as a Christ-like being establish him as a potential savior for the desolate world.
Aforementioned allusions to Christianity as well as descriptive symbolism work to evoke this idea of the boy as a Christ-figure. Early in the story, the father kills a man who threatens the boy which leaves the boy covered in the man’s blood and brains until he can be washed. Once at a safe place near a river, the father washes the boy’s face of the nastiness, makes a place for him to sleep, and sits with him drying his hair by a fire. This sequence of events is described by the father “like some ancient anointing” (McCarthy 74). Historically, anointing in the New Testament was used to confer divine religious responsibility and the father’s allusion to this practice shows that the boy is, “at least for his father—none other than Christ” (Stang). In another instance, the boy catches a delicate snowflake in his hands and watches it “expire there like the last host of Christendom” (McCarthy 16). While this event at first seems to represent the loss of Christian presence on earth, the word “expire” here connotes death, which is the centerpiece to the Christian belief of a sacrificial atonement. As the boy absorbs the material of this snowflake into his hand, the event comes to symbolize a ritualistic transubstantiation where “the boy establishes the possibility of spiritual redemption” (Sanchez). The repetition of these symbolistic events definitively establishes the boy as a Christ-figure who is bringing hope and light to the dark post-apocalyptic wasteland in The Road.
Throughout the story, but especially as he nears his death, the father increasingly recognizes this significance of his son’s innate, Christlike goodness which further dramatizes the boy’s capacity to positively impact the world. In his last days traveling up the road, the father describes a profound hopelessness and anguish as he leans on their cart weeping. However, when he looks up, his spirits are lifted as he sees his son “standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle” (McCarthy 273). A culmination of events similar to this ultimately enlighten the father’s mind with the fact that “whatever dim light remains in a world shorn of its sun collects around the anointed boy. He has become ‘the light of the world’ ” (Stang). Describing the boy as “glowing” once again illustrates his Christlike goodness and his ability to protect this valuable light within himself. Using the word “tabernacle”, the father also alludes to the tabernacle which once housed the treasured Ark of the Covenant, adding additional emphasis to the importance of the special “fire” his son holds. Understanding that whatever hope emerges in their barren world must come through the boy (Busby), the father uses his final moment on earth to counsel and motivate his son. He exhorts his son more persistently than ever to “carry the fire”, tells him “don’t give up”, and delivers a firm declaration about where the fire is; “It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it” (McCarthy 278, 279). These words from the father’s dying breath are just enough to motivate the boy in maintaining his goodness and his will to live as he joins a new band of “good guys” just before the story concludes. In the end, the development of the boy as a Christ-figure underscores the boy’s potential to preserve hope and overcome amorality in his desolate world.