Nothing but fire and ash. Everyone that was once alive on earth are gone. Society is now just a daydream. As life becomes a living hell, what will you become in a land infested with monsters? The novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, envisions a post-apocalyptic America, where society has long since collapsed and all that’s left is bands of marauders. With very little food in the country, humanity becomes savage to survive. What once was a race of civilized creatures has now become demons in their own little hell. In the midst of all this, a father and his son try to survive through it all. In a world such as this, it is not surprising that the people are inherently bad because of their (1) being no law and control, (2) constant fear of death, and (3) the ocean worth of distrust among everyone.
P. First, Law and control. As humans, sure we might be able to govern ourselves, but we still need boundaries. We still need lines to be told not to cross.
E. It’s why we consider ourselves as something higher than animals. In this post-apocalyptic world, with no one to control and draw those lines, there’s nothing keeping humanity from degrading and falling apart into the animal they tried to stray from. A prime example is, near the beginning of the novel where the father and boy are faced with their first encounter with someone in the book, when the father shoots the man and then come back to find that he was eaten by his own group who had come across his body. In today’s society, if someone found a dead body, they wouldn’t cook them and eat them. They would be held by law not to cannibalize that dead human being, not to mention the morale aspect of things.
A. With this world, there are no boundaries, nothing stopping people from consuming the flesh of their own. This is without a doubt, the biggest reason for humanity’s nefariousness. But for as big of a reason for humanity’s “badness”, there are a great deal of other reasons for it as well besides loss of sequence and regulations
Next, fear of death. Throughout the story the father and boy are faced with the passing of many people, including their own mother/wife. Humans always fear death for its unknown. Nobody knows exactly what will happen to them after they will die, even after religious beliefs. Because of this, instead of risking it and trying to help everybody survive, most people would kill others just to keep themselves alive. For example, the father and the boy come upon a house with a basement. Inside this basement, there are people inside there that have been eaten, but left alive. Limbs that had been burned off and eaten, with nothing but nubs of scorched bone on the ends of them. To gruesome of a sight to hold, the boy and the father flee. As they escape, the father sees people walking to the house from the backyard. A family of the sorts. A family, willing to consume another human being, scratch that, multipole human beings and leave them alive for second helpings. No good soul would ever do something like that to others. Another perfect example of the bad nature of humans in the book. But, Fear of the Grim Reaper isn’t the only reason for humanity
Last, the ocean worth of distrust. Usually when someone said oceans worth they mean it as a hyperbole, but in this instance, it is used literal. The people in the story do not trust each other at all. Nobody knows who will try stabbing them in the back. Near the end of the publication, the father and man are at the coast now, and have set up camp. As they are away from camp, they find a boat and collect supplies from it. As they come back, they find that their entire place has been raided. Every item of importance had been stolen. In instances like these, a person must know that a “good person” would never do such a thing, and thankfully the boy and the father find the thief responsible for it. Never the less, wariness leads to conflict, and on a large scale can lead to scenarios like The Road. It’s not very surprising that that much distrust led to this amount of bloodshed and chaos.
Because of their being no rules and authority, fear of the grim reaper, and the distrust among people, it is not surprising that the people in The Road are inherently bad.