essay on the road book

Themes in “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy Analytical Essay

‘The Road’ is a book by Cormac McCarthy that focuses on a post-apocalyptic event involving a nuclear war. Evil is prevalent and man seems to have lost any sense of morality. Theft, murder, cannibalism and all forms of brutality seem to be the order of the day. This quote from the book is a clear indication of how worse things had become:

People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate smoking in their clothes, like failed sectarian suicides. Others would come to help them. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered, by day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. What had they done? He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it (McCarthy 53).

The story is centered on a post apocalyptic event that causes the suffering of humanity. People lack the most basic necessities and live under extreme cruelty. An unnamed man and his small boy are exposed to the brutality. There are incidences of rape, theft and cannibalism all over. When they try to escape from the brutality, they come across one of the ‘bad guys’ who intends to kidnap and kill the boy.

The man shoots him and they escape but they are disturbed by the incidence. When the man and the boy run out of food, they go to a place where they come across some scary scenes. Humans are held captive by some gang, and are kept like livestock to be feasted upon. Such was the intensity of human cruelty. In one of the passages the writer says; “The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night (McCarthy 24).”

People are prone to hunger and starvation, the man and the boy, for instance, are at the verge of starvation when they come across an apple orchard and a well. This cushions them against starvation. When they run out of their food reserves again, they came across canned food at some bomb shelters but they do not take the same with ease as they fear for their security.

The theme of violence is also brought out when the boy’s mother clearly expresses her fears that they might soon be found, raped and killed, as such had become normal in the society. She even states that in the past they would talk about death but they no longer did as it was being witnessed everywhere. This is evident in her statement:

No, I’m speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won’t face it… We used to talk about death,” she said, “We don’t anymore. Why is that?… It’s because it’s here. There’s nothing left to talk about (McCarthy 93).

All these point to the absence of law and order. The scarcity of resources drives people to steal, kill and even become cannibals. Those who attempt decency try to avoid the vices and are only driven to the extremes out of necessity.

This is evident in the passage, “The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead (McCarthy 102). ” In spite of all these, the man and the boy remain compassionate and generous.

The boy, for instance, does not harm anyone, while the man does so only when it is really necessary. This implies that in the midst of all the cruelty, the virtues of compassion and morality can still prevail. The woman however opts to commit suicide so as to escape the cruelty. The man also preserves two bullets in the gun for self destruction incase things get to the extreme. This is evident in the passage:

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. She would do it with a flake of obsidian… and she was right. There was no argument. The hundred nights they’d sat up debating the pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall (McCarthy 94)

This is a clear indication that suicide seemed a better option under extreme brutality.

On their journey, they come across incidences of cannibalism as evident in the passage, “Coming back he found the bones and the skin piled together with rocks over them…He pushed at the bones with the toe of his shoe.

They looked to have been boiled (McCarthy 110).” In the novel, it is also quite evident that the people are subjected to abject poverty to the level that some do not even have clothing as evident in the passage, “Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands (McCarthy 168).”

Such lack is what drives the people to cruelty for survival. It is a man-eat-man society and virtues seem rare. People are raised just like livestock for slaughter, and the conditions under which they are raised are pathetic. The boy is exposed to the world at its worst and the man is not even able to explain the same to him.

Cruelty had become normal and one had to use any means including hurting or killing so as to survive. Someone, for instance, tries to kill them by shooting them with an arrow. The man is wounded on the leg but manages to protect the boy. Before the offender could aim again, the man shoots at him and they all hear him scream.

The Man and the boy seem to be living in isolation from the good people. It almost seems as though even God had abandoned them. In spite of all these, their affection for each other remains strong. Their memory of a better past makes it so hard for them to come into terms with the current happenings. The writer seems to be pointing to the fact that with such cruelty, human are likely disappear from the face of the earth. One of the characters, for instance says:

When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that? (McCarthy 237).

At first the boy is left by the mother, who opts to commit suicide as she can no longer cope with the hopelessness. At the end the boy is also left by the father, who dies and leaves him alone in a world that is so difficult to cope with. People are in a state of disillusion and it is even hard for one to imagine that things will ever get better. The man for instance says, “Well, I don’t think we’re likely to meet any good guys on the road (McCarthy 224).” This is a clear indication of the hopelessness that existed.

The land is unproductive and in desolation. It is quite evident from their conversation that people were hiding from each other. The phrase points to the fear and isolation that had become evident. No one could trust another. The man refuses to imagine that the ancestors were watching and that there would be any form of justice at the end. According to him, they were dead and that was all. It is as though the human history and morality had been eroded by that devastating apocalyptic event.

While asked the purpose of the gun, the man indicated that he possessed it for the purpose of setting others on fire and not necessarily signaling. Such are the extremes that the world had reached so that a grisly weapon is used for signaling and setting others on fire. The society seems to be divided into two, the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys.’ The bad ones seem to engage in acts that demean and even eliminate those that are weaker than them.

They enslave, torture and even kill them while the good ones try not to harm others unless if it is out of necessity as in the case of self defense. The man and the boy fall in this category. He assures the boy that they were still good guys. The man goes ahead to assure the boy that they would not eat a human even if they were starving. This is a basic form of decency that any man is expected to have but it is quite surprising that most people.

Works Cited

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Pan Macmillan Limited, 2010. Print.

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Bibliography

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By Cormac McCarthy

'The Road' is often cited as McCarthy’s “most readable novel.” It is also one of his most popular. 

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

While exploring the story of The Man and The Boy I found myself amazed by the many different ways to approach this review. The novel is entrancing. It grips readers from its first pages and doesn’t let go until the final words. 

Survival and Relatability

‘ The Road’ is filled with heart-wrenching and painful scenes, ones that are too easy to imagine with one’s own loved ones. Throughout, one can’t help but imagine what they would do if they found themselves in a similar situation. 

The two protagonists, a father and his son , struggle throughout the novel to make their way south, supposedly, to safety. The entire plot is bound up in this march along the road , seeking out a place of refuge among the roadagents, or cannibals, and various other threats. The Man and Boy survive in a state of near starvation. But, throughout it all, there is the drive to move south to the coast to what The Man believes (or purports to believe) may be a safe haven. 

It’s this belief that is tied to nothing but hope and the need to present a goal to his son that is hard to let go of. They travel through a wasteland without so much as a hint of true hope in the future. It’s impossible to know what exactly the two are going to find when they reach their destination, but it’s hard, having seen what the world is like, to believe there is much if any good left out there. Despite this, The Man maintains hope for his son, repetitively telling him that they are the “good guys” and that they have to continue on, “carrying the fire.” 

Carrying the Fire 

This term is tied up in the relationship the father and son have and the way that the latter considers the world around them. It’s clear from the former’s narration that he’s lost hope in the world (except perhaps when it comes to his child). But, that’s not something he’s willing to share with his son. 

The Man shares the phrase “carrying the fire” with his young son as another way of ensuring him that the two have a purpose in life and that they aren’t suffering for no reason. They have to carry hope, kindness, and morality with them through their lives because others aren’t. The “fire” of human goodness is at stake. The Man sees it when he looks at his son in a way I have to believe resonates with readers worldwide. 

The Boy 

The Boy is presented as a figure of hope throughout the novel. While The Man often gets lost in feelings of despair and is tempted by violence, The Boy is kind and helpful to a fault. One of the best examples is when the two pursue and find the thief that stole their belongings off the beach. The Man makes him strip naked and takes his clothes and belongings, condemning him to death. But, The Boy won’t stand for it. He is unwilling to concede that the two are the “bad guys” like the other people they meet on the road. 

In bother instance, the two meet an old traveler named Eli. This old man, who The Man seems surprised is still alive, travels with them for a brief period of time. The Boy, despite The Man’s attempts to stop him, gives him food from their supplies. Eli is without gratitude for this incredibly selfless act, but The Boy does it anyway. Its moments like this make it clear why The Man feels as though he has to preserve The Boy’s life at all costs. He’s willing to do anything to ensure that his son survives. 

The Boy becomes more than just The Man’s son; he’s also, in a way, all that’s left of humanity as it used to be. The world has changed irrevocably. There’s no going back to the way things used to be. The Boy, due to the way The Man has raised him (on memories of the past and how the human race used to act), is different. 

Love as a Theme 

Love is one of the primary themes readers are left with when they walk away from this novel. The book is filled with torment and the horrors of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic world. But, it’s also filled with a great deal of love. There is the love that keeps The Man thinking about his wife, the mother of his son, and the love that keeps The Man and The Boy bound to one another. One particularly moving scene comes near the end of the novel when The Man has passed: 

He slept close to his father that night and held him but when he woke in the morning his father was cold and stiff. He sat there a long time weeping and then he got up and walked out through the woods to the road. When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again.

The Boy remained at his father’s side, despite the fact that he was dead, for three days. The Man was all he knew in the world. Now, the novel implies, he is going to have to go on and figure out life on his own. But, soon, a new hope arrives. 

When The Boy has been discovered by a new family. The following passage I found to be particularly moving as The Boy is saying goodbye to his father. 

He walked back into the woods and knelt beside his father. He was wrapped in a blanket as the man had promised and the boy didnt uncover him but he sat beside him and he was crying and he couldnt stop. He cried for a long time. I’ll talk to you every day, he whispered. And I wont forget. No matter what. Then he rose and turned and walked back out to the road.

Here, The Boy pledges to speak to his father every day. He “won’t forget,” he adds. Not only won’t he forget the love they shared, this implies, but also the lessons The Man taught him and the concept of “carrying the fire” throughout life. He commits to remembering the past in a way that the rest of the world seems not to. 

Is ‘ The Road ‘ worth reading?

Every reader is different, but for most readers, they are going to find ‘ The Road’ worth reading. It taps into universal themes and tells an unforgettable story. 

Is ‘ The Road ‘ by Cormac McCarthy sad?

The ending of ‘ The Road’ is deeply sad, but it is also tinged with hope. There are several other moments readers might find themselves moved by the subject matter, including when The Man thinks about his wife. 

What caused the apocalypse in ‘ The Road ?’

Cormac McCarthy revealed that the apocalypse in ‘ The Road’ was caused by a meteor strike. But, that fact is never mentioned in the book. 

The Road Review: McCarthy's Harrowing Novel of Survival and Love

Book Title: The Road

Book Description: 'The Road' is a memorable novel that explores the importance of love when one is contending with matters of morality, life, and death.

Book Author: Cormac McCarthy

Book Edition: First Edition

Book Format: Hardcover

Publisher - Organization: Alfred A. Knopf

Date published: September 26, 2006

ISBN: 978-0-375-41542-4

Number Of Pages: 287

• Writing Style
• Lasting Effect on Reader

The Road Review

‘ The Road ‘ by Cormac McCarthy is an incredibly moving novel. It follows two unnamed characters as they contend with the aftermath of an unknown apocalypse. Traveling the barren landscape of what used to be the United States, The Man and The Boy are constantly forced to fight for their lives. 

• Creative writing style
• Mysterious characters and their pasts
• Beautiful descriptions of terrible sights and events
• Dialogue is difficult to read due to lack of quotation marks
• No solid conclusion at the end
• Deeply disturbing scenes

About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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from the book review archives

Review: ‘The Road,’ by Cormac McCarthy

In 2006, our reviewer correctly predicted that this father-son tale would eclipse the popularity of McCarthy’s 1992 hit, “All the Pretty Horses.”

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By William Kennedy

• Oct. 21, 2021

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy | Review first published Oct. 8, 2006

Cormac McCarthy’s subject in his new novel is as big as it gets: the end of the civilized world, the dying of life on the planet and the spectacle of it all. He has written a visually stunning picture of how it looks at the end to two pilgrims on the road to nowhere. Color in the world — except for fire and blood — exists mainly in memory or dream. Fire and firestorms have consumed forests and cities, and from the fall of ashes and soot everything is gray, the river water black. On the Interstate “long lines of charred and rusting cars” are “sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber. … The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.”

McCarthy has said that death is the major issue in the world and that writers who don’t address it are not serious. Death reaches very near totality in this novel. Billions of people have died, all animal and plant life, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea are dead: “At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore as far as eye could see like an isocline of death.”

A man in his late 40s and his son, about 10, both unnamed, are walking a desolated road. Perhaps it is the fall, but the soot has blocked out the sun, probably everywhere on the globe, and it is snowing, very cold, and getting colder. The man and boy cannot survive another winter and are heading to the Gulf Coast for warmth, on the road to a mountain pass — unnamed, but probably Lookout Mountain on the Tennessee-Georgia border. It is through the voice of the father that McCarthy delivers his vision of end times. The son, born after the sky opened, has no memory of the world that was. His father gave him lessons about it but then stopped: “He could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own.” The boy’s mother committed suicide rather than face starvation, rape and the cannibalizing of herself and the family, and she mocks her husband for going forward. But he is a man with a mission. When he shoots a thug who tries to murder the boy (their first spoken contact with another human in a year) he tells his son: “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

McCarthy does not say how or when God entered this man’s being and his son’s, nor does he say how or why they were chosen to survive together for 10 years, to be among the last living creatures on the road. But the tale is as biblical as it is ultimate, and the man implies that the end has happened through godly fanaticism. The world is in a nuclear winter, though that phrase is never used. The lone allusion to our long-prophesied holy war with its attendant nukes is when the man thinks: “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.”

They keep walking, the man coughing blood, dying, envying the dead. They are starving, stalked by the unseen, by armed thugs who travel by truck, and in terror they see an army of “marchers” who appear on the road four abreast and epitomize what the apocalypse has wrought: “All wearing red scarves at their necks. … Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. … Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like windup toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. … The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of truck springs. … Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites ill clothed against the cold and fitted in dog collars and yoked each to each.”

And the boy asks, “Were they the bad guys?”

“Yes, they were the bad guys.”

“There’s a lot of them, those bad guys.”

“Yes there are. But they’re gone.”

The overarching theme in McCarthy’s work has been the face-off of good and evil with evil invariably triumphant through the bloodiest possible slaughter. Had this novel continued his pattern, that band of marching thugs would have been the focus — as it was with the apocalyptic horsemen of death in his second novel, “Outer Dark,” or the blood-mad scalp-hunters in his masterpiece, “Blood Meridian,” or the psychopathic killer in his recent novel, “No Country for Old Men.” But evil victorious is not this book’s theme. McCarthy changes the odds to favor the man and boy.

“The Road” is a dynamic tale, offered in the often exalted prose that is McCarthy’s signature, but this time in restrained doses — short, vivid sentences, episodes only a few paragraphs or a few lines long, which is yet another departure for him.

The accessibility of this book, the love between father and son expressed in their quicksilver conversations, and the pathos of their story will make the novel popular, perhaps beyond “All the Pretty Horses,” which had a love story and characters you might befriend and not run from, and which delivered McCarthy out of cult status and onto the best-seller list. “The Road” is the most readable of his works, and consistently brilliant in its imagining of the posthumous condition of nature and civilization — “the frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night.”

The man and boy keep heading south and do reach the ocean, which the boy heard was blue, but it is as gray with ash as the rest of the world — a dead sea. And the Gulf Coast is as cold as Tennessee. When they capture a man who stole their goods the father leaves him naked on the road to freeze. The boy protests but the father chides him: “You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.” And then the 10-year-old messiah, who is compassion incarnate, and carrying the fire, gives up his secret. He says to his father: “Yes I am. I am the one.”

The good guys remain elusive as the father sickens, and he talks of the boy inevitably being alone on the road. The boy asks about another boy he saw walking alone. Was he lost?

“No,” the father says. “I don’t think he was lost. …”

“But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?”

“Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.”

Goodness is an anomalous subject for McCarthy, especially in the language of a children’s book. He has given his own kinetic language to the narrating minds of morons, cretins, madmen, psychotic murderers; but this father and son remain only filial familiars, brave and loving and good but tongue-tied on what else they are or are becoming. But the father was right about goodness: it arrives on cue as a deus ex machina that has been following the pair and swiftly enfolds the boy savior into a holy family, maybe a holy commune, where they talk of the breath of God passing “from man to man through all of time.” Then McCarthy ends with an eloquent lament: a vision of a time gone when the world was becoming; and what had been was “a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again.” And all things “were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

Brief and mystical, this is an extremely austere conclusion to the apocalyptic pilgrimage. Of the boy’s becoming, or his mission — redeeming a dead world, outliving death? — nothing is said. The rhythmic poetry of McCarthy’s formidable talent has made us see the blasted world as clearly as Conrad wanted us to see. But the scarcity of thought in the novel’s mystical infrastructure leaves the boy a designated but unsubstantiated messiah. It makes us wish that that old humming mystery had a lyric.

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Cormac McCarthy

• Literature Notes
• Book Summary
• Character List and Analysis
• Minor Characters
• Summary and Analysis
• Character Map
• Cite this Literature Note

The novel begins with the man and boy in the woods, the boy asleep, as the two of them are making their journey along the road. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, date and place unnamed, though the reader can assume it's somewhere in what was the United States because the man tells the boy that they're walking the "state roads." Neither the man nor the boy is given a name; this anonymity adds to the novel's tone that this could be happening anywhere, to anyone. Stylistically, the writing is very fragmented and sparse from the beginning, which reflects the barren and bleak landscape through which the man and boy are traveling. McCarthy also chooses to use no quotation marks in dialogue and for some contractions, he leaves out the apostrophes. Because this is a post-apocalyptic story, the exemption of these punctuation elements might serve as a way for McCarthy to indicate that in this new world, remnants of the old world — like electricity, running water, and humanity — no longer exist, or they exist in very limited amounts.

While the boy sleeps, the man reflects upon one of his dreams of a creature with dead eyes. The man's dreams play a large role throughout the novel; the man tells both himself and the boy that good dreams are to be feared because they indicate a form of acceptance, and that death would inevitably be near. Bad dreams, on the other hand, are reassuring because they demonstrate that the man and boy are still persevering in the world they inhabit.

From the start, it's clear that the boy is all the man worries about. He is all the man has, and the man believes that he's been entrusted by God to protect the boy. He keeps a pistol with him at all times, unless he goes inside a house. Then he gives the pistol to the boy. The pistol, though, only has two bullets.

The man, too, is all the boy has. When the boy wakes, they set out on the road yet again, making their way through a "nuclear winter" that follows them from start to finish as they make their way south to the coast, hoping to find a better life there, although the man knows there's no reason for him to hope that things will be different for them there. They have a grocery cart with them, filled with their belongings and supplies for their journey. They are running low on food, and the man is fighting a bad cough, one that sprays blood on the gray snow.

They come upon towns and cities that are mere shells of what they once were. Remnants of the old world often — like houses, billboards, and hotels — clash with the reality of the new world, reminding the man of the life he once lived. The man remembers an evening spent on the lake with his uncle. And he remembers his wife — who left him and the boy, presumably to kill herself and escape this horrible new world.

In one grocery store, the man finds a pop machine that has a single Coca-Cola in it. He retrieves it for the boy and lets him drink it. The man likes to offer whatever he can to his son to make his world a bit more pleasant and to give him glimpses into the world that existed before him.

The man and boy come upon the house where the man grew up. The boy is scared of this house, as he is of many of the houses. The boy worries they'll run into someone, like the roadagents or bad guys who eat people in order to survive. The man has decided, too, that should roadagents find them, that he will kill the boy so that they cannot torture him, but he often wonders to himself if he would be able to do it if the time should ever come.

They come upon a waterfall and the man and boy swim together, the man teaching the boy how to float. It's a tender moment that suggests lessons that fathers would have taught their sons in the old world. Throughout the novel there are moments like this one at the waterfall, scenes that prove the bond between fathers and sons still exist in this new world. It exists, in many ways, just as it did before. The father cares for his son, and teaches his son, and worries about his son's future under such uncertain circumstances.

The boy is very concerned with making sure they are "carrying the fire," assuring himself that he and his father are the good guys as opposed to the bad guys (who eat dogs and other people). The man tells the boy stories of justice and courage from the old world in the hopes that such stories will keep the fire alive in the boy. The man hopes for a future that might again also harbor courage, justice, and humanity.

As they walk, they keep track of their location on a worn and tattered map that they must piece together like a puzzle each time they use it. While on the road, they come upon a man who's been struck by lightning. They pass the burnt man and the boy wants to help him, but his father says they've got nothing to give him. The boy cries for the man, showing his kind heart and his compassionate nature in a world where very little humanity exists.

The man has flashbacks about leaving his billfold behind earlier in the journey, after his wife left him and the boy. He recalls that he also left behind his only picture of his wife, and ponders whether he could have convinced her to stay alive with them. The man remembers the night that his son was born, after the clocks all stopped, how he'd delivered the baby himself, marking the beginning of their intense father/son bond.

A truck full of roadagents comes upon the man and the boy, who hide in the woods. The truck breaks down and one of the bad men finds them in the woods. The bad man grabs the boy, and the boy's father shoots the man in the head and both escape into the woods. Now the pistol has only one bullet left, and the man knows that this bullet is for his son should the time come. The boy wants to know if they are still the good guys, despite his father's committing a murder. His father assures him that they are.

The man views his son as a holy object, something sacred. The boy is a source of light for the man and the man believes that if there is any proof of God, the boy is it.

The man and boy are cold and starving, as they are for most of the novel. As they travel, they are on a constant lookout for food, clothing, shoes, supplies, and roadagents. In one town, the boy thinks he sees a dog and a little boy and tries to chase after them. He worries about the other little boy for the rest of the novel.

By the time they come upon a once grand house, the boy and man are starving. There are suspicious items in the house, such as piles of blankets and clothes and shoes and a bell attached to a string, but the man these. He finds a door in the floor of a pantry, and breaks the lock. The boy becomes frightened and repeatedly asks if they can leave. In the basement, the man and boy find naked people who are being kept alive for others to eat. The man and boy flee just as the roadagents return. They hide in the woods through the freezing night, the man feeling certain that this is the day when he's going to have to kill his son. But they survive the night and go undiscovered.

They continue their journey, exhausted and still starving. The man leaves the boy to sleep while he explores, and he finds an old apple orchard with some dried out apples. He continues to the house that's adjacent to the orchard, where he finds a tank of water. The man fills some jars with water, gathers the dried apples, and takes them back to the boy. The man also found a dried drink mix, grape flavored, which he gives the boy. The boy enjoys the drink and their spirits are lifted for a moment.

The man and boy move on, but the perceptive boy asks his father about the people they found in the basement. The boy knows that the people are going to be eaten and understands that he and his father couldn't help them because then they may have been eaten, too. The boy asks if they would ever eat anyone, and his father assures him that they wouldn't. They are the good guys.

They press on, enduring more cold, rain, and hunger. Nearing death, the man's dreams turned to happy thoughts of his wife. They come upon another house, and the man feels something strange under his feet as he walks from the house to the shed. He digs and finds a plywood door in the ground. The boy is terrified and begs his father not to open it. After some time, the man tells the boy that the good guys keep trying, so they have to open the door and find out what's down there. What they discover is a bunker, full of supplies and canned food, cots to sleep on, water, and a chemical toilet. It is a brief sanctuary from the world above. The man realizes that he'd been ready to die, but they would live. This is hard for the man to accept. The man and boy stay in the bunker for days, eating and sleeping. The boy wishes he could thank the people who left these things. He's sorry that they're dead, but hopes they're safe in heaven.

The man whittles fake bullets from a tree branch and puts them in the pistol with the one true bullet. He wants the gun to appear loaded should they encounter others on the road. They go into town to find a new cart and return to their bunker to load up with supplies. In the house, the man shaves and cuts both his own hair and the boy's — another moment in the novel that recalls a father/son ritual of the old world. They plan to leave the next day, but the following morning they wake up and see rain, so they eat and sleep some more to restore their strength. Then, they set out on the road again, still heading south.

They come upon another traveler on the road, an old man who tells them his name is Ely, which is not true. Ely is surprised by seeing the boy, having convinced himself that he never thought he'd see a child again. The boy persuades his father to let Ely eat dinner with them that night. The man agrees, but tells his son that Ely can't stay with them for long. Later that night, the man and Ely talk about the old world, about death, God, and the future — particularly, about what it would be like to be the last human on the planet. The next day as they prepare to part ways, the boy gives Ely some food to take with him. His father reluctantly gives away their supplies. As Ely moved on, the boy is upset because he knows that Ely is going to die.

As they continue moving south, the man and boy run into other towns and landscapes that act as skeletons of the old world, both literally and metaphorically. They see bones of creatures and humans alike, as well as empty houses, barns, and vehicles. They find a train in the woods, and the man shows the boy how to play conductor.

The boy asks his father about the sea. He wants to know if it's blue. The man says it used to be. The man has a fever, which causes the two to camp in the woods for over four days. The boy is afraid his father is going to die, and the man's dreams turn to dead relatives and better times in his life. The boy's dreams continue to be bad, and the man encourages him, saying that his bad dreams mean he hasn't given up. The man says he won't let his son give up.

When they set out again, the man is even weaker than before. They come upon numerous burned bodies and melted roads that have reset in warped shapes. There are people following them: three men and a pregnant woman. The man and boy hide and let the group pass. Later, the man and boy come upon their camp and discover the baby skewered over a fire. The boy doesn't speak for over a day. Then, he asks about the baby; he doesn't understand where it came from.

Their arrival at the coast is anti-climactic. The water looks gray and the boy is disappointed. It looks as if, even at the southern coast, life isn't sustainable. But the boy, with his father's encouragement, runs to the waves and swims in the ocean, which lifts both his and his father's spirits.

From the shore, the man and boy see a boat in the water. The man swam to the boat and explores it, finding supplies, including some food, a first-aid kit, and a flare gun. He and the boy make their camp close to the beach, plundering the ship each day to see what else they can find. The man's cough worsens and then the boy gets sick, too. The man believes the boy will die and he is terrified and enraged. The boy, though, recovers.

The man and boy decide to leave their camp on the beach, and they pare down their food stores so that the cart is more manageable. They hike up and down the shore, and when they return to their camp they see that all of their belongings have been stolen. They take off after the thief and find him. The man makes the thief take off all of his clothes, leaving him there for dead, which is what the man tells the boy the thief did to them. The boy begs his father not to hurt the man, and when they leave the boy cries and convinces his father to take the man's clothes back to him. They can't find the man, but leave his clothes in the road. The boy tell the man that they're responsible for that other man, that they killed him, and it makes the boy question their role as the good guys. He says they should be helping people.

They walk through another barren town, and the man gets shot in the leg by an arrow. He shoots a flare through the window from which the arrow came and hits the man who shot him. It's unclear whether he kills the man, but when the boy asks, his father tells him that the arrow shooter lived.

The man stitches up his leg and they press on. The man grows weaker, his cough worsening and becoming even bloodier than before. The man's dreams soften and he knows he's going to die. They make camp and the man tells the boy not to cover him because he wants to see the sky. The boy brings his father water, and the man sees a light surrounding the boy. The man tells the boy to go on, to leave him, but the boy refuses. Eventually, the man dies. The boy stays with his father's body for three days, then a man with a shotgun finds him. The man invites the boy to come along with them. The man says that he's one of the good guys and that he's carrying the fire, too. He also says that they've got a little boy with them and a little girl, too. Eventually, the boy decides to go, but not before he says goodbye to his father. The boy leaves his father covered in a blanket.

The novel ends with the boy welcomed into a new family in this new world that he must learn to inhabit. The question of his future, and the future of humanity remains. The boy talks with the woman about God, and he admits to the woman that it's easier for him to talk to his father instead of to God. The woman tells the boy this is okay, because God's breath passes through all men. The final passage of the novel is set up in story form, evoking thoughts not only of the man and boy's story, but also of humanity's story as a whole. The novel ends with a note of mystery — the mystery of the bond that exists between father and son; the mystery of the boy's and humanity's future; and the mystery of this new world and what it will be like now that it has been forever changed.

Next The Man

On the Road Full Book Summary

This essay about “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac explores the essence of the novel through the adventures of Sal Paradise and his encounters with Dean Moriarty. It reflects on the themes of freedom, the search for meaning, and the impermanence of life as experienced by the youth of post-war America. Through spontaneous prose, Kerouac captures the spirit of the Beat Generation, emphasizing the desire to live fully outside conventional boundaries. The essay discusses how the novel resonates with readers by tapping into the universal yearning for exploration and self-discovery. It concludes by reminding us that “On the Road” is more than a book; it’s an invitation to experience life’s vast possibilities and the stories that unfold along the way.

How it works

Diving into “On the Road” is like grabbing a backpack, throwing caution to the wind, and hitchhiking across the soul of post-war America. Jack Kerouac, the maestro behind this timeless piece, didn’t just write a novel; he spun a yarn that wrapped itself around the hearts of the Beat Generation and beyond. This isn’t your standard narrative; it’s a wild ride with Sal Paradise, our guide through a world brimming with the raw essence of life, jazz, and the pursuit of something more.

The book throws us into the passenger seat alongside Sal, a young guy with a thirst for the kind of adventures that can’t be found in any guidebook. He’s drawn to the open road like a moth to a flame, seeking the kind of experiences that leave you changed before you even realize it. Dean Moriarty enters the scene, a whirlwind of charisma and chaos, embodying the freedom and fervor of youth. Together, they set off, crisscrossing the vast American landscape, their journey a tapestry of fleeting moments and enduring memories.

Kerouac’s prose is an electric current, buzzing with a spontaneity that jolts the narrative to life. It’s as if he’s sitting next to you, recounting his tales with a feverish intensity, his words racing to keep up with his thoughts. This is the heart of “On the Road”: a narrative that doesn’t just unfold but erupts, echoing the cadences of the jazz that our protagonists worship. It’s raw, it’s real, and it refuses to be tamed.

But it’s not all smooth sailing. The road, with all its freedom and allure, also winds through landscapes of loss and longing. The very fabric of “On the Road” is woven with a sense of searching, a quest not just for adventure but for meaning in the vastness of America’s plains and cities. Our heroes confront the reality that every mile gained is also a moment lost, every exhilarating high matched with the shadow of the low. Their freedom, boundless as it seems, carries its own cost.

Yet, this is precisely why “On the Road” strikes a chord, even today. It captures a timeless yearning, a whisper in all of us that calls for the open road, for life unscripted. Kerouac masterfully taps into the essence of what it means to seek, to yearn, to chase the horizon and the dreams that lie just beyond. It’s a reflection on the beauty of the journey, with all its twists, turns, and what lies at the end of the road.

In wrapping up, “On the Road” isn’t just a book; it’s an experience, a manifesto for wanderers and dreamers. Through the eyes of Sal and Dean, Kerouac invites us to question, to roam, and to embrace the raw chaos of living. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the most profound discoveries are made not at the destination, but on the journey there. So, here’s to the road ahead, to the stories waiting to be told, and to the timeless quest for something more that Kerouac so vividly captured.

Just remember, while this summary might give you a glimpse into “On the Road,” there’s nothing quite like embarking on the journey yourself, page by adventurous page. And hey, if you’re looking to polish your own tales of the road or any writing adventure you’re embarking on, don’t hesitate to seek out some professional guidance to make your story shine.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Road — Analysis of Optimism in Cormac Mccarthy’s “The Road”

Analysis of Optimism in Cormac Mccarthy’s "The Road"

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Published: May 7, 2019

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Hope in The Road

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Penguin Press, 2015

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Christopher spaide, more online by christopher spaide.

• “Nihilism, Shmihilism”
• The Trembling Answers

The Road Not Taken

By david orr, reviewed by christopher spaide.

For a half century, Robert Frost has been the most unavoidable of American poets: the nation’s inaugural inaugural poet, laureate of swinging birches and snowy evenings, a fixture as essential to the middle-school classroom as the chalkboard. He has also been our most defended poet: Frost’s respectable partisans, among them Lionel Trilling, Randall Jarrell, Joseph Brodsky, and Paul Muldoon, have insisted that we look more closely at the true Frost, a poet less lovely, more dark and deep, than the Frost we were taught to love. “The Other Frost” (to quote the title of a Jarrell essay) is not a populist, apparently patriotic bard, but a modernist whom you might call (depending on whose Frost you’re meeting) coy, playful, mischievous, malevolent, an unsparing skeptic (if not an atheist), or an unappeasable pessimist (if not a downright nihilist). These corrective lenses have scandalized casual readers, but they utterly delighted Frost: when, at Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday dinner, Trilling shocked guests by toasting Frost as “a terrifying poet,” Frost responded with a thank-you note: “You made my birthday party a surprise party.”

The latest defense of Frost—the longest, most publicized, and most extravagantly subtitled to date—is David Orr’s The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong . Orr is a pithy, pushy poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review , and the author of one previous book, Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry (2011). On face, The Road Not Taken looks like that earlier book, which performed a particular service for a particular audience: if you’ve always wanted to vacation to that foreign destination called Poetry, but simply don’t have the time, Orr’s travel guide will save you the trouble by condensing all that beautiful, pointless sightseeing into 200 pages. (This is Orr’s metaphor: in its introduction, Beautiful & Pointless analogizes modern poetry with Belgium, a beautiful and pointless country.)

But Orr’s new book is far subtler, stranger, and more subversive than his last, a how-to that admits defeat page after page, a manual for the uninitiated which never dumbs down or tidies up its unsettling suggestions. Orr has written the rare book on poetry that does not discriminate between audiences: newcomers and experts, Americans and Belgians, This Frost or the Other Frost, you or me or Orr. Why? We’re all wrong.

Orr’s Frost evolves into an unmanageable poet, but he starts off as something simple: the author of “The Road Not Taken,” a poem whose ubiquity goes without saying. Orr says it anyway, finding the poem’s deep cultural seepage in Ford commercials, rap lyrics, journalistic clichés, “one of the foundational texts of modern self-help” ( The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth ), and over four hundred books “on subjects ranging from political theory to the impending zombie apocalypse.” (Orr overlooks the prevalence of the phrase “the road less traveled” in America’s sex columns ; his arguments suffer accordingly.) Whether or not you’ve actively tried to memorize this poem, you likely have its best-known phrases stored in your vocabulary. Or you know its moves, its progression of steps forth and looks back, the way you half remember a joke: a man walks into a yellow wood, two roads diverge, he chooses “the one less traveled by,” that makes all the difference, America-brand individualism wins again.

The punch line, Orr reveals, is that the road “less traveled by” apparently wasn’t: worn down by passersby “really about the same,” both roads “that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Take these lines literally, and the speaker’s sonorous conclusion—“I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference”—sounds less like measured stock-taking than an after-the-fact justification. For champions of the Other Frost (and for Frost himself), “The Road Not Taken” is a dark joke at the expense of a self-deluding speaker—as Orr articulates the position: “The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism; it’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” But Orr is too hesitant, too baffled, to fix the poem with one definitive reading, whether as “a paean to triumphant self-assertion” or as that paean’s wicked parody. Oscillating between extremes, “The Road Not Taken” ceases to be about a particular choice and becomes “about the necessity of choosing that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself—that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads.”

Orr is not the first reader to complicate Frost’s greatest hit: see books on and by Frost , reviews of those books , even Orange Is the New Black . Orr makes his most original points, and finds his winningly self-skeptical voice, in the book’s four central chapters. All four work as discrete lessons on how to break into almost any poem; all four fail, exasperatingly but instructively, at cracking “The Road Not Taken.” In “The Poet,” Orr introduces a man as indecipherable as his best-known poem, obscured by biased biographers, adulatory defenders, and his own designing performance as America’s sour, lovable, libertarian sage (a role the culture now fills with Ron Swanson). In “The Poem,” Orr relates how “The Road Not Taken” was misunderstood by its very first reader and dedicatee, the English critic-poet Edward Thomas, and finds openings for that misunderstanding throughout the poem, from its title (which road wasn’t taken, and by whom?) to its final word. In the trendily interdisciplinary “The Choice,” Orr turns the poem into a case study for contemporary sociology, philosophy, marketing, and even neuroscience (Frost’s two roads map comfortably onto the brain’s left and right hemispheres). And in “The Chooser,” Frost’s poem serves as confirmation for two mutually exclusive notions of American personhood, the self as moment-to-moment construction and the self as wholesale discovery.

By now, Orr has perfected strategies for exposing poetry to new audiences. His deftest is a bait and switch: he gives airtime to outsider assumptions (“Poets, we assume, are not popular—at least after 1910 or so”) and hard-to-gauge truisms (“Poetry has always oscillated between guardedness and fervor”) only to second-guess, backtrack, uncover exceptions. Orr’s off-topic jokiness, which spurs the taut comic routines of his journalism (and, unchecked in Beautiful & Pointless , produces a dinner full of dad jokes), is absent, replaced by a single-minded drive to let no easy reading stand. The result is not only a compilation of brilliant explanations for non-experts, on topics both poetic and not—Frost’s metrical theory of “the sound of sense,” or “the border of determinism and free will”—but also “a guide to modern poetry” far more welcoming, more wide-ranging, than Orr’s first book.

It’s also wrong—“wrong” in the way Orr’s subtitle informs us that “almost everyone” is wrong, subject to unacknowledged biases, overinflated claims, indigestible self-contradiction. As the book progresses, “The Road Not Taken” builds up into everything and nothing: on one page, it “captures the difficult essence of American experience”; on the next, it’s a funhouse of deception and distortion. Frost comes across as the century’s most prescient thinker, encoding contemporary philosophy and psychology into gnomic lines, but also as a modernist supervillain, bent on deceiving all audiences, himself included. That Orr never even tries to resolve these contradictions is not a demerit but this book’s great unspoken lesson. The further you get into “The Road Not Taken,” or any inexhaustible poem, the notion of any one unequivocally “right” reading seems more and more like an illusion. Depending on how you view it, Orr’s shrewd guide will teach you how to read Frost in many “right” ways, or how to read him spectacularly wrong. Thankfully, it doesn’t make a difference.

Published on April 29, 2016

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On the Road

By jack kerouac, on the road essay questions.

Discuss Kerouac's vision of individuality in On the Road. Is such a vision of individuality healthy or hurtful?

Kerouac's vision of individuality relies on a person's willingness to separate from the conventional lifestyle of the culture. For Kerouac, this was white American culture. In the novel, Sal often wishes he could become part of another culture and race, a true separation, yet whether or not Sal would be able to remain an individual while becoming part of another group is not discussed in the book. One could also question whether Sal was truly being an individual through much of the book, since his goal, as he stated it, was to follow Dean and Carlo around to be a part of the fun they were having. Towards the end of the novel, Kerouac seems to be suggesting that separating himself from Dean and the Beat lifestyle had become necessary in order to retain his own notions of self.

In the novel, what does it mean to be "Beat," and how does this concept change over the course of the novel?

At the beginning of the novel, Sal describes a person as Beat who is mad, "mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles." By this definition, someone who is Beat is a person who lives in the moment, always attempting to experience life at its fullest.

Yet the notion of Beat changes through the novel. This change is best characterized by the persons Sal finds himself surrounded by in a Detroit movie theater, a place he and Dean stop to sleep because they cannot afford a room. These people he describes as trash, persons who have been discarded by society, an image Sal himself comes to identify with.

Discuss Kerouac's use of the passage of time in the novel.

Kerouac's notion of time seems to be that of an entity that is constantly moving and constantly taking others with it. During the novel, Sal feels many different emotions concerning this reality. As he sees his friends growing smaller in the rear window of a car as he leaves them, he laments not being able to be a part of their lives permanently. Yet, the madness he seeks makes such permanence impossible. This is also the case in the memories that Sal and Dean continually share. They cannot conquer the past, so they continually try to relive it.

Sal and Dean discuss "it" throughout the novel and believe that each of their journeys is going to bring them closer to this "it." What is "it"? Do Dean and Sal ever find "it"?

Dean's and Sal's notion of "It" is best summed up by Dean as he watches a jazz musician preform. The musician has "it" because he is living completely in the moment. He no longer cares for the conventions of society because when he has "it," he is able to live outside those conventions. He no longer cares about things like money, family, or shelter and the other necessities of life. For Dean, finding "it" means living in a pure state.

Arguably, the closest Dean and Sal come to finding "it" is during their trip to Mexico. During this trip they have literally taken themselves out of the American landscape and immersed themselves in a new culture. They head to Mexico City, a place that could truly be a Beat haven for them, but they find they cannot live in "it" for very long after all.

What is the novel's vision of the American dream in relation to 1950s America and today?

The novel's vision of the American dream as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is interpreted as meaning that one is constantly moving through the American landscape. Adventure and exploration are the tenets of this dream, though through the novel Sal and Dean often find there are fewer and fewer places to explore.

Kerouac's characters speak harshly to those who find happiness in consumerism and the conventional life of family and job. Kerouac also could see the American landscape, particularly the old frontiers of the American West, quickly turning into tourist attractions. This transformation has continued into the present day, and Kerouac's novel promotes traveling to get to know a culture rather than being a tourist who never changes.

Discuss the relationship between men and women in the novel. Are Sal and Dean justified in the ways they treat women?

For those who see conventional middle-class life as a burden to be challenged by a bohemian lifestyle, the way Dean and Sal treat the women in their lives might seem necessary. Family and wives were, and are, part of the bedrock conventions of society.

Yet, in the novel, Sal begins to see the toll such a lifestyle can take on one's loved ones. During their last journey, both Dean and Sal have sentimental moments when relating to children, and they begin to see that ideas of family might be more important than they realize. The novel suggests that family ties are a natural part of human life, beyond mere convention. Sal and Dean are constantly torn between the love they feel for women and family and the freedom they desire.

Nevertheless, treating women who are not going to become family seems to be a different matter, and here the conflict is about basic respect and equality versus individual aggrandizement. In that sense, the male beatnik treatment of women is part of the larger beatnik lifestyle of disrespect for the lives and property of others.

Is Sal's interpretation of African American culture fair?

Kerouac's novel has been criticized for being a glorification of a caricatured African American culture. Sal sees this culture as one that does not have to deal with the pressures of white middle-class conformity precisely because of the marginalization of African Americans in his experience. Through the novel, Sal often does not see the burden of this marginalization on African Americans.

What does law enforcement represent in the novel?

Law enforcement officers are truly the "bad guys." During the multiple traffic stops that Dean and Sal have to talk and beg their way out of, law enforcement officers are not seen as the guardians of society but as a force that is attempting to control society and take away an individual's freedom. In one section of the novel, Dean characterizes police officers as being a part of a national conspiracy to spy on Americans. For Dean and Sal, the military and law enforcement are the antithesis of what it means to live in America. Other contemporary dystopias take a similar view (consider Orwell's 1984), a reflection of anti-totalitarianism during the Cold War.

Compare the "old" Sal of New York with the "new" Sal after his journeys.

The "old" Sal of New York was primarily interested in following around characters such as Dean and Carlo Marx in order to "burn" with them in their madness and to catch some of that himself. Yet, by the time that Sal crosses the Mississippi River on his first journey, and continuing through his second and third journeys, Sal ceases to simply follow people around and becomes one of the madmen himself. While Dean remains the catalyst for these bouts of madness, Sal finds that he too possesses the power to experience life for himself in such a way. His first journey takes him everywhere from drinking on the back of a truck to picking cotton in California. The "new" Sal is a person who experiences life firsthand, not only through others. He also gains in wisdom about some of the effects of libertinism on oneself and others.

How might Kerouac's novel have influenced the cultural upheaval of the 1960s?

The cultural revolution of the 1960s reflected a time in which the more strict morals and conventions of the 1940s and 1950s were examined and often tossed out by younger adults. The novel provided a guide for much of the spirit of individual freedom from convention and power that was sought. In its depictions of drug use, loose sexual morality, and lack of regard for authority, it helped to plant the ideas of revolution that fueled much of the social changes of the time. The novel showed that subcultures could and did exist alongside the allegedly conformist life of the American white middle class, and it romanticized some of the alternatives by suggesting that greater freedom might exist through a subculture or Beat lifestyle.

On the Road Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for On the Road is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

According to the narrator, why do people in town wear a “crucifix, St Christopher’s medal, rosary something”?

I see no evidence of this in the book, On the Road ? Are you sure you've placed your question in the proper category? Chapter?

On the Road[The Run,#4]

Chapter 4? Or this is a series.... Book 4?

When Mac is taking care of Anna’s wound, Anna asks if he thinks she is going to become “one of them.” What does Mac reply?

I see no evidence of this in the book, On the Road , by Jack Kerouac.

Study Guide for On the Road

On the Road study guide contains a biography of Jack Kerouac, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About On the Road
• On the Road Summary
• Character List

Essays for On the Road

On the Road essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

• Jack Kerouac's Fear of Women and Lust
• Idealism and the Road in the late 1940s vs. the 1960s in On the Road and Easy Rider
• Jewels in the Night: Sal's Identity in New York City, Denver, and San Francisco
• Improvisation and other Jazz-like Techniques in Jack Kerouac’s Writing
• Human Motivations in On the Road

Lesson Plan for On the Road

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Introduction to On the Road
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• On the Road Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for On the Road

• Introduction
• Production and publication