Cormac Mccarthy The Road Essay

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In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road fire holds two significant meanings. One is that fire is the manmade cause of the catastrophe that obliterated humanity, made total destruction and turned earth into a living hell. The other is that fire is a symbol of hope for humanity and of the human spirit. The two protagonists—a man and a boy—who are traveling across a burned America in search of warmer weather use the phrase “carrying the fire” (60) to give each other hope that they are indeed the good guys. In The Road, McCarthy presents carrying the fire as the small family's way of preserving something that is worth saving in the face of total destruction. By having the image of fire, the boy believes they are not going to succumb to immoral acts such …show more content…
Carrying the flame of humanity and ensuing their moral obligations to never commit any acts of cannibalism is depicted in the way that the boy is seen as a living version of the fire. He is determined to help others and leave nobody behind, and therefore serves as a beacon of hope, —to not only his father but to everybody they encounter on their journey. The fire ends up defining them as the good guys as they travel, and through this McCarthy stresses the contrast between their choice to live with morality, and the choices of the inhuman cannibals with whom they share the destroyed landscape. He also shows how hard it to live in a cannibalistic society where there is no morality left and where even in total destruction, there is still life. The power of fire an its meaning is exemplified in The Road through being the cause of the apocalypse and through the phrase “we’re carrying the fire." Fire will always have the same meaning throughout McCarthy's novel: as long as the flame of humanity is left alive, there will be hope to keep going and find

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