Father And Son In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

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In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a man and his son travel across a barren wasteland with only themselves to keep company. The reader sees their relationship progress throughout the book in different ways for each. The boy needs the man for physical help while the man needs the boy for mental help. The boy talks to the father one night when he asks,

“What would you do if I died?

If you died I would want to die too.

So you could be with me?

Yes. So I could be with you.

Okay” (11).

They need each other because they are the only living things they have left. They must travel south and can only depend on themselves to survive.

when reading this passage the reader thinks about the sons relationship towards his father. How the son needs the father to do the physical labor like gathering wood and making a fire to survive. The boy would not know what to do without his father and he could not survive. The reader thinks about when they are freezing or starving, the man starts a fire or looks for food while the boy sleeps. The boy needs his father to feel a sense of compassion and care, or else he will not survive.

The passage makes the reader think about how the dad needs the son to survive. The son may not provide much …show more content…
The man would want to die if his son did so that they could be together. The reader sees how the boy and father can not live without one another. The son provides the only source of hope for the father and is the only reason he keeps venturing. When the man wants to give up, he remembers the boy and questions whether to have them die together. However, he cannot put himself in that situation to kill his only love and must strive to care for the innocent boy. The reader feels the compassion of the man and son through this quote by realizing that they cannot survive without on

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