Food - Elisha

The Road by Cormac Mcarthy has many themes establish and develop so picking one to track wasn’t easy, however after the final reading it was. Since early in the book the man has been sick but we are never told the cause. Despite the relative mystery behind his illness it is safe to assume it has some relation to the state of the world. With no clean water and limited access to food maintaining health is no easy task. This is prominent through the health of the child as he has grown and lived through this world, he is often described as thin and malnourished. We see the boys physical struggles described on pages 38 and 74 as “The boy was so thin it stopped his heart” or “The water was so cold the boy was crying”. It is safe to say their collective health is on a steady decline, there are moments that they were doing well but the man is frequently coughing. The lowest point in terms of health was about mid way through the book as they faced starvation almost killing them. On page 118 the man could barely climb a ladder even after eating he is noticeably weak, the boy notices on page 133 when he asks “How many days to death?”. There are moments of rejuvenation in finding more recourses as described on page 144 “He’d been ready to die and now he wasn’t going to and he had to think about that.” even in the progress the man is admittedly defeated as he knows he is only adding time to the clock. Eventually we begin to see just how critical his situation is on page 237 were “He woke coughing” “Coughing. Coughing. He bent over, holding his knees. Taste of blood.”. Readers can only assume this means the man is close to his limit, the man knows this too on page 237 “He thought about his life but there was no life to think about”. Continuing in his poor state he eventually passes on page 281 the page that inspired me to track their conditions.