The Road Morality Map

The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a timeless piece of literature that puts into question numerous aspects about morality and human nature as we know it. The setting takes place in an abandoned version of the Earth, coated with ash and debris everywhere the main characters, the man and the boy, turn. Throughout the novel, the two characters are forced to make heavy decisions that will not only change their present and future, but will also affect their righteousness. The boy, who is the son of the man, is often seen as compassionate and empathetic no matter the situation. His behavior is striked as out of place as the norm of their current environment is every man for himself and doing what you have to do to survive. This can be observed in multiple senses such as when the boy saw another child in the road who was alone and begged his father to help him, and another where a stray dog followed the man and boy for miles causing the boy to plead with his father to share their food with the animal. The child is so upstanding that his father frequently compares him to God, stating “If he’s not the word of God, God never spoke.”(5) The boy’s compassion is so strong that it gives the impression that it is unwavering, but that is false.

As the novel progresses, we see the light in the boy’s eyes begin to dwindle, his father saying “Something was gone that could not be put right again.” (136) Readers can see the mental as well as physical change in the boy as he begins to more closely resemble his father’s vocabulary. He begins to act like the man, think like the man, and even ideas that the boy was so against in the beginning of the book, he now finds himself rethinking.

This is exactly what I have decided to make present in my moral map. I have taken my top quotes from the book that I believe have contributed to the moral changes of the boy, and mapped them in a circle around a pistol and a fire. The pistol is meant to represent the ride of morality’s final destination, when the father died and the boy began to use the gun as protection, which is an act he did not understand before. Then, the fire is meant to constitute as the boy “carrying the fire” as the man would always say. The quotes and symbols are surrounded by a sad and gray environment with trees of ash.