Cormac doesn't make explicit what kind of catastrophe has
ruined the earth and destroyed human civilization, but what might be
suggested by the many descriptions of a scorched landscape covered
in ash? What is implied by the father's statement that, "On
this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and
they have taken with them the world," [p. 32]?
We certainly don't have the exact details of what happened in this world; however, how many details do we really need to understand the situation? Obviously, wars between nations wiped out the land and most of the people on it. Most likely, it was a nuclear holocaust, where nukes were detonated on a massive scale. In order for the world to have gotten to that point, the bad in the world had to be more than the good; the evil had to overwhelm the good, enough to let the people in charge be willing to cause near human extinction in their war. This point is reiterated in the quote that you have above: a lot of the people left are not men that are good--they are evil. They are men with no sense of God, and when you leave God out of the equation, a moral compass and any sense of what is right and wrong go also. The people left are willing to bear children just to eat them; they are willing to murder, kill, hunt, and cannibalize anyone that comes into their paths, just like whoever was nuking each other was willing to kill anyone who threatened or opposed them. In this way, the type of people that are left, even though fighting hand-to-hand for daily survival, are much like whoever it was that made the decisions behind the massive bombings that wiped out people. They would do anything to survive. But, is survival worth it at such a price? That is just one question that is addressed in this novel; and the boy's mother obviously thought the answer to that was no. Life was not worth living for her anymore; survival was not worth the struggle.When the "godspoke" men were not heard anymore, or perished, then the evil had full reign on the earth. The remaining people let what happened occur, which led to such barbarism in the survivors afterwards. When there was no one willing to stand up for decency, good, right, morals, and bravery, the world as mankind knew it disappeared in ashes, first in the bombs, and then in the life after the bombs. The man, trying to protect his son, and keep his son from the life of those evil people that are around him, is one of the few that are left that are willing to survive to live a life filled with goodness.
ReplyDeleteThere are many elements of analyzation we could use to determine what disaster occurred to create the landscape and atmosphere within The Road. We believe that there was a global-scale nuclear attack which would render the world unstable or unable to support life. It would compensate for the amount of ash. However, McCarthy does not state whether the ash is or ever was radioactive, which is what a nuclear strike would produce. In most likelihood, there was a volcanic eruption or an asteroid impact which sent up an endless blanket of dust and ash into the atmosphere which blocked out the sun. It would not matter what disaster occurred, as long as we understand the fact that a nuclear winter has settled across the land which the man and his son are roaming.
ReplyDeleteWe can determine that there are very few people left on the earth, and as the man said, "there are no godspoke men." For me, I can attempt to visualize the godspoke men as good people with good intentions like the man and boy. I also have believe that the godspoke men could be those who worsened the outcome of the apocalypse: a mob made of rioters, protesters, people gone crazy with grief and hysterics. "They have taken with them the world".
The above quote, "On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world," indicates that godspoke men left like the man and his son have the remaining qualities of good people. The only people the two have seen since the apocalypse have been cannibals, robbers, and evildoers. They are forced to believe that there are no good people left in the world, and that the man and the boy are the only two people left who are bearing the flame of humanity. They mean no wrong unto anyone else and are only trying to survive through any means necessary.
The many descriptions infer some type of nuclear disaster. I have also heard people say that they believe the disaster might have been a super-volcano. None-the-less, the reader is left to decide what they believe for themselves.
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