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Clavacia Smith
Professor Eric Barnhart
English 113B
02 December 2015
Moral Road to Survival

Cormac McCarthys The Road, portrays the world that one of our protagonist
has lived his entire life in as no longer being the same as we are all accustom to. Most of
the people that they come across are dead and a great portion of the living are raping
women and children, others are killing the few survivors, while some are eating one
another. Resources are very limited and shelter is hard to come across. This is a horrific
apocalyptic state that our protagonist have to struggle to survive in with the team of a
father and son. Our protagonist undergoes harsh situations that force them to question
themselves with questions, such as Are we going to die? (101). In a sense, this is the
son asking what his worth is to the world with the conditions being dealt with. They are
in a harsh need for aid and support. Living in the real world you never know what
miscellaneous unfortunate events may occur, but when they do you would want to be
prepared. Even though the father may be well capable of surviving, but there is never a
problem with having assistance as far as protection, ideas, and contributions to survival
tactics. However, all they have is one another to look for each others well being in this
new apocalyptic world. This is why Cormac McCarthys The Road shows the necessity
for good moral values and relationships.
Even though he did not make these assumptions alone, because he discussed

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this with his wife in the earlier pages of the novel. The wife says, Sooner or later they
will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They will rape him. (56). Even
though the two obviously were not on the same page with most ideas they did both have
an agreement of the intentions of some of the people outside of their family that they may
come across. By accident they were stumbled across by only one of the truck people,
which was vey beneficial that it was only one because he in fact did try to harm them and
threaten them with the life of the boy. The father was forced to shoot and kill him in order
to protect the life of the boy. The text tells it as, The man had already dropped to the
ground and swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position
balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. (66.) In a situation like this it is very
good that the father was not so open and willing to making an alliance, because even
though he does not know all of the complete intentions of all of the truck people, he does
know that at least one of them would have come and tried to attack or harm him or his
son. We can use our common knowledge to assume and infer that the other people would
have done the same because we tend to associate with people that have similar if not
same interest as far as moral values go.
This brings up the idea of why they should have worked alongside other people
in order to survive. Just as they are living and not bad, there is bound to be few others
like them. Rather than seclude and segregate themselves away from the potential Good
guys that they commonly refer to themselves as in the novel when the father refers to
The bad guys which is usually everyone else that they see or encounter in the novel.
They are not one of a kind when it comes to being the good guys and working along
side others who share a common interest. Fighting for a common goal in most cases it

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can be found highly beneficial to assist and be assisted in a union type fashion. Opposed
to having a sprawl type community setting where the people are working against each
other. This is a father and son, so the father is raising and teaching the son to be what he
believes is correct morally. The father does not teach the son to be a killer or theif. Due to
the moral values that the father and son team have, they cannot live the savage, nomadic,
and cannibalistic lifestyle that some of their counterparts are conforming to live. The
establishment of alliances was an important factor in the survival of this dystopian
apocalypse in Cormac McCarthys novel The Road.
The father did not form any other relationships with people because he strongly
believed that the other people were bad and he showed the boy several times on
numerous occasions that they could not allow for their guard to be lowered for even a
brief moment. Due to the fact that people were more than willing to do what it takes to
save theirselves even at the fatal cost of another person or even a group of peoples lives.
A perfect example of this is at the end when the father held a man at gunpoint naked,
because he had stole from them. From the research I seen in The Power of Context in
Shaping Moral Choices from Schmidle, Robert, In this thesis I intend to argue that that
the nature of all moral states fundamentally involves a contextualized element that is
historical and situational. The father felt as though he did not need relationships with
people given the element he was in, just as Schmidle says in his writings. The father may
have known allot, but did his knowledge and morals interfere with survival making
alliances essential to survival?
The father was portrayed as a very intellectual and showed that he had great
knowledge and comprehension of the situation they were placed in. He had the common

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sense and smarts needed to know how to do things such as start a fire and find things like
a rags or bags for warmth. He knew that a basket would be necessary for their travel, he
knew what places to go to that may have resources they could scavenge for that are
essential such as weapons, ammunition, and gasoline. The father was not always right,
but he had reason for what he did. His main reason for a majority of his actions were
precaution, of things that could happen such as them being set up or ambushed. The
father thought that people would harm them and do things to them such as rape them for
their personal pleasures and entertainment. The father was conscious of two things one
that is not that type of atmosphere he would want his son to witness and grow up living
in. Also, it would always be the worrying of whether they would try to harm his son
while he was sleeping and whether they would have to escape or not. Which is explaining
his reasoning behind the truck people and wanting to stay away from them and out of
sight. The truck people were a group that traveled around throughout the novel chasing
people in order to rape, kill, and eat them. He assumed that they were up to no good and
did not have any hardcore evidence
Another example I would like to view of the father exercising his judgment
would be the scenario in the later pages of the novel where we find our two protagonist
debating on whether they should help a lonely elder man they see walking down the road.
Now moral values can tell us that we would enjoy seeing us help people in need
especially youth and children since they tend to be in need of assistance more. However,
due to the circumstances dealt the father believes the best decision to be made is that they
do not assist or even associate themselves with the elderly man. The boy who throughout
the entirety of the novel is the voice and thought of reason, differs in belief and thinks

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that they should in fact assist the man. He maybe in need of something, as they were
always in need of something whether it be food, sleep, or clothing. Which is something
we would naturally want to do is help someone in need, especially women and elders.
Assisting someone in need is debatably a moral value, just as common respects and
courtesies are not installed in everyones hearts and minds.
The father does not follow these natural habits or common courtesies; he has a
different set of morals in comparison to the boy. The boy was convinced by the man to go
and help the man, and they found that the name he claimed to have was Ely (he later
admitted to be lying about his name) and he spoke in riddle and tried to offer wisdom
within their dialogue. You cant go with us, you know, the man said (168). The man
would not allow for the son to have an opportunity to have the moral judgment of helping
someone in need. The man was honest and straightforward and even though the man
judged a book by its cover, I would argue and defend the fact that it was a right decision,
for the simple fact that he openly lied to them when they were offering help and
assistance to him, in his time of need. With him being old and weaker he would not be
able to offer much more than wisdom and ideas, which the father had an abundance of
skills that the son began to learn himself in the later pages of the novel. However, trust
was something that is essential especially in given the situations that the world was
placed in due to the situations that the apocalyptic world had put everyone in. According
to the readings and research I have done within the article False Excuses: Honesty,
Wrongdoing, and Moral Growth the author Diana Hsieh, a person denies responsibility
for a misdeed through deliberate deception, thereby shielding himself from the negative
consequences of the truth about that misdeed. (174). To me this research is saying that

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he had something wrong that he had done that he was trying to hide, and that is why he
found it necessary to lie or deny the truth. This quote is relevant to the elderly man since
he is lying and attempting to deceive these people trying to help him. Even still, the boy
found it right in his heart and mind to share the little food they managed to ration and
maintain with them. Maybe, Ely had lost his morals when the world took a turn for the
worse.
Finally, the last incident with the man and boy displaying different morals that I
would like to mention is at the end of the novel. The man and boy have managed to be
alive all the way to the coasts in the south. However, they are not saved yet. They let their
guards down for a mere second, and all of their possessions they had kept close to help
them survive had been stolen. This is what the father had been trying to avoid the entire
time, by always having the son or himself guard their possessions. They had been on the
beach and used the sand to find out which direction the thief had went in, and when they
found them the father was definitely showing his fury when he pulled out his pistol.
Standing there raw and naked, filthy, starving he was already shivering (257). The
man obviously had reached the point of no morals. According to what the father
described as Bad Guys since he had stolen from them. His son only could cry and try to
cover his eyes and not look, because it was too much for him to bare and witness from his
father. A man that did them wrong and took from them was at wrong, and them taking
their possessions back was needed, but they did not have to strip him naked. At that point
they were wrong and two wrongs did not make it right. Which, is why we see the boy
pleading, and this may be the reason the father did not go as far as killing the man.
Throughout the entirety of the novel we can see that the boy did care for others

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well being and not just himself. A scenario with the boy showing how he had morals that
developed and were maintained would be in several sections of the novel. When the boy
wanted to help a man that was struck by lighting. He asked his father if they could assist
him and the father sternly said that they could not help him in anyway. Then, the section
of the novel with Ely the boy wanted to help. The part of the story where the boy did
not want his father to harm or kill the man that had stolen from them, even with him
being knowledgeable of the repercussions that would come if they did not receive all of
their items that had been stolen. The biggest scene that spoke to me and gave clear sight
to the boy and his true thoughts and morals was when he seen another small boy close to
his age. The boy begged, pleaded, and he even cried saying that he wanted to help the
small stranger boy. He offered the little share he owned of the little food they had with
them in their cart. Which, shows that he really was willing to give and help. He seen
someone that could be alone, hungry, scared, cold, and in the same situation as them if
not worse and he wanted to give all he potentially could and more to help. This goes
without saying that it is morals that we would need in any society whether it was a
maintained society or one that was in the process of being salvaged and restored.
Surprisingly we see no scenes where the father shows good moral values as far as him
caring for others safety.
To conclude my research paper I would like to say that the theme in Cormac
McCarthys The Road is moral values are essential survival. If the father would have
found more people that had similar values and respect for people just as they did they
would not have been so alone in their journey. More people did mean more mouths to
feed, but it also meant there would have been more people to help with helping to find

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food. Another piece of research I have from Williams, Walter in Discrimination: The
Laws Vs. Morality by gives insight to show that we do not have an official law or set of
values, however, we all generally know what is right and wrong, or what is crossing the
line. If we live on bad and hard lives where we are mean to one another, it will come
around and hurt us just as some would refer to as karma. This is clearly shown in the
novel because in the beginning the father and son avoided people and the father did not
help anyone, even though the son begged and begged. Fleegal, Stacia says in The North
American Review that, All of our good doings will return with promises and our wrong
doings will come back to haunt The father began to get sick and then ended up dying
shortly after he was very cruel and did a form of torture in a sense to the man that stole
from them. The son survived and the son was also merciful and had thoughts of sparing
and allowing for survival of the thief. There is not any hardcore or concrete evidence but
it can be inferred by the audience at the end of the novel that the family the son is
adopted into is the family of the boy that he seen and wanted to help earlier in their
journey. Oh she said, I am so glad to see you. (286). She says this as if she had known
him and been with him before. Nonetheless, the boys good actions came back to him by
him receiving assistance from the family and being in good health. The only difference
between the boy and the man throughout the novel is that the boy maintained the good
morals and treated other people very neighborly.

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Work Cited
FLEEGAL, STACIA M. "Karma." The North American Review, 296.4 (2011): 10.
Hsieh, Diana. "False Excuses: Honesty, Wrongdoing, and Moral Growth." The Journal of
Value Inquiry, 38.2 (2004): 171-185.

Schmidle, Robert E., Jr. The Power of Context in Shaping Moral Choices. n.p.: ProQuest
Dissertations Publishing, 2015.

Williams, Walter E. "Discrimination: The Law Vs. Morality." Cornell Journal of Law
and Public Policy, 13.1 (2003): 111.