The Road: Post 1

7. If every book is an author's attempt to answer one of life's questions, what question is McCarthy and/or Kerouac attempting to answer? Explain.

If every book is an author's attempt to answer one of life's questions,in the novel The Road, McCarthy answer the question,"How does one live when the world is dead?" The title is the story. A father and his son travel the road in post-apocalyptic America in search for food in a struggle to survive. While reading, I asked myself...survive for what?! There is nothing left. Only evil and people eating each other. Yet, they travel the road not for hope of survival, thought the child may think so, but as the father knows deep down because it is the right thing to do. They must spread the fire and try to survive and keep the goodness alive. In the world McCarthy provides death would seem better then trying to brave what is left on the earth. The father could have very easily killed himself and his son, and not exposed the son to the horrors of cannibalism and death. This would be very easy yes, but it was not what he set out to do. The father most likely knew that they were some of the only good people left on the earth. At this point though the others on earth can hardly be spoken of as people, since they have fallen to below the standards of most animals and capture and eat other human beings. With this there is something to be said for being the last real human beings on earth, and no matter how hard it is to sustain that life the weight of that fact is immense and it is something that you would try to keep alive for.