On The Road Of Striving For Survival

Cormac McCarthy (1933-) is a well-known contemporary American writer. Hisnovel The Road (2006) won the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black MemorialPrize for Fiction in2007. McCarthy delineates the survived father and son staggeringalong to the south coast to seek for the possibility of life on the jungle landscapewhere mankind has degenerated to the primitive status in The Road. Like most of hisformer works, The Road also shows that McCarthy is quite concerned about humancondition and social issues. Besides, he attempts to remind people to rethink abouttheir view of life and value system in true life.This paper studies the awful human existing circumstances and difficult mentalstate of the protagonists in The Road from the perspective of tragedy aesthetics ofFrench critic Albert Camus. McCarthy’s viewpoint of active resistance againstpredicament is fully discussed, and his extreme concern for the fate of modern peopleis revealed.This paper is divided into five parts including introduction and conclusion.McCarthy and The Road are introduced briefly in the introduction, along withCamus’ theory of tragedy aesthetics and the significance of this research.In the body part, the tragic atmosphere throughout the whole text will bedepicted from the aspects of the resistance of the father and son against the society,against others and against themselves respectively. Chapter One demonstrates theextreme tragic life experience of the father and son in the external world by analyzingtheir deficiency of foodstuff and their shelterless condition. Facing up to this seriouscircumstance, instead of living with useless resentment and complaint, the father andson choose to take an optimistic attitude of being-toward-death on the doomsday.Chapter Two focuses on the confrontations of the father and son with the cannibalsand necrophile, which proves their dangerous situation with the fatal life threat fromthe others. However, their brave counterattack does not stop the father’s miserabledeath. Having known the inevitable doom, they still stick to persist their humanity and struggle for meaning of life with dignity. Chapter Three analyzes their intense internalstruggle for the faint hope under the circumstance of their impractical illusion abouthope with their irresistible doom. Thus, their tenacious vitality was conveyed fromtheir pursuit of noble ideals and their determined resistance against unfair fate.Based on the former discussion, this paper draws the conclusion that toMcCarthy, it is hard for human beings to escape their tragic fate, but what counts isthat mankind should take active actions to resist the doomed fate and seek hope out ofdespair, to survive challenges and spiritual crisis, finally to find the dignity of being aman.