What is left when we're at the end of the world? : can Cormac McCarthy offer any kind of hope in his apocalyptic novel The Road?

This essay is based on the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006), a futuristic novel in which the author deals with an end of the world scenario, where two people, a man and a boy walk along the road, trying to survive. Their surroundings are completely devastated, solely grey and dark and their future is seemingly hopeless. The man is sick. Most people, out of few survivors, are “bad guys”, raping or eating other human beings. The landscape and the plundered buildings look the same and have been for the last years – burnt down, filled with ashes, rough. Hardly any food or water is to be found. The cold and moist, additionally, threaten to take their lives. Even though dark and horrible, is the whole experience and feeling after reading this novel complete emptiness and hopelessness? This is what is investigated in this essay. What is left when we’re at the end of the world? Are there glimpses of hope hidden in the text? Could there be hope for a future? If so, do we have to believe in order to survive? Naturally, love constitutes a strong theme, the love between father and son, which helps them fight for their lives, which makes the father unbelievably strong and love which lives within the boy and even makes him altruistic and awakens thoughts concerning him being divine. Moreover, an essential theme is civilization . Can civilization survive in such extreme conditions? After studying the novel closer, the answer is: there is hope to be found. Hope for civilization. Hope for a future. Further more, McCarthy convinces the reader that belief of some kind helps us to go on, to keep struggling. A novel, which on the surface, and to many readers, seems altogether dark and hopeless somehow offers the reader consolidation and comfort. There is hope.Validerat; 20101217 (root