Power and Violence in “The Road” by McCarthy
Power and violence are part of our lives as it is impossible to analyze history and nature without seeing the two. Power and violence are elements that comprise our news, historical elements, and traditional narratives. These are evident in McCarthy’s “The Road,” in which they have various representations. The analysis will discuss the role power and violence play in McCarthy’s novel, by looking at the forms they take.
In “The Road,” McCarthy represents violence in the form of natural and unnatural elements. McCarthy depicts either violence as violent natural forces, such as massive meteor strikes, or natural violence such as that caused by human technology, like nuclear weapons. The magnitude of McCarthy’s violence is large since both the natural and unnatural causes of violence completely wipe out the natural beauty of the earth. The author uses the analogy of a father and son fleeing across a barren land to show the magnitude of violence. The barrenness of the land also represents the devastating nature of human beings and their inventions. The devastation is by cannibalism as human beings turn to each other to survive. There is no doubt that devastation, the bareness and emptiness of the land is another form of violence.
Violence is a major theme in the novel, and one McCarthy represents in the form of death. The desolate land cannot sustain any form of life. The few survivors feed on each other and languish in pain and death as seen in the Apache warriors “high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft of things of the world below” (McCarthy 109). The images of dead plant and animal life as conjured up by McCarthy are vivid depictions of the violence of human technology. Violence through death occurs when the father and son come upon campfire that is abandoned. In the campfire, the father and son face the picture of the “headless and gutted” corpse of a child “blackening on the spit” (McCarthy 198).
The apocalyptic nature of the landscape is McCarthy’s representation of the power of Human technology and natures own force. Therefore, the natural and unnatural sources of violence represent power in the novel. McCarthy uses the image of Appalachia, ten years after a nuclear winter to create a version of power. Power is also seen in the father and son’s conviction that they are “carrying the fire,” on their journey from Tennessee through the barren land to the Gulf. This is because the “carrying of fire” is the representation of a promethean image that is not moral. The morality of the father and son’s strength in not turning to cannibalism to survive is a mark of power as they turn to each other for strength. The personal strength and moral code between the father and son is a representation of power. This is seen where the son “tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didn’t forget” (McCarthy 286). The father’s reason to survive is to preserve his son, as he sees himself, as the protector of the boy in a world destroyed is a form of power.
It is evident that the themes of power and violence are in a correlation. Both natural and unnatural forces like meteors and nuclear weapons are violent powers that leave behind great devastations. The representation of violence is in form of the desolation of the land, the cannibalism of humans, and in death. Power on the other hand, is in the form of the father and son’s resilience to feed on each other or on corpses.
