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Father/Son Relationships • This is arguably the most important theme of the novel, providing the reader with the most material to analyse. It's the vast emptiness that allows the reader to focus excruciatingly closely on the father-and-son relationship.The two characters are never named making their familial relationship their whole identity rather than their own individual traits. McCarthy, then, makes their relationship generalisable to any father/son relationship that exists within and outside of the novel. • “Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.” (p. 4) • As the world has gone to destruction, it seems that it is a natural progression for the only person left in one’s life to become their sole focus. However as the novel moves on it becomes apparent that there is humanity outside of their relationship but they fail to see it through fear and paranoia of human contact. • The father/son relationship in this novel, however, is unlike the stereotype. Whilst the father is still instructive and proud of his son, he also fails to instill optimism and hope in his child. The child asks: “Are we going to die?” and his father replies “Some time. Not Now.” (p. 9) Though the father’s honest answer can be perceived as having honourable intention, in a world where there is little to hope or live for the father gives his son little incentive to move through the world happily.
Socialisation • The relationship of the father and the son is a prevalent theme throughout the novel. However it is the educational nature of their relationship which lends poignancy to the absence of society in the novel. The father is teaching the son how to survive in a cultureless society. The norms and boundaries which we are used to have long since decayed along with the apocalyptic ‘event’ which is left ambiguous.
Socialisation • In The Road the various inputs in socialisation are absent, the responsibility all remains with the father. For the most part of the novel it is only the father and the son present in the narration. The extraneous characters are all treated as outsiders: distrusted and almost always feared. The son’s experience is thus a reversal of our own. His father is essentially ‘desocialising’ him: teaching him to reject any form of company outside of their duo. Their singular act of humanity towards the character of Eli results in the threat of them losing their entire supplies, potentially facing starvation reinforcing the son’s desocialisation.
Socialisation • It is interesting that at the end of the novel the group which ‘adopt’ the son are far more forgiving and humane. It suggests that in a wider group of people it has been possible to maintain that level of noble humanity we believe is innate. It is only after the father’s death that the son is able to interact successfully with outsiders. However it is possible that small pockets of humane humans still survived but the father’s suspicion of the world may have blinded the narration; making the world appear more desolate than it is. It is difficult to be any more certain about this aspect of the novel as McCarthy leaves a lot of ideas open to the reader’s interpretation.
