Doomsday

In “The Road,” McCarthy portrays a protagonist who is resentful towards the wrathful God who created his post-apocalyptic world he has been condemned to with his son.

The nameless man and his son are wondering around a desolate, torched land trying to reach the coast. He addresses his creator: “Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God (11).” His angry plead to understand what has happen shows he has a complicated relationship with God. He seems to believe that there is a heaven that he will be going to but he’ll be extremely angry when he gets there. He’s talking to God, therefore he thinks there is a possibility that he exists. Perhaps it is a God who is a watchmaker like in Watchmen.

His relationship with God has been transformed by the atomic disaster but so has his relationship with people. We know very little about the protagonist but there is a hint that he was a doctor. Though he has taken the Hippocratic Oath he still passes by the lightning stroke man that is dying. He has rejected his role as a doctor where he is now no one but a father to his son.

The man has a sense of reverence for his son as he feels he is charged to protect him since he is the only good left in the world. He refers to his sleeping son as a “golden chalice, good to house a god (75).” While parents tend to have strong loving feelings towards their children, this relationship is more intense as they are literally each other’s world. There is another interesting scene of transferred divinity is the when the pair finds a house stocked with food. They pray and thank the people, not God, for the food that probably saved their lives.

They are living in a Godless world epitomized when the boy catches a snowflake in his hand and “watched it expired there as the last host of Christendom (16).”