Cormac McCarthy and His Exposure of a Problematic Modern American Society Anonymous 12th Grade

The 1990s and early 2000s were full of revolutionary changes in society, and heralded some of the changes in technology usage and social norms that still define our lives today. Cormac McCarthy is an accomplished, acclaimed, and rather dark American author who wrote mainly during this time period. His writing is especially different, including odd punctuation, debilitating violence, and a scarily detached tone. However, he succeeded in capturing certain unpleasant aspects of modern American society and exposing them to readers through his novels. Although McCarthy is a largely idiosyncratic writer in terms of his style, he does represent the quintessential zeitgeist of the time period.

The relationship between father and son is a large topic covered within Cormac McCarthy’s tenth book, The Road, which was published in 2006. In this novel, an unnamed father and son roam the roads of a gray, post-apocalyptic world with diminishing hope for survival. In desperation, the majority of the world’s survivors have reverted to cannibalism, and the father and son spend most of their time avoiding terrifying encounters with their gangs. Since the boy’s mother killed herself after losing faith in everything, the two are all that they have...