Spirituality and Suffering: Comparing and Contrasting The Road with Who Fears Death Arianna Perroots College

In Okorafor’s Who Fears Death and McCarthy’s The Road, both protagonists encounter a spiritual journey in their apocalyptic scenario, emphasizing the importance of religion in the post-apocalyptic world. In the novels, the characters experience entirely different types of religion, a Christian worldview presented in The Road, and a polytheistic native religion in Who Fears Death. Through the themes of spirituality and suffering, the novels compare the significance of each, revealing that in the presence of suffering, it is natural for the human mind to turn to spirituality for answers.

Where the two narratives are concerned, the views of spirituality in both novels vary greatly depending on which character is speaking and at which point in the book they are. When the Man and Boy shared dinner with the dying man, who introduced himself as Ely, although later revealed it wasn’t truly his name, when the Man asked him if he believed in God, his response was “There is no God… There is no God and we are his prophets.” (McCarthy 88). The significance of this is that the stranger argues that despite his belief in a higher power, he believes that humans continue to carry on the lie by “prophesying.” Arguably, spirituality is also...