Environmental Apocalypticism In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Cormac McCarthy is one of the most prominent American novelists in contemporary American literature. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007 for his latest novel The Road(2006). The Road is a fiction about doomsday. In the novel, McCarthy inherits the writing style with themes of darkness, bleakness and violence. Moreover, he highlights the theme of love, goodness and hope in the desperate world. This novel shows the contest between humanity and evil, and eulogizes people’s pursuit of higher morality.Based on the environmental apocalypticism, this thesis aims to interpret the eco-consciousness implied in The Road and arouse the awareness to take the responsibility to construct a harmonious relationship between nature and human, human and society. Besides, it also explores the way to realize self-sublimation and self-redemption. Firstly, by depicting people confronted with the destruction of environment, this novel warns people to establish the consciousness of eco-crisis, and predicts the fact that the worsening environment may lead to the collapse of human spirit and the demise of human civilization. Secondly, by analyzing the image of the father and the son, McCarthy reveals that the father who is wounded physically and mentally is the victim of the destroyed human civilization, while the son is a metaphor for the holy grail and his divinity is of great importance to heal the traumatic world. Lastly, by exploring the way of realizing the father and son’s self-sublimation in the catastrophic world, McCarthy points out a direction to get rid of spiritual and social predicament, and enlightens people to keep faith and remain goodness.In summary, the destructive catastrophe in The Road is McCarthy’s imagination of the future. This novel reveals McCarthy’s concern about the latent crisis, which has the function of cautionary. Meanwhile, this novel reflects McCarthy’s view of reality, and his concern about humans’ ultimate fate. Besides, McCarthy intends to explore a way to save the world.