Death is a recurring theme in The Road. The topic itself is explored numerous times, with people constantly threatened with it in various instances throughout the award-winning novel (people struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic scenario, pitted against the forces of cannibalism, starvation, exposure to disease, etc.) A good example of this is when the father and son deliberately avoid the men in the truck, who they know are cannibals. They care more about their own survival than interacting with other people. This survivalistic situation that occurs throughout the book makes the father suspicious of most humans they encounter, and leads them to avoiding taking risks with other human beings. The son and the father also frequently discuss death, actually based off of frequent conversations the author had with his own son.
So, why even bother to include death in the story, when thousands of authors never bother to address the topic in their books? Well, McCarthy answered the question in a New York Times interview in 1992, saying "(he only cares for writers who) deal with issues of life and death." He also says: "if it doesn't concern life and death, it's not interesting." These may not seem like adequate answers to the question, but the author tends to have an underlying meaning under every statement he makes. We can make an educated guess and assert that he meant that death is such an important issue that it makes more sense to address it than not to address it. This may help explain why McCarthy puts such an emphasis on a topic other authors have tread carefully around. Perhaps another reason why he addresses an issue is that it is taboo to discuss it in many societies today. Maybe he challenges this unspoken rule that people cannot speak of death, which they fear but attempt to ignore. Perhaps he brings up death simply to remind us how crucial it is to everyone. But with him being a member of Mensa, he probably used death as a theme for all of these reasons.
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