Cormac Mccarthy The Road Women

There are those who have what it takes to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and there are those who cannot. Women are those that cannot survive in a world of cruelty and danger unless heavily supported by men. In the novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a father and son struggle to survive in the United States years after a mass extinction event. The two follow a road south in hopes of finding food and warmth, staying careful not to wander into the presence of other humans hoping to use their bodies as food. Throughout the journey, the father and son see few women, and when they do, they are often either depicted as pregnant, or as being around several strong men. The only woman who has a prominent role is the son’s mother, who kills herself out of fear of what is to come. Cormac McCarthy's novel depicts the role of women in a post-apocalyptic setting as either being too weak to survive, or too foolish to believe that they can survive without men. Some people simply cannot bring themselves to push forward in a world that has no hope. The father manages to convince himself that there is hope in surviving, and that one day the disaster in which he lives in will be fixed. The father instills this hope inside of his own son who does not know any better than to …show more content…
The mother is used to push the father along and develop a hardened shell for himself that will do anything to protect his son. The pregnant marchers are used to show women as weak and highlight their only possible contribution to a post apocalyptic world: children. The woman in the house shows that without the presence of men, women are not equipped to survive in such a drastic world. Cormac McCarthy’s allergy to having actual dynamic female character’s, leads to the women in The Road having small roles that are only used to further develop the