etropy in cormac mcarthy's 'the road'
Fiction set within quasi-fantastical circumstances is a long-standing tenet of science fiction which has largely been based on contemporary anxieties, often regarding either economical or ecological uncertainties - often offering a fictional glimmer of hope to its readers. However, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road (2006), refrains from depicting an unimaginable world but instead, portrays a semi-recognisable America after some unspoken collapse of society, the environment and the growing capitalist condition we occupy presently within much of the world. Famously, Fredric Jameson argued that; “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” (Jameson, 2008 p.563). McCarthy’s 2006 novel unwittingly epitomises Jameson’s heady claim as the two main protagonists, Father and Son[1], journey across a post-apocalyptic America and though it is no longer dominated by capitalism, it remains a product of it. This aspect will serve as the axis of my discussion which will focus on illustrating how primarily, the Father in particular, serves as a symbolic dying ember of capitalist ideals. To support this proposition I will also consider the post-apocalyptic (and post-capitalist) depiction of the moribund American landscape which serves as a speculative setting rather than a fantastical one. I will extend this discussion to consider how this environment affects the surviving sectarian groups and shapes the desires of the remaining population.
[1] From this point, I will refer to the unnamed protagonists as ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ in order in differentiate them from other unnamed characters in the novel. I will later to refer to the wife as ‘Mother.
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow/Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man”
– T.S Eliot, ‘The Wasteland’ (1922).
– T.S Eliot, ‘The Wasteland’ (1922).
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, renders a world in which, entropy, capitalism and some unknown disaster have amalgamated to forge a heinous account that offers the reader an extreme, but plausible, insight into an apocalyptic, and hopeless, future. The unnamed protagonists are Father and Son, with the former indoctrinating into the latter an apocryphal hope;
"We’re going to be okay, aren’t we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That’s right.
Because we’re carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.” (McCarthy, 2009, p. 87).
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That’s right.
Because we’re carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.” (McCarthy, 2009, p. 87).
Throughout the novel the looming symbol of ‘fire’ does little to alleviate the suffering of either but the Father uses this ambiguous metaphor as a source of reassurance to the Son, thus conserving his moral beliefs by which he lived in pre-apocalyptic civilisation. Unlike many of the remaining civilians in the text, the Father refuses to succumb to acts of cannibalism. Imperative and key to my argument, is that the Father associates his refusal to adjust his moral standards with an inherent goodness which he terms, “carrying the fire” (2009, p. 87), a polemic view which is dismissive of other survivors and accounts for his reluctance to form any kind of faction. With the exception of analeptic mentions of the Mother, all other characters outside of the father/son dynamic are ‘othered’ by the Father, a reactionary trait which echoes the particularly acrid fallout of a post-9/11 world in which strangers or those who conform to a disparate set of ideologies are rejected and sometimes even violently challenged. In the instance in which Father and Son meet the man who calls himself Ely, the Father must be convinced by the son to donate a small amount of food (despite their bounteous supply) to the elderly man, the Father feels no sense of responsibility for his fellow man. Ely’s nihilistic world view only highlights that the Father’s own insistence that he and his son are the good guys is a pointless imagination; “There is no God and we are his prophets” (McCarthy, 2009, p. 181) and indeed, Father, Son and Ely are all largely living in a moral and righteous fashion as if they are judged by a God, the belief in which has long abandoned Ely. What the Father believes to be moral and good are his pre-existing ideals from a pre-apocalyptic world which afforded a life dedicated to religion or some veiled moral code. Even after the Father is convinced that Ely is no threat to either himself or his son, he still tells him upon parting that “I wouldn’t have given you anything” (McCarthy, 2009, p. 184) despite it being some of the last food on Earth. The food, time spent together and conversation become a commodity which the Father is unwilling to freely give. Though we largely think of capitalism involving the distribution of money, Jeremy Rifkin reminds us;
“The food we eat, the water we drink, the artefacts we make and use, the social relationships we engage in, the ideas we bring forth, the time we expend, and even the DNA that determines so much of who we are have all been thrown into the capitalist cauldron…” (Rifkin, 2014, p. 19).
“The food we eat, the water we drink, the artefacts we make and use, the social relationships we engage in, the ideas we bring forth, the time we expend, and even the DNA that determines so much of who we are have all been thrown into the capitalist cauldron…” (Rifkin, 2014, p. 19).
“Gods away on business”
– Tom Waits
– Tom Waits
Thomas Piketty’s very recent Capital in the Twenty- First Century (2014) proposes that in order for a just and fair society what is needed is a re-imagining of our economic system though staying within the boundaries of current capitalism. This is akin to values of the Father in The Road who lives within the ideologies of capitalism despite the complete collapse of any economic system at all – rather than re-imagine his identity within the new world, he merely shuffles the boundaries within the post-apocalyptic America to conform with his pre-existing standards of “good” and “bad”. The Father, though possibly without intention, maintains his subscription to capitalist ideals; despite his growing fatigue and terminal illness, he continues to work (or walk) from dusk until dawn, repeatedly hoping to attain a satisfactory restitution to appease the basic needs of himself and his son, remarkably evocative of the middle-class American ideology of now, the only difference being that the literal (and no longer financial) survival of himself and his son relies on his “working day”. During one of the Father/Son “working days” they visit a supermarket in search of items imperative to their survival; it is in this supermarket that the Father finds the widely-discussed can of Coca-Cola. Up until this point in the novel, everything described by McCarthy in terms of names or locations has been unidentified in contrast to the established style; the conversation between Father and Son in regards to the drink is a poignant one;
“He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here.
It’s because I won’t ever get to drink another one isn’t it?
Ever’s a long time.
Okay, the boy said. (McCarthy, 2009, p. 23)
It’s because I won’t ever get to drink another one isn’t it?
Ever’s a long time.
Okay, the boy said. (McCarthy, 2009, p. 23)
Coca-Cola is the epitome of successful American branding, its 1993 branding slogan “Always Coca-Cola” (Coca-Cola Company, 2012) is the unsaid answer to the boy’s question; “What is it?” (2009, p.22). The term ‘Coca-Colonisation’ was coined by the French in 1949 and has been used throughout the decades by those who are opposed to the mass global imposition of American culture – Tom Standage discusses the significance of the brand in his text ‘A History of the World in 6 Glasses’; “Coca-Cola is unquestionably the drink of the twentieth century, and all that goes with it: the rise of the United States, the triumph of capitalism over communism, and the advance of globalization.” (2006, p. 327). The Father, and certainly the reader, are unable to isolate the omnipresent beverage from the significance of its surrounding ideology. The echoes of our pre-apocalyptic world becomes the marker by which we judge the devastation of the post-apocalyptic world: even when the Father is situated in a purported version of a world shed of capitalist ideals, the icons of useless consumerism become the desire and a way of bonding with his son, the ultimate aim of the Coca-Cola brand.
The Father is the remains of a privileged American, emblematic of the present capitalist regime, unnamed figure securing his status as an ‘everyman’ character endorsing the values ingrained by the ‘American Dream’. America’s oblivious privileged[2] , presently, prosper within the very ideological structures that are the very real and probable symptoms of environmental (and thus, economical) apocalypse depicted in McCarthy’s novel. By offering an absent hope to his son he is halting the inevitable final consequences of the collapse of capitalism, unable to imagine a world that refuses to comply with his instilled values.
[2] By “privileged” I refer to those with continued access to education, housing, food and healthcare.
The Father is the remains of a privileged American, emblematic of the present capitalist regime, unnamed figure securing his status as an ‘everyman’ character endorsing the values ingrained by the ‘American Dream’. America’s oblivious privileged[2] , presently, prosper within the very ideological structures that are the very real and probable symptoms of environmental (and thus, economical) apocalypse depicted in McCarthy’s novel. By offering an absent hope to his son he is halting the inevitable final consequences of the collapse of capitalism, unable to imagine a world that refuses to comply with his instilled values.
[2] By “privileged” I refer to those with continued access to education, housing, food and healthcare.
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
Jack Kerouac, ‘On the Road’ (1957).
Jack Kerouac, ‘On the Road’ (1957).
A 2013 article in The Guardian claimed that “The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies” (2013) supporting the claim that environmental decline is predominantly generated by capitalist and consumerist models. Whilst my claim is not that environmental entropy is the cause of the apocalypse in The Road, the barren landscape which acts as the setting in the novel is not beyond the realms of a legitimate and impending landscape if governments and societies fail to take action - it is worth here considering Naomi Klein’s stark warning; “All we have to do is not react as if this is a full-blown crisis. All we have to do is keep on denying how frightened we actually are. And then, bit by bit, we will have arrived at the place we most fear, the thing from which we have been averting our eyes.” (2014, p.19). The harrowing scenes which are depicted rather distinctly in The Road are most likely the consequences of that which Naomi Klein describes as “ecological amnesia” (2014, p. 19). Earlier, I mentioned that the Father represents an ‘everyman’ stock character, in ecocritical terms the text becomes an ominous universal narrative, this theory supported by the anonymity where we would expect nouns. This is an interesting approach in which to also consider the Mother character and though she is scarcely mentioned, she is a constant and ethereal presence in the novel. The relationship between Mother and Son is analogous to that of ‘mother nature’ and man – both give life and abandon it in the conditions of the atrocious apocalypse. The breakdown of the relationship between man and nature (read Father/Mother) will inevitably end in a cataclysmic desertion of the life giving half of the relationship. The Road’s depiction of a post-capitalist America is “Barren, silent, godless" (McCarthy, 2009, p. 2) landscape which prohibits the outcome of either a verdant environment or prospering humanity. Thus, the erased remnants of a society which prioritizes profits over ecological prosperity becomes the chilling residue of capitalism in a post-apocalyptic world rather than an inauguration of a world without capitalism. To further justify Jameson’s earlier claims, Greg Garrard states that; “it could be argued that the real moral and political challenge of ecology may lie in accepting that the world is not about to end, that human beings are likely to survive even if Western-style civilisation does not.” (2004, p. 107).
“Fine fellows—cannibals—in their place.”
― Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899).
― Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899).
One much-discussed aspect of The Road are the cannibals which haunt the landscape and who’s destruction offers the most harrowing sections of the novel. Whilst many humorous correlations have been made demonstrating a moral likeness between cannibals with the most ferocious of capitalists, McCarthy’s cannibals were, at one time, ordinary citizens of the United States who have been forced to shed their own moral integrity in order to literally survive and to liken them to ardent capitalists whom profit (only financially) from the suffering of their fellow man and the earth which they inhabit is unfair on the cannibals. The entire novel is littered with the remains of cannibalistic feasting – “Coming back he found the bones and the skin piled together with rocks over them. A pool of guts. He pushed at the bones with the toe of his shoe. They looked to have been boiled.” (McCarthy, 2009, p. 73/74) - but his promise to the boy is that they won’t turn to cannibalism to survive;
“We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of Course not.
Even if we were starving?
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t.
I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving.
But we wouldn’t.
No. We wouldn’t.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.” (McCarty, 2009, p. 136)
No. Of Course not.
Even if we were starving?
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t.
I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving.
But we wouldn’t.
No. We wouldn’t.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.” (McCarty, 2009, p. 136)
However, the father is not averse to killing for survival, blurring the line that distinguishes the “good guys” and the “bad guys” – both are trying to survive and what is good or bad is only measured, by the Father, in terms of pre-apocalyptic standards. In 2015, one would view the cannibals as abhorrent rebels (and are certainly depicted as such [00.12.41] in John Hillcoat’s 2009 adaptation of the novel) but these are not frenzied isolated instances of the horrifying act, the cannibals have formed a version of a community who work to together to survive – the Father’s firm resistance to the atrocity, in the post-apocalyptic America, is a gallant but perhaps harmful decision which echoes back to his inhumane opposition to his wife’s suicide or his unwillingness to aid other innocuous human beings
"Our fruitless labours mourn, and only rich in barren fame return."
– Homer, the Odyssey: Book 10.
– Homer, the Odyssey: Book 10.
McCarthy’s tenth novel, like book ten of Homers Odyssey, finds man under attack from some force of nature by which he is expected to perish. Though the outcomes are contradictory, both are austere allegorical accounts of contemporaneous warnings. McCarthy, at once, illustrates in his novel an agonisingly plausible disaster in order for the reader to cognitively engage with the collapse of the seemingly permanent and frequently-claimed ‘necessary’ capitalist society of today. In my introduction I made reference to Fredric Jameson’s much-quoted assertion and within this essay I have sought to substantiate Jameson’s claim via a reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road which, despite its post-apocalyptic setting, only reinforces Jameson’s claim – we cannot imagine a world without capitalism, a post-apocalyptic imagination of our world is only judged a disaster in comparison to our capitalist society. The causes of such a devastation can only be made real by the consequences of an ongoing capitalist society and culture of consumption. The novel portrays the end of the world but, through the Father, refuses to abandon the ideals which led to its death.
Bibliography:
Filmography:
- Coca-Cola Company, 2012. A History of Coca-Cola Advertising Slogans. Available at:
- http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-slogans
- Conrad, J. (2006). Heart of Darkness. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
- Eliot, T.S. and Rainey, L (eds.) (2005). ‘The Waste Land’. In: The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose 2nd Edition. Pennsylvania: Yale University press.
- Garrard, G. (2004). Ecocriticism. Oxfordshire: Routledge New Critical idioms.
- Goldenberg, S. 2013. ‘Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions’. The Guardian [Online]. 18th Feb. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change [Accessed: 15th January 2015].
- Homer. (2002). The Odyssey. [Trans. Fagles, R]. London: penguin Books.
- Jameson, F. (2008). The Ideologies of Theory. London: Verso.
- Kerouac, J. (2000). On the Road. London: Penguin Books
- Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate. Toronto: Penguin Random House.
- McCarthy, C. (2009). The Road. London: Picador.
- Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty- First Century. London: Harvard University Press.
- Rifkin, J. (2014). The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Standage, T. (2006). A History of the World in Six Glasses. New York: Walker & Company.
- Waits, T. (2002). Gods Away on Business. Song Information available at: http://www.tomwaits.com/songs/#/songs/song/51/Gods_Away_On_Business/ :ANTI.
- Zizek, S. (2014). Trouble in Paradise: Communism after the End of History. London: Penguin Books.
Filmography:
- The Road. 2010. [Blu-Ray] Directed by John Hillcoat. USA: Icon Home Entertainment.