What does The Road say about the meaning of life???
Purpose:
Throughout the novel, finding reason to live on was a dilemma for all of Cormac McCarthy's characters. In the end, if you investigate all of their decisions under the given circumstance, a common meaning was for the pursuit of peace. The Man and the Boy's purpose was to reach the beach. If you think about it, their logic for heading south wasn't very sensible. In the end, it wasn't the beach that kept them alive all that time - that enforced their will to survive. The driving force that gives one reason to live is purpose. As long as you have a purpose that you feel inside your heart, it will give your life some meaning. The Man's wife had no purpose, she even said that "as for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart."(57-58). The reason why she committed suicide was because she didn't have a purpose. The duo's decision to head south and find other "good guys" wasn't very likely that it would save them, but in a way it did. It helped them to press on, gave them hope that one of these days they would wake up and not fear for their life.
Love:
Purpose kept the duo from death, but as a pair. If there were no purpose, they probably would have committed suicide together. But what makes such a bond? What keeps the man from killing himself, albeit any group purpose, and leaving his son to face the horrific world alone? What about vice verse? It is the boy and the man's intense love for one another that keeps each one alive. Both believe that the other would not stand a chance in that world alone. As absurd as it may sound, the boy believed that he was the one holding the burden of keeping the to alive, saying that he "is the one. {He} is the one worries" about everything (356). But in a way he is right. Through his actions you can easily infer that he sees himself as the moral regulator between the two --making sure that they make ethical choices. In the end, the man does die, and the boy is able to live on with favorable chances. But the powerful bond that he shared with his father will probably withstand his lifetime. It is the existence of this relationship that makes it worth continuing the
struggle.
struggle.