Challenge in the Road

Nick Beatty 

Sigmund Freud’s book, Civilization and its Discontents, closes with a question posited to the entire human race.  Though it seems on the surface to be a jeremiad against civilization and religion, the question he really wants answered is whether or not mankind can dominate, through culture, their damning instincts of aggression and self-destruction.  In choosing such a question as the closing point of his work, Freud reveals his own doubts of our long-term survival in light of the power these instincts have over our psyche.  After reading Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, one is compelled to the view that McCarthy shares Freud’s skepticism.

            One can reach this conclusion about McCarthy’s response to the question by analyzing the characters in his novel.  McCarthy’s book was not intended to have stirring action scenes or to have a twisting plot.  Unlike his arguably more famous work, No Country for Old Men, this is not a story that easily lends itself to the action of a Hollywood movie.  The real heart of the novel does not lie in the plot, but in the characters, and their relationships with the other characters, and with the setting they find themselves in.

            In fact, the most climactic part of this story, and the most telling revelation of McCarthy’s negative response to Freud’s query, has already occurred years before the first chapter begins.  McCarthy’s novel has a post-apocalyptic setting; in his world, the characters already know that the answer to Freud’s inquest is a resounding no.  To the father and son, the fact that humanity cannot control its destructive instincts is easily apparent. 

            Another way that a reader can infer how The Road answers Freud’s question is by studying the human representatives in the story.  The supremacy of aggression over culture is the most apparent symptom of the characters the father and son meet along their journey. .  The thief seen on page 255 is one of these.  Coming across the bountiful treasure of food that the father and son have accumulated, he decided to take all of it and make his getaway.  He had undoubtedly been taught by his society before the event that theft is not right.  His culture surely promoted human decency, but now that his survival is placed on the line, he shows a marked declination of civility by leaving nothing.  Even the father, presumably the story’s protagonist, takes back everything from the thief, leaving him discalced and naked.  He only relents to let the thief keep the clothes on his back after pleading from his son.  Neither example bodes well for mankind’s ability to suppress the aggressive instinct, at least when one feels that his survival is at stake.

            The thief and the father show the supremacy of the aggressive impulse on an individual level.  This outcome, though unpleasant, is not shocking.  There is more surprise when the “army in tennis shoes” files by on page 91. The men in this army show the application of aggression on a larger scale.  They completely suppress any culture they may have picked up before the event, because in the new world it can be seen as a weakness.  They turn instead to blatant displays of aggression, like having a slave train and wearing masks, in order to terrorize, conquer, and live.  They show signs of a new society. Previously, communities tried to suppress the destructive impulse, but now the only communities that remain are celebrations of it.

            The most shocking instance of complete obeisance to the aggressive instincts can be seen on page 263.  The bowman in the house seems to be so caught up in aggression that it has replaced very simple cultural tendencies like rationality.  For some hardly tenable reason, he decides to shoot at a father and son he sees wheeling a cart down a road.  He has lost any semblance of culture that he had shown before the event; he now is willing to break the taboos of killing innocent people, even if they are children.  His immediate survival was not even at stake; the only possible explanation was a desire for the food in the cart.  The bowman reveals the aggressive impulse in its worse form, desperation.

            Other examples from the characters in the novel show a tendency towards self-destruction rather than outward aggression.  The most obvious example is the mother.  She long ago decided that life in this new world was not worth living.  All she can find is languor and depression, and she longs for death to take her.  Giving herself up to the human instinct of self-destruction, she feels that the best course of action is to commit suicide.  She shows a disconnect from one of the most common societal norms, that of the mother’s desire to protect her children.  In her mind, the most protection she can offer her child is to have him follow her in death.  She does, however, reveal that some cultural development is left in her decision to leave him alive so that the father will have someone to live for.

            Not all of McCarthy’s novel leans toward a purely negative response to Freud’s query.  In the end of the novel, the reader can infer that he does have some hope for the future.   This inference is made when he introduces the family who take in the boy in the last pages of the novel.  This family has not completely given itself up to the destructive forces inside the human mind.  They come across the boy, and instead of making the aggressive decision to kill him and take his food, as the bowman attempted, they offer him security and a place in their family.  Their example shows a victory for the human attempt to suppress aggression and self-destruction in favor of community and civilization.

            Overall, majority of the characters in McCarthy’s novel show evidence in favor of a negative response to Freud’s question.  The overwhelming response to the situation from the characters is that of total surrender to the destructive impulses.  One must, however, read closely enough to see that McCarthy has not completely given up hope.  The most convincing evidence of this is not something written in the novel, but the fact that the novel was written.  His book can be seen as a challenge to mankind to be aware of the fact that this may easily happen.  His novel is a warning to the human race to suppress these destructive instincts.  He took the time to write out this warning, which shows that even if he doesn’t believe it likely, mankind may take heed.