In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author uses the landscape and setting to comment on the social and public life of the few remaining humans left on Earth. Through out the novel, the author presents a landscape that is barren and cold and desolate. Nature is as brutal and unforgiving as the other humans that the man and boy encounter. The form and “attitude” of Nature reflects and further defines humanity and the last remnants of mankind.

The apocalypse has forces humanity to lose its civility and any form of civilization that they might have had in the past. The man and boy are attempting to travel to the south coast, where they think the weather and climate will be more suitable for habitation. As they journey, they must fight not only the surviving humans for survival, but they must also fight against the land. Instead of settling down with a store of food and attempting to farm the land and survive in this manner, they continue to move and forage. This suggests that humanity on the whole has reverted back from their agricultural abilities to the hunter and gatherer mentality. The food that the man and boy eat are the leftovers of civilization. While they do not hunt animals for meat and hides, the “bad guys” hunt and eat other humans to facilitate their own survival. They encounter people being locked in a cellar and kept as a meat locker. They cannot stay and help the people as they call up, “Please help us” (Mccarthy, 110). They do not participate in the eating of the flesh. This cannibalism is the last resort and the fact that humanity has been pushed to such measures in order to maintain the species continued existence proves the decline of the human race back to a more bestial and primal life.

The cold and barren nature of the environment through which our characters travel is also indicative of the nature of the remaining humans. Humanity is barren like the surrounding setting. Beyond mere survival, they have nothing to look forward to and nothing pleasant to reflect upon. The people who the man and boy encounter are savages. The land is barren and from all accounts it seems that the human race is as well. Several times the boy is challenged and threatened. Without the man there to feed, clothe, and care for him, the boy would not and probably could not have survived. The boy thinks he sees another little boy when they see this dog. Almost assuredly had the other little boy existed, he died after they saw him. This little boy seems to represent the boy if he were alone. The only infant or small child that is seen in the novel is the one they find in the cooking pot “headless and gutted and blackening on the spit” (198). Obviously the continuance of humanity has come to a stop and procreation has ceased. The only women through out most of the novel are the ones being kept in the meat cellar. From these textual clues, the futility of their attempts to survive can be seen. Even should the man and boy survive, the civilization which they plunder in order to survive has gone and humanity is struggling to stay alive themselves. No one seems to have any thought of the race as a whole surviving, only themselves individually. This can be seen when the man repeatedly refuses to allow the boy to give his food to others. The boy wants to share his food with the old man, “Eli“. He also does not want the man who stole their livelihood at the beach to die or go hungry. Survival of the fittest is solely an individual concern, but it is the overlying attitude for most of the characters, with the sole exception of the boy.

Further to this point, nature does not provide anything for the man and boy. There are no wild animals to hunt or trap. There are no gardens or wild plants to eat. They survive solely on what other people have left behind. Just when they run out of food the deus ex machina arrives in the form of a huge pantry with everything they need to get well and have food. Without this store of food, the characters would not have survived. The coldness of the environment adds to rejection of humanity by nature. It provides nothing to help them survive, but there is some sense in the book that what has happened to make the world as it is is somehow the fault of mankind. This is nature’s revenge upon mankind for whatever they have done that halted the progress of nature. No animals or plants. All that remains of the fertile Earth is a cold and barren wasteland. Their continued survival comes from the remains of civilization. Without the buildings, pantries, houses, and stores they could not survive. In essence, the man and boy are still living off of the former human life and have not acclimated to the new set of circumstances.

At the end of the book, the man dies and the boy goes with a man and woman who have two other children with them. This is the first nuclear family unit that is portrayed. The father and son were the only other family that the author presented. This is a broken family as the mother has already died. The presence of the nuclear family at the end suggests that civilization, however small, is beginning again. With the iconic boy-girl children and the maternal woman to care for them, the boy finds civilization. Nature claims his father and the world, as he has known it, dies. With the death of the father is the death of the past. The boy appears to have found the good guys and in them he finds the new beginnings of human life. Groups of humans which appear earlier in the book are more like animal packs. They roam together in search of food. This family structure is more of the human attributes which have been almost entirely missing from the world previously.

The barren and desolate lifestyle of humans in the novel is reflected by and enhanced by the environment. Nature is the conduit through which the reader sees how the world of the novel has changed and been changed by humanity. Humanity has broken nature and nature seems determined to repay the favor. By the end of the novel the reader sees that humanity may be again reaching a level of civilization that may enable it to coexist with nature instead of in opposition to it. Civilization is the first step on the path to survival. Agriculture may not yet exist in the novel, but the man carried seeds in his pocket and perhaps others exist as well. The seeds are the fire of humanity and human civility. Through these seeds may be sown the base from which humanity can again grow and flourish.