Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy

Looking online searching for interviews I began to wonder and make assumptions for myself to why he made this book. Almost wondering will the book still have the same interest to me after I know where the authors inspiration came from. It still does......

I came to find the interview with Oprah which I watched and was surprised at how old he was, I had no clue! Back to the topic....I found it surprising that, that interview was the first TV one he had done. With the interview I found out that the idea of the book just came from him being in a small town in an old hotel. What came up in the interview was the question "Is this a long story to your son" , I found this intriguing because I never really got that feel from the book until then. The story is basically about father and son traveling looking for a better life in hopeless surroundings. It never clicked for me that this is basically a love story. 

In another interview I found this statement, "whereas "The Road" is about human goodness. It wasn't until I had my own son that I realized a personality was just innate in a person. You can see it forming. In "The Road," the boy has been born into a world where morals and ethics are out the window, almost like a science experiment. But he is the most moral character. Do you think people start as innately good?" This statement was from the interviewer but the Cormac answered saying that " I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble. But people tell me from time to time that my son John is just a wonderful kid. I tell people that he is so morally superior to me that I feel foolish correcting him about things, but I've got to do something--I'm his father. There's not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he's not." I also found that many conversations he had in the Road were conversations he had with his son John. I found the things I found gave me a more analytical look at the book, I feel now that I can understand it more. 

The THEME Cormac talked about was Human Goodness I believe that everyone is born with some goodness in them no matter what. This theme is ever present in the Road, Cormac seems to characterize the "bad guys" as having no human goodness. 

Kay, Bai