The Road by McCarthy has a prominent theme and underlying issue of sense of reality. So far throughout the beginning of the novel, the man and the boy wander through this space of earth, with memories and emotions from before this apocalyptic world. They travel to find food and shelter in an environment of gray snow, dark sky, and ash on the wind. McCarthy illustrates their loneliness and fight to keep their sanity, knowing that they had a normal, better life before all of this happened.
“The snow had stopped and it was so quiet they could all but hear their hearts.” (page 35) When I think of being able to hear my own heart, I think of running a cross country race, or in the middle of a basketball game with seconds on the clock and the game is tied. In these moments, life or reality is altered. Time feels slowed down and it seems like you have a lot of more time to think. There is a sense of independence in these times, and quietness, but these times don’t last forever. In The Road, there is the same feeling of time being slowed and a sense of independence and quietness, except it doesn’t seem that it is going away anytime soon, and with no other people around them to help in this time, it seems close to impossible to keep their sanity as time goes on, which brings together my point of their sense of reality and trying to keep their sanity throughout the novel.
Great American Novels 