Lit on Fire

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Elizabeth Hahn and Peter Whetzel • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Ash falls, trees stand like burnt ribs, and a father tells his son to carry the fire. We dive into Cormac McCarthy’s The Road not just as a survival story, but as a sharp mirror reflecting who gets to be called human when every system fails. We wrestle with the novel’s treatment of women—the mother’s contested agency, the near-total silencing of female voices, and the brutal imagery of bodies reduced to utility—and ask what it means when the narratives that endure in catastrophe preserve only certain kinds of power.

From there, we track the book’s braided symbols of faith and ethics. Is the boy a messiah, or is he conscience made flesh? We unpack biblical echoes, Eli’s provocation that “there is no God and we are his prophets,” and the stubborn instruction to “carry the fire” as a portable moral code. When institutions collapse and scripture loses authority, the story suggests the only commandment left is what we practice: care, restraint, and responsibility that costs us something.

We also connect the ash-gray world to our own: environmental collapse, cannibalistic capitalism, and the thin line between survival and savagery. The road becomes a ritual of movement that refuses despair—keep walking, keep the flame, keep the code—while the ending hands that fragile hope to the next generation. If you’ve ever wondered whether hope is naïve or necessary, or how literature can expose the price of outsourcing morality, this conversation offers a rigorous, compassionate guide through the smoke.

If the episode resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review telling us what “carrying the fire” means to you. Your notes help more curious readers find the spark.

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change. So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm Peter Wetzel.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

SPEAKER_00:

And this is Lit on Fire. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're walking into Ash and Silence, into the Road, Cormac McCarthy's stark, devastating vision of a world after the end. This is a novel often framed as a survival story, or a father and son tale stripped down to its bare bones. But we're going deeper. In this episode, we'll examine the road through a feminist lens, asking hard questions about whose voices are absent, whose bodies bear symbolic weight, and how motherhood, femininity, and care are imagined or erased in apocalyptic narratives. We'll also trace the novel's religious illusions and biblical symbolism, the language of prophecy and pilgrimage, the echo of a godless world still haunted by God, and what it means to carry the fire when morality itself feels post-scriptural. Is the man a priest of the old world? Is the boy a messiah? Or a moral compass? Or something far more fragile? We'll confront the societal issues McCarthy lays bare: collapse, environmental ruin, cannibalistic capitalism, and the thin line between survival and savagery. What does this novel suggest about gendered labor, power, and ethics when society falls apart? And what does it ask of us now in a world increasingly shaped by climate anxiety and moral exhaustion? This is not a comforting book, but it is a revealing one. So grab your coats, keep close to the fire, and join us as we step onto the road and ask what kind of humanity, if any, is still worth carrying forward. So, Liz, what's your overall take?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know that I teach this to my AP literature class. So I'm going to do a five out of five stars for its literary merit with a caveat. And the caveat has to be my feelings when it comes to Cormac McCarthy's view on women, the position he puts women in, the way that he reflects on women in his books. I have a lot of feelings and maybe issues with some of that, but I have to give it a five out of five for the purpose of just the literary merit alone. There's so much symbolism, there's so much illusion, there are so many moments that are so parallel to our own society and the questions we need to ask ourselves that I think it's a book that creates marvelous discussion. I just also think it creates discussion about the author's viewpoints and exactly how he approaches some of those things. So, what did you think? Because this is the first time you've read it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I went in pretty blind. I mean, I knew it was an apocalyptic story about a man and his son, but I went in expecting Stephen King's The Stand. And I'm glad you did not prepare me to think deeper or anything. I didn't want you to. I just went in with my own expectations and ended up getting a post-apocalyptic waiting for Godot. Which means that this book might not be for everybody because as a post-apocalyptic story, it's it's pretty straightforward. Man and boy walking down a road, doing everything they can to survive and avoid cannibalistic people who want to eat them.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, correct.

SPEAKER_00:

And so people who view it that way, I've heard criticize it as boring or overrated. But it didn't take me long to realize that it's a lot deeper than what meets the eye. I'm very convinced now that I have read it that there are huge allegorical or metaphorical aspects to the story if it isn't meant to be a metaphor entirely.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct. And that's kind of how I feel about it as well. It's funny because my students year to year react to it the way certain people react to it in their criticisms. So one year I will have a group of students in AP literature that absolutely love this book. They see it in all its layers and they just want to talk about those layers. I've had students write epic essays comparing the road to Dante's Inferno. Right? So we've got all these really nifty things you can look at. And then I have years where I try to present this to students. They read 20 pages in and they're like, what is this? We don't like it. Can we read something else? So it really is one of those books that inspires very extreme reactions. For me as a lover of literature, even though I may have some issues with some of the content, what appears to be the position of the author, I still see this literary merit and see all those diverse things. Some things that students have actually taught me in my classroom when we're discussing it, because everyone has such a different response to this book. But I see also where people could get lost in McCarthy's minimalist style. I mean, we've got no quotation marks, we've got very little punctuation, we've got these short conversations that are not identified as people are talking, so much so that you have to go back and you have to say, who said that? You know, as you're looking at it. So I think people get lost in it, but there's so much here if you persevere and you spend the time. So I guess let's start by talking about the women in this. Of course, the most notable woman that is talked about in this is the mother, who is not alive in the story, but we meet her through flashbacks and realize that she gave birth to this boy in the wake of the apocalypse, whatever apocalyptic event has happened. The city's burning in the distance. She gives birth. She is alive for a certain amount of time trying to survive with her husband and the boy. And then she decides that she's had enough and she is going to kill herself, that she wants to die. She doesn't want to say goodbye to her son. And you know the son's old enough to understand that she's going to have left because the father's like, you know, what do I tell him? But we get this image of this mother in a lot of people's minds abandoning her responsibility and walking off into the wilderness and dying on her own and leaving her husband, the boy's father, to keep him alive in this post-apocalyptic world. And a lot of people ask the question: is she liberated in this way that she makes this decision for herself? Is it cowardly? I don't particularly think Cormac McCarthy necessarily gives her a good look. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I agree. It immediately bothered me. The fact that this is a book being written by a man portraying this one female role so negatively, it just felt misogynist when I read it. Like he really has a negative view of women in general.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And so you can't help exercising a little biographical criticism looking at the author because you look at his history of relationships, and then he had his son at a much older age. I think he was almost 70 when his son was born. You look at this and you kind of think, what is going on there with his description of this woman and his creation of this woman? The only other women we get are the women that are either in distress and they're just part of the mass of people. They're not really distinguished. And then the women that are in the cannibalistic groups that are all pregnant and are bearing the children that are going to get consumed, as in Eaten, for the purposes of survival, which is a really interesting irony given the discussions around birth and motherhood in our society today and this quote-unquote pro-life. But in this book, McCarthy kind of flips it on his head, and now these women are simply breeding stock for food. And so that is another really interesting thing to examine.

SPEAKER_00:

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the only woman that speaks in the entire book is the mother, right? None of these captive women or complicit women have any lines whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01:

I think there is one woman, that gray-haired woman in the house, that has one or two lines as she's protecting the body of this man. She has one or two lines, but really, you're right. No other woman has a voice. So women are robbed of voice in this book. And I think it says something about the stories that survive in an apocalyptic world. McCarthy's viewpoint is that the male stories survive. There are multiple men that speak in this book, but the female stories do not. So there are some things to consider there. And when you read it, I think those things are worth looking at and worth criticizing. So from a feminist critical perspective, there's definitely a lot there that you might consider. So this also brings up the idea of which we've kind of already said, gendered labor, the male and female roles in this. How did you perceive the responsibilities of the men in this story?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the father's main responsibility is to protect the boy at all costs and instruct him on how to survive and what it's going to take to survive. And he's willing to do anything to that end, even things that make the boy deeply uncomfortable and hurt his sensitive nature, because he has a much more caring and compassionate nature than the father, who seems to have given up all of his real compassion for anyone else except for this boy.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And they flipped roles in some moments. So the father is the caretaker where the mother should be, if we were talking about traditional roles. The father is definitely a caretaker in this. His responsibility is the child, and he makes that his sole responsibility in a protector capacity. Right. As well as a compassionate capacity, but more of a protector capacity. So I'm going to shoot anyone that tries to threaten my son. I'm going to do anything to protect my son. I'm going to give my son the food. It's kind of an interesting combination between mother and father, the sacrifices that the father makes. And then we have the boy. When I say role reversal, there are times where the boy is the voice of wisdom as opposed to the father.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. He's the only conscience the man has left.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And he says if God exists, then the boy is the warrant. The boy is the one who says that God still exists. And that's why a lot of people put the boy in the Messiah capacity.

SPEAKER_00:

There's an early quote that I loved. He said, if he's not the word of God, then God never spoke.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. My son is the only proof of an existence of divinity. Otherwise, this truly is a godless world, which is a really interesting conversation as they push forward. And you see that consistently.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you think the fire represents?

SPEAKER_00:

I felt like the fire represented hope throughout the book. A hope for humanity and a future.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell Right. And I think the fire also represents hope. There are other moments where I think it represents truth. We're carrying some type of truth forward.

SPEAKER_00:

Even spirituality.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And there were a couple moments where I felt like it represented some type of faith or spirituality, as you just said. So there are countless moments where the fire goes out, and then the father quickly throws on other logs and starts the fire again, that they keep the fire going, that they're sleeping by the fire, and the fire becomes this eternal symbol through the entire narrative. And it is the one admonition that the father continually gives to his son. We have to keep carrying the fire. You have to keep carrying the fire. This is like our most sacred calling. And so you know that that fire means something beyond simply carrying the fire of warmth. It goes beyond that. And it makes me think of, and here I'm going to whip out my literature person, it makes me think of Fahrenheit 451 when Montag, for those that have read that, realizes that this society is corrupt, this society where they can no longer read books. The fateful moment for him is when he goes into an old woman's house and she has a ton of books, and she refuses to leave her books and instead allows the fireman to burn her with her books. And she says, Today we will light this fire that shall never go out. And it doesn't go out with Montag. And later on, he talks about lighting a candle. And you get this image of fire there too. Fire is first to destroy. And then when he meets the old woman and he has this transition, fire is knowledge. Fire is carrying forth the knowledge. So I also see some of that in McCarthy's writing, carry forth this fire. These are the lessons you have been taught that lead you to be something else, other than an animal instinctually trying to survive and willing to eat and kill other people to do it. You are carrying forth the fire of knowledge. Interesting. And the storytelling that takes place between father and son. What do you think about the boy as Messiah? Because so many people say that the boy is a Christ figure. And we get a lot of Christ figures in literature. I've had people suggest that the man is a Christ figure. I know that you feel like there were other religious figures along the way or figures that posed in some religious capacity. So tell me what you think about that and the other people that they meet along the way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I do think that's very interesting because there are so many references to him being the word of God, which is a name for Jesus. And also when the father says to Eli, which is a mysterious man that they meet along the road, what if I told you this boy is a god? And Eli He says, There is no God, and we are his prophets. And so I thought that was really interesting because Eli translates as the most high. Right. So some people have suggested that this is a symbol of spirituality or religion, that he is a metaphor for this man's last vestige of religious hope or faith. Right. He has this man denying the godhood of the boy, which makes me think that Cormac McCarthy doesn't want us to see him so much as some sort of Christ figure, but something simpler that we can hold on to in the absence of God.

SPEAKER_01:

Innocence?

SPEAKER_00:

Innocence. Yeah, our humanity, truth, everything that the boy represents in his nature is the only God that we need to follow. There is no supreme being that's going to intervene for us or take care of us. We have to become our own God in a way. That's why I really think that the man and the boy are actually two sides of the same coin. I think that this is needing to protect this boy is the symbolism of protecting the last vestige of your innocence, your humanity, your goodness and hope. Because he keeps saying, We're the good guys. We're the good guys.

SPEAKER_01:

We're the good guys still, Papa, right? Yes, we're the good guys.

SPEAKER_00:

And the boy has to constantly morally check in with his father because he knows his father is struggling to do the right thing. And he keeps saying, Are we still the good guys? And it's like how he remains grounded in this world that has lost all of its humanity.

SPEAKER_01:

And in this way, this is a real crisis of faith. You have this idea of this godless world that has happened after this apocalypse. If there was a God, how did this happen? No, now we live in this world of nothing but violence and man eating man, literally and figuratively, and we have this boy who is the symbol of innocence, but we have no God that's directing us. When Eli says there is no God and we are his prophets, to me, what Eli is saying is the only people that keep promoting this concept of God is us. We keep saying that kind of stuff. But God's not making himself apparent. God is not here. So we have to stop putting our dependence on this illusionary God. And we have to look at things like the innocence of this boy.

SPEAKER_00:

And I think that's interesting because we mentioned already that as cannibalism is a capitalist metaphor. What I have noticed is the most religious people often rely heavily on outsourcing their own morality.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct. I understand exactly what you mean.

SPEAKER_00:

And so this whole concept of there is no God and we are his prophets, and we need to stop outsourcing our morality and own it in truth as it is embodied by goodness and innocence and right action, which is what the boy represents.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. I agree. I think that is really what's going on here. The idea that when we espouse a God, we license ourselves to do all kinds of things. In his name. In his name, correct. And we then push it off on God and say, Well, this is what God wants me to do. God says this is bad. Therefore, I do this in the name of God. We kind of go with that and we run with that and allows humans to alibi themselves. Eli says, We have no alibi. This is us. Like we do what's right or we do what's wrong, and we own the responsibility of it without putting it on someone else. So I absolutely agree with you. I think that is a really important thing to witness in this that the father is protecting this boy, and he's protecting at the same time himself. So you really believe that the father and son are one person?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I think that the road, of course, is a metaphor for life.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Because one of the frustrating things about it is that they he constantly says, We've got to keep going down the road. We cannot stop. We cannot stop for long. We have to keep going. Even when they find a perfect place to stop in this underground bunker full of food and supplies that they could have stayed for indefinite amount of time because no one had found it before then. Right. So the logic that they need to keep moving or else they'll be found out doesn't make any sense. He just knows that in this world you have to keep walking.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Keep moving south. Keep moving south. And he pushes that and pushes that. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it's this constant push forward. And I'm not sure that I find a lot of nobility in the father in those moments. I feel frustrated with him because he's just pushing his son forward. I want them to stop, and they won't. That life is just this continuous grind, and maybe the father doesn't know how to live it in any other way. We definitely mention capitalism as inherent with the cannibalism and exploitation. And I think you hit on kind of that consumption in our world without ethics or pushing ethics on to someone else. What about this apocalypse? What do you think happened with the apocalypse? My students always ask me that. What do you think happens in this case?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I guess I then wonder where the sickness of the man comes from because he's constantly sick and coughing of blood the entire time. And I assume that was a byproduct of whatever apocalyptic event happened. But that being said, it's really unclear number of different apocalyptic things that could happen, such as nuclear warfare or merely environmental.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's my question. Is it an environmental commentary as well? The man coughing and coughing up blood or whatever else.

SPEAKER_00:

And all the animals are gone. All the trees are gone, and we can't see the sun any longer. Right. We are given that much information.

SPEAKER_01:

We are. And so is that smog? Is that pollution? Is that the earth shrouded in this darkness? Because it seems to be the whole earth. It seems to be no matter how far they're gonna walk, they're gonna keep running into the same thing. I feel like it's a complete environmental fallout from human irresponsibility.

SPEAKER_00:

I would agree with that. I think it seems there are more clues to indicate that than anything else, than any kind of warfare.

SPEAKER_01:

On that note, you can question whether McCarthy intends a commentary on that, or is he again just talking about the consumption of man without ethics and the inevitable fallout of the world as a result? There's lots to consider there as far as that's concerned. And now the boy would bear the responsibility for that as the upcoming generation. And the boy now knows nothing else, and so he's more conditioned to it than the father. The end of the novel is something always really interesting to me. And I don't know how you read it, but I feel like we get the sense of hope at the end of the novel. And I'm not sure whether it's a hope we can trust, whether it's genuine or not. What are your thoughts on the end?

SPEAKER_00:

I kind of began to see, like I said, the man and the boy as two symbolic elements. So, like we said, there's the cynicism, and then there's the innocence, there's the despair, and then there's the holding on and trying to protect the hope. But also, as a man and a boy, we also have a past and a future. And so if you see it as a metaphor for life, then in a way, it's this person carrying their pain. And their pain is shaping the world around them and how they see it. And the boy is that struggle through that despair and that misery and that pain to hold on to some kind of hope. And it's only when that pain is exchanged for something else that hope can truly flourish and thrive. And so I there is this passing on of the hope in the end. It seems to say that the world will be a better place.

SPEAKER_01:

If that hope is nurtured.

SPEAKER_00:

If that hope is nurtured. And I think that this promise that the boy makes to always talk to his father, to never forget him, and he'll be there whenever he needs him, is a promise to remember the lessons of the past without holding on to the pain of the past, without having to live that pain out. But we'll be in conversation for those who forget history are destined to repeat it.

SPEAKER_01:

I can see that. And then the hope is nurtured there at the end, and then we get somewhat of an ambiguous ending, leaving the question mark of where that hope will go from here. Right. And we're kind of left in that spot to our own determination. Ultimately, I feel like McCarthy is asking us, is humankind inherently good or isn't inherently evil? And you come to the conclusion from McCarthy's point of view, what?

SPEAKER_00:

That they are more evil than good.

SPEAKER_01:

I think I read that too. McCarthy is showing a situation where all our societal checks and balances have failed. The world is almost a failed experiment. Right. And then we see how these human beings react, and the father and the son, and if they indeed are one, are the last bastion of this humanity. And maybe Eli represents that on some level along the road. But all the other people we meet have degenerated into violence.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because I think the statement he's making is the world as it has been and was is beyond saving. The only hope we have is to start anew.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And so that takes us back to our conversation about women of Wild Hill, burn it down, right? So McCarthy is painting another picture where we simply have to burn it down.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because on the one hand, it's a very cynical perspective of humanity. But at the same time, he still gives us that, but if only we could shift the narrative, we could still have hope for humanity again. He doesn't give up fully.

SPEAKER_01:

No, he doesn't because he leaves us with that opportunity for hope.

SPEAKER_00:

But it's just a spark that can start a fire.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct. And then it's what will we do from here? And perhaps he's asking that to us on a societal level as well.

SPEAKER_00:

So for all those people whose criticism would be we are reading too much into this, this is just a poorly written post-apocalyptic story about a man and a son trying to survive. That is clearly proven not to be the case. There may be things were pulling from it that McCarthy himself didn't attend, but the process of making art means you release the meaning of the art to those that would interpret it from their own perspective and their own experiences. And so we can draw out deeply personal things and very true things from a work of literature like this, because that's what we're getting out of it, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. It's like literature is always happening in the present. We always talk about it in present tense. And with each generation that reads a work like this, new things are applied to it. But I think undoubtedly there are too many motifs, too many things going on in this for us just to read it as a very simple story.

SPEAKER_00:

And we do not need to ask McCarthy how we should be thinking about this.

SPEAKER_01:

This is not something you have to ask any artist. You simply make the meaning as you're experiencing it. So, Peter, what are we reading next time? What are we talking about next time?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, next week, I believe we will be discussing Pierce Brown's series Red Rising.

SPEAKER_01:

And it is awesome so far. I'm really enjoying it. It is that sci fi series. It's more leaning into the science fiction. I think it's gonna be good. Until then, keep reading, keep thinking, and we look forward to talking to you soon!