Apocalyptic Setting
To viewers, especially of the film adaptation, The Road is clearly an apocalyptic narrative; Grey ash covering the land, the numerous earthquakes and thunderstorms, and the complete lack of life. The Man and Boy take a journey by foot to the west coast in hopes of finding the sea; and hope. I argue that the journey is not only a apocalyptic mission, but reminiscent of the journey Jesus of Nazareth took from Galilee and Jerusalem, particularly illustrated in the Gospel of Mark. The Journey of Jesus of Nazareth accounts his teachings of Godliness as he travels to what is eventually his death and resurrection. Similarly the journey to the ocean in The Road is a vehicle for the Man to learn lessons of Godliness demonstrated by the Boy through his interactions with those they come across. In this regard the Man can be considered a a disciple of The Boy. Furthermore, the act of reminiscing when the Man dies acts as a resurrection in which the Boy can continue his relationship with his father.
"McCarthy has adopted the language and rhetoric of the Bible to compose an “apocryphal” narrative of the American Southwest, and by extension the United States at large, while exploring the human innate tendency to evil"; a universe "abandoned by God" (M. Broncano)
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“The film follows a decades-long trend of Christians making mid-budget action movies based on the end of the world, using the same formula that’s been repeated onscreen for the last 40 years: A Godless society is ushered into the end times, leading to an apocalyptic showdown foretold by the book of Revelation” “it was Footmen that serves as the first major effort in the “End of the World” genre that has captivated religious filmmakers ever sense”(Carey)
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"The first allusion to the Bible [in The Road] comes from the post-apocalyptic world. This post-apocalyptic world that the Father and Boy are living in can be paralleled to the world described in the book Revelations. In Revelations there is catastrophe that hits the world when Jesus is returning. The world they live in is barren and had been destroyed by an apocalypse. In the Bible, the story of Christ's return is usually portrayed with fire everywhere. In "The Road" the world the story is set in is burnt and ash covered. This implies that McCarthy is paralleling the world in "The Road" to the world after the apocalypse in Revelation." (Tylerankarlo)
Allusion to the Book of Revelations:
“Watching while they opened up the rocky hillside ground with pick and mattack and brought to light a great bolus of serpents perhaps a hundred in number. Collected there for a common warmth. The dull tubes of them beginning to move sluggish in the cold hard light. Like the bowels of some great beast exposed to the day. The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be. The burning snakes twisted horribly and some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses. As they were mute there were no screams of pain and the men watched them burn and writhe and blacken in just such silence themselves and they disbanded in silence in the winter dusk each with his own thoughts to go home to their suppers” (McCarthy, 188-189)
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And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads names of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as though it had been [b]smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole earth wondered after the beast; 4 and they [c]worshipped the dragon, because he gave his authority unto the beast; and they [d]worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? and who is able to war with him? 5 and there was given to him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and there was given to him authority (ASV, Revelation 13)
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