An Analysis of The Road from the Perspective of Community Theory

As one of the representatives of Anthropocene fiction, Cormac McCarthy's The Road focuses on the protagonists' looking for hope for living.It can be inferred when analyzed with Tnnies' theory that a community is constructed within the relationship between father and son, together with other characters that are involved in the narration.Accordingly, the changing process of community is demonstrated in a progressive sequence of blood-geopolitics-spirit, revealing a sense of progression in an Anthropocene context.This paper analyzes and explores the process of evolution in three dimensions reflected in the novel: construction, crisis, and the reconstruction of community.It is considered that The Road conveys powerful calls of the yearn for the survival of the individual, which can be regarded as a reflection of the human condition in reality.Meanwhile, its distinct and full-scale evolution of community process expressed in the novel also presents a referentiality to the age of Anthropocene.