Never a day too late : ethics, resistance, and the contradictions of human and animal euthanasia in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

This project draws upon representations of both human and Animal euthanasia in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, (2006) to examine euthanasia as a political and ethical phenomenon which is both determined by and reproduces human exceptionalism in the form of the human/Animal divide. Set in the aftermath of an ambiguous and irremediable apocalypse, The Road explores the notion of killing as a kindness, where death is the only way to escape threats of sexual violence, cannibalism, and exposure. This project thus engages McCarthy’s novel at the intersections of literary studies, companion species euthanasia and Canada’s evolving Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program to argue that the idea of a ‘good death’ has been ontologized, such that both humans and Animals are made vulnerable to a form of death that I argue few would knowingly choose for themselves. Oriented by the theoretical tenets of Critical Animal Studies, I argue that human exceptionalism forms the foundation for multiple and contradictory frameworks of euthanasia, as well as their discrepant ethical imperatives. These speciesist imperatives, what I call the commonsense ethics of euthanasia, contradictorily compel us to end the life of a suffering Animal and yet prolong and legislate the life of a suffering human. My reading of The Road is thus twofold: I consider how representations of euthanasia reflect and reproduce the assumptions of human exceptionalism, while also exploring how reading resistantly might carve space to challenge assumptions about death, within and beyond the text.