Between Dystopia and Utopia: The Post-Apocalyptic Discourse of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

This article examines the relationship between good and evil and hope and despair in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. It is a novel that tells a classical, almost mythical story and throughout its discourse it touches contrasting yet related opposites: it is the story of man against the elements, and it is a matter of life or death; not only the life and death of its individual characters but of humanity as such. The article discusses how McCarthy's novel is playing with opposites as its discourse contains elements of utopia as well as dystopia. External space, the natural physical world, constitutes a strong dystopian element, while inner space, the psychological inner life of the characters, constitutes a utopian element. In other words, the opposition between the land and the two main characters is the novel's discursive centre.