Black Lives Matter: Critical Analysis of McCarthy’s The Road (2006) in the Backdrop of George Floyd’s Murder

Abstract

A large body of American literature deals with the subject of immigration from other parts of world to America and clashes within varied cultures in America. The latest murder of Gorge Floyd, a black American, very inhumanly by white Police Officers has once again brought into focus the issue violence with the idea: the other is not acceptable. This incident has once again raised the ideas of nation, transnationalism and Americanness: the main area of concern in the novels of a contemporary American novelist Cormac McCarthy. His novel, The Road (2006) is post-apocalyptic novel. The central idea of McCarthy’s The Road is making a new world after a big apocalypse with an end of violence and killing of the ‘Other’ while Geroge Flyd’s killing brings this idea to a reverse gear. Its reason appears to be the violence and bloodshed rooted in American soil, in American history. Through the portrayal of a post-catastrophic new world order, the writer asks his American readers to acknowledge the common humanity possessed by the ‘Other’ through transnational reconciliation.