"KEEP A LITTLE FIRE BURNING;
HOWEVER SMALL,
HOWEVER HIDDEN"

~Cormac McCarthy
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The Main Theme:



 

The main theme that McCarthy portrays in his book is to continual maintain "the fire". This can mean several things sand be argued to represent many different things: the fire could represent your morality, religion, motivation or motivation. For consistency's sake, maintaining the fire of morality will be argued here. 

"The Fire" is mentioned numerous times in The Road,  for the father, it represents the moral challenges that he faces every day. These challenges include: cannibalism, thievery and most of all, maintaining empathy. Through out the book, the only one of these challenges that gets progressively worse is empathy. The father's morals are strong enough for him to not become a cannibal or a thief. It should be noted that these latter two temptations do exist (considering the majority of people on the earth are cannibalistic and/or thieves), the father does not participate in them because he carries enough of the fire to do so. It was also established that the father had connections to God that were diminished after the destruction of the world, so he knows that empathy towards other human beings is an important part if maintaining faith in his religion. The father begins to become less empathetic while taking more risks, listening less to his son. He forgets to think of his own partner while worrying about himself more often. This lack of empathy towards his son's fears are matched with his decreasing empathy towards the rest of the people that he meets on the road. 
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His decrease in empathy overtime for others other than his son is first seen when the father refuses to help an old man on the side of the road named Ely ( this is the only name given, however, he does not want to give his identity away so this is a fake name). The boy convinces his father to let the old man, Ely, spend dinner with them. This is against the father's judgement; he is showing a lack of empathy. When they reach the coast, this is when we see the father reach his lowest point regarding empathy. He strips a man of his clothes after the man begs for him to have mercy; knowing that if his clothes are taken he will surely die. It is not until after the boy begs his father to give him his clothes back, does the father return the thief's clothes to the spot where they took the clothes from the thief. This lack of empathy towards others posses for a very undesirable trait.

During the father's lifetime, there are no immediate ramifications when his lack of empathy and safety. After his life, however, is when a man approaches the boy soon after his father has died. The man says that he and his group have been following the two for awhile, and they wait for the father to pass before approaching the boy. This means that something kept the man from approaching the father altogether. This hesitance to approach the father comes from the father's tendency to take risks and most importantly, his lack of empathy. The man that comes to rescue the boy is in search of a long-term survival, this can only be achieved if he trusts every members if his family and/or group. They avoided interacting and taking in the father because of his lack of empathy towards other people. The theme that McCarthy wants to portray is: worrying about yourself is never a good way to live life. This self centeredness could create more problems and even cost you your life when a savior comes along your road.