Abstract

In our world and our modern society, we have laws, ethics, morality, and religion that guide us, teaching us the basic principles of what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. However, what would happen if all of these guides suddenly cease to exist? In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is exactly what happens. The novel’s two main characters, a father and his son, try to survive in a world that has turned into ravaged landscapes with people that will hunt others down, kill them and eat them. Through the story, the pair fight to survive, but also fight to maintain their ethical values and moral duties when everyone around them has abandoned those values. This thesis will thereby demonstrate the possibility of ethics in a post-apocalyptic world and analyse this by reference to consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Moreover, it will show the ways that The Road can be used to teach right and wrong and good and bad in upper-secondary school.