The Sense of the Ending and Human Finitude. Representation of Catastrophe in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”

Abstract

This paper, starting from the awareness of the anthropological finitude, aims to investigate the symbolic meaning of the catastrophe in today's society. With reference to E. De Martino’s and G. Anders’s anthropo - philosophical theses, the paper analyzes the representation of present catastrophes as Apocalypses without eskaton, in which the "blindness" of man and his inability to react is manifested. Both technological catastrophes directly caused by man and environmental disasters indirectly produced by anthropic neglect causes a widespread sense of powerlessness, leaving man devoid of theoretical and practical means to guide his action. This implies, however, the necessity to widen human "feel" and the ability to understand the "meaning" of our actions in the world. This paper aims to examine all these issues through an ecocritic analysis of the novel The Road by C. McCarthy, in order to show that there is still a deeply human way to experience the fragility and to represent the catastrophe.

Keywords

• anthropological finitude, technological catastrophes, cormac mccarthy, ernesto de martino, gunther anders