Stumbling Upon McCarthy

In the interview with Cormac McCarthy on Oprah, themes like luck and money showed up. According to McCarthy, money was never a concern. When things were going badly, something usually happened that put him back on track. Just like in the road, as they face danger or hunger, the father finds a way to get passed it alieve. For example, McCarthy mentions a situation where he didn't have any money and was trying to live from babysitting. One day, the door bell rang and a man gave him a letter, stating that they were giving him twenty thousand dollars. In situations like this one would think McCarthy had a lot of luck. But he also disagrees on this. He says the world is not controlled by luck, only probability. Sometimes, you end on the right group and you 'get lucky', or at least believe so, until that time period passes.      In McCarthy's novel, The Road, luck is a well-desguised theme. Living in a world where the only thing left for you is to survive, being lucky or seeing and positive side in a situation is otiose. In this time, money is not important anymore, it's useless. Just like McCarthy feels money wasn't important in his life, he implies this feeing in his post apocalyptic novel. The most important thing for the characters in the road is family. As the father speaks of his son, the believe that "if he is not the word of God God never spoke" conquers his thoughts.(McCarthy, 5) The father's only concern is his son's well-being, luck or money don't really fit the equation.     There's something McCarthy mentioned in the interview that caught my attention. When Oprah asks him if he was concerned about money, he answers the following: "I was very naive. I always assumed I was going to be taken care of one way or the other. And i was." This made me think about how humans take so much for granted. In The Road, we see a perfect example of this. They are living in a world they helped create as they destroyed it. Humans took nature for granted, they didn't take care of it. As McCarthy describes, "he did not take care of her and she died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no other dream nor other waking world and there is no other tale to tell."(McCarthy, 32) McCarthy is trying to remind us that we can no longer presume we will be taken care of forever. If we keep up with this attitude, probability will chose our fate instead of ourselves earning it.